Lois Weber
As told through clips from 183 female directors, this epic revisionist history of the cinema focuses on women’s integral role in the development of film art. Using almost a thousand film extracts from thirteen decades and five continents, Mark Cousins asks how films are made, shot and edited; how stories are shaped and how movies depict life, love, politics, humour and death, all through the compelling lens of some of the world’s greatest filmmakers – all of them women.
The first talkie was directed by Alice Guy, the first color film was produced by Lois Weber, who directed more than 300 films over 10 years. Frances Marion wrote screenplays for the Hollywood Star Mary Pickford and won two Oscars, Dorothy Arzner was the most powerful film director in Hollywood. And what do all of them have in common? They are all women and they have all been forgotten. Incredibly, it also took until 2010 for the first woman, Kathryn Bigelow, to win the Oscar for Best Director. Even if underrepresented women have always played a big part in Hollywood and it is this part of the film history left untold that this documentary sets out to uncover.
In this melodrama filmed on location in Hawaii, a sugar plantation manager finds himself falling in love with a native girl, but instead of committing to her, he marries a socially prominent young woman from San Francisco. The spoiled girl does not easily adapt to the rigors of plantation life and she gets terribly bored. She is just about to give in to the romantic overtures of a persistent native when her former lover shows up. The husband gets jealous and is about to attack him when the wife sets fire to the cane field. The husband's native lover saves him from death. Afterward, his wife leaves to be with her old flame, and the manager is free to be with the woman he's loved all along.
Babe Scott, a cabaret dancer who is constantly searching for sensational material to shock her customers, conceives of burlesquing a Salvation Army girl and attends mission meetings on the East Side for atmosphere. There she meets Jerry Wilson, an honest truckdriver and friend of the Army captain. Although the act is a success, Babe is disillusioned to find Lonnie, a fellow worker who has been romancing her, stealing her money and making overtures to Big Bertha, the hard-boiled club hostess.
Topsy is the main character in this movie. When the black girl who "jes' growed" is auctioned as a slave but nobody will bid on her, Little Eva purchases Topsy for a nickel. That's the one part of this movie that I found plausible: slaveholders often refused to buy children, since their upkeep in food usually exceeded any labour they performed. There's a gooey romantic subplot between Mariette (the niece of Simon Legree) and George Shelby, son of a prominent slaveholder.
Ray Sturgis, leader of the fashionable Long Island jazz set, is engaged to "Egypt" Hagen, an up-to-date girl in every respect. Egypt is arrested at a roadhouse raid, and at her mother's bidding, the Reverend Norman Lodge arranges for her freedom. At a fancy-dress ball, when Ray wears a costume made of newspaper headlines concerning her arrest, Egypt is offended. Seen constantly in the company of Reverend Lodge, her reputation causes church people to take up the matter with the bishop. Leaving the country club, Egypt goes to the Lodge home and hides behind the door when the bishop arrives; Reverend Lodge wants to marry her, and they admit their love; but humiliation causes her to leave with Sturgis that night. Their yacht is wrecked, but Lodge and the bishop follow and rescue Egypt, though Sturgis is drowned. The bishop, realizing the depth of their love, consents to marry them.
A Broadway actress becomes a star due to the guidance of her director. The two fall in love, but are prevented from marrying due to a clause put into her contract by her producer. The Library of Congress has an incomplete copy.
Complete copies are held by many film archives in Europe and the United States.
Professor Griggs, teaching at the college, doesn't get paid a living wage; his next door neighbor, successful shoemaker Olsen, has money and plentiful food, while the Griggses have hardly any. When the professor's rich student Phil West falls for beautiful Griggs daughter Amelia and also befriends the poor Reverend Gates (a young man who is also in love with Amelia), he observes the difference in his life and theirs and tries to help make a difference.
