I’m still on a silent film rabbit hole—I love the imagination and pathos in scenes without words, the experimentation of moving theater onto film. And last week I was surprised to learn that the highest-paid director of silent films in the early twentieth century was—of course—a woman, Lois Weber. In fact, there were many women directors in the silent film era. Weber not only directed—she acted, wrote, produced, and created her own production company, while also pioneering techniques such as split screens and double exposure. Yet she died in obscurity.
Lois Weber at work in her garden, photographed in 1925 (Credit: Getty Images). Source.
One of Weber’s films, The Hypocrites, addresses themes of duplicity in the church, in marriage, and in politics. The allegory is heavy-handed, but it was scandalous at the time for filming a fully nude actress who played “naked truth,” who appears only in ghostly double exposure throughout the film (Weber pioneered the double exposure technique). If you love the creative weirdness of silent films too, you can watch the film here.
Weber was passionate about film as a means to address social issues and women’s rights head-on, promoting stories that advocated for birth control and showed the vulnerability of women in poverty. Yet her work also followed Margaret Sanger’s birth control advocacy into themes of eugenics. (why, white feminists, why