According to this Lois Weber production, men don't really seem to know what they want at all -- first Frank (J. Frank Glendon) wants to be an inventor. Then he wants to marry his childhood sweetheart, Hallie (the lovely Claire Windsor). Then he wants children. Then, when his inventions bring him financial success, he becomes restless, so he takes up with another woman. Eventually he figures out that the woman's reputation is less than squeaky clean, so he wants his wife back. But he sees Yost, one of Hallie's former admirers (Hallam Cooley), walk into their house and believes she is unfaithful. Months later, he finds out through his brother Arthur (George Hackathorne) that she's been true all this time, and Hallie lets him come back to her. Read more at https://www.allmovie.com/movie/what-do-men-want-v116388#LiSD6dO7IZmUGgXo.99
A woman, having lost interest in her soon to be bankrupt husband, decides to seduce a doctor.
Marie, a hotel maid, falls in love with millionaire's son Roger, but Roger cannot marry her because of her inferior station and his unwillingness to make his family unhappy thereby. They separate. When next they meet, Roger discovers that Marie is actually a princess. Now their renewed romance cannot continue because Roger is a mere commoner. But the Bolshevik revolution provides complication and at last resolution to their dilemma.
A minister and his young daughter Bess, journey west where he hopes to regain his health. They become involved with notorious outlaw 'Eagle' Ryan. The outlaw becomes influenced by the power of religion along with Bess's gentle persuasion, he is reformed from his life of crime and forgiven by all the townspeople.
A pretty but poor girl leaves the young boy who loves her for a rich playboy who she believes will take care of her, but the wealthy cad has other plans for her.
A female ape takes to mothering the orphaned boy (Tarzan) and raises him over the course of many years until a rescue mission is finally launched and the search party combs the jungle for the long-time missing Lord Greystoke. But then, one of the search members, Jane Porter, gets separated from the group and comes face to face with fearsome wild animals. Tarzan saves her from harm just in the knick of time and love begins to blossom.
The mysterious "K" takes a humble job and falls in love with his landlady's daughter, Sidney Page. Sidney discourages her boyish admirer, Joe Drummond, and seeks training as a nurse. Infatuated with the head surgeon, Dr. Max Wilson, she accepts his proposal, which infuriates nurse Carlotta, who also loves Max. Carlotta lures Max to a roadhouse, where Joe, mistaking her for Sidney, shoots Max. K appears and, assuming his true identity as the famous Dr. Edwards, saves Max's life by performing his "Edwards operation."
A depressed man grows to love life just as his fortune teller's predictions become dire. An incomplete copy exists at the Library of Congress.
A poor shopgirl is offered a "good time" for a week by the son of her employer. She accepts, but the offer is misunderstood by her brother, who informs the girl's parents of her "fling."
Characters in the film attend a movie titled 'Life’s Mirror', where they see parallel, cautionary versions of their own lives. Only the first two of the original seven reels survive.
A chorus girl gains infamy after the suicide of her beau. An incomplete copy exists at the Library of Congress.
Walton, the District Attorney, yearns to have children. Soon after defending an author on trial for publishing indecent literature, Walton discovers a secret his wife and her socialite friends have been hiding from him.
Ed Brown plays a old war veteran tired of living in a veterans' home and decides to move in with his wealthy nephew.
Fenella (ballerina Anna Pavlova), a poor Italian girl, falls in love with a Spanish nobleman, but their affair triggers a revolution and national catastrophe. Based on the opera by Daniel Auber.
The story of St. Gabriel, who was killed by an ignorant mob for making a nude statue representing Purity, who is also represented by a ghostly naked girl that flits through the film.
A woman known as Sunshine Molly gets a job in an oil field, and clashes with a belligerent employee named "Bull" Forrest. (Note: multiple reels of this film were damaged beyond repair. Only three reels remain, two of which are also heavily damaged.)
The story of a ruddy-cheeked rural postman who dabbles in poetry-writing on the side. He utilizes his hobby to spread a bit of sunshine throughout the village, at one point reuniting a long-estranged family.
A rich merchant, Antonio is depressed for no good reason, until his good friend Bassanio comes to tell him how he's in love with Portia. Portia's father has died and left a very strange will: only the man that picks the correct casket out of three (silver, gold, and lead) can marry her. Bassanio, unfortunately, is strapped for cash with which to go wooing, and Antonio wants to help, so Antonio borrows the money from Shylock, the money-lender. But Shylock has been nursing a grudge against Antonio's insults, and makes unusual terms to the loan. And when Antonio's business fails, those terms threaten his life, and it's up to Bassanio and Portia to save him.
A group of jealous men conspire to defeat a romantic rival who has captured the attention of all of the ladies at a summer hotel. (Note: The majority of this film is considered lost. Only a fragment survives.)
Diana Grave's husband has left her, preferring any life to that of living with a woman who is not congenial to him. Howbeit, her husband gone is a different matter than her husband present. She commissioned a detective to locate him.
An isolated house is too remote for a lone servant, who leaves a note, quietly exits the back door, and puts the key under the mat. Left alone in the house is a mother and her infant. A tramp has watched the servant leave and begins to skulk. When the lady of the house sees him outside as he discovers the key, she's terrified and desperately phones her husband, who's at work in town. He jumps into a car that's idling in front of his office and races toward home, the car's owner, and police, in hot pursuit.
Three men in succession propose marriage to Grace Darling; she accepts all! Since they are roommates, the three discover their problem in short order; when they return for an explanation, they're in for a surprise.
Haunting and hypnotic, this artistic gem recounts the lyrics from a popular 1898 song of the same name. Weber’s stylistics, including circular matte shots, foregrounding of the cross and the rosary, and placement of the characters within each shot bring to the film an enormous emotional and spiritual range.
Alleged silent short adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel, first mentioned in a 1966 copy of Films In Review. Recent scholarship argues this film never existed and is erroneously included in the publication.
The Fine Feathers is a 1912 silent film dramstic short directed by and starring Lois Weber. It was produced the Rex Motion Picture Company and distributed six months before the formation of Universal Film Manufacturing Company.
A Japanese Idyll is a 1912 silent short drama film directed by and starring Lois Weber. The film was produced by the Rex Motion Picture Company for release by Universal Film Manufacturing Company.
A chemist named Aratus invents a concoction that will turn creatures to stone, but only realizes the dangers of his creation when his wife falls victim to it.
A 1911 silent drama film written and directed by Edwin S. Porter and Lois Weber. Starring Lois Weber, Phillips Smalley, and Charles De Forrest.
The baby daughter of Mrs. Norton, a widowed seamstress, dies. The sorrow-stricken mother gazes at the empty cradle and decides to replace the departed soul with an orphan child upon whom she can lavish the love, the rightful object of which the Great Giver and Taker has taken from her. She goes to the orphanage and asks to be given a baby girl, and is given one of the twin baby sisters. Richard Golden, a wealthy shirtwaist manufacturer, has an only son, a little boy, who yearns for a sister and continually begs his father to bring him a little sister to be a playmate to him, and the father, to satisfy the child's persistent pleading, goes to the orphan home and brings home the other little twin sister. Years roll by and both girls have grown to young womanhood in their different stations in life. Jack Golden, now grown to manhood, and knowing that the girl is only a foster sister, asks her to become his wife.
Pretty Ann, and Joe, the hostler, one day chance to meet. Strong is Joe, and simple, and Ann is shy and sweet. As man and maid have done before, they love, and marry, too. And live happy ever after? Ah, this tale is new to you! Yes, the tale is drear, prosaic; and so poetry won't do. A baby boy comes to bless the union. Joe is working in the stables when they tell him of his joy: his heart is gay and happy, and he tells the horses so. Then, it might be the angels were jealous of such mortal happiness; it might be the devil, seeing the stage so set, entered to play the leading role.
Little Sherlock Holmes, Jr., reads the doughty doings of his hero-god, and at once determines to become a detective himself.
During the American Revolution, an innkeeper's daughter learns of a plot to assassinate George Washington while he will be staying at her father's inn.
A self-centred wealthy woman is transformed after she is confronted with the harsh reality of the living conditions endured by the employees of her husband's mill.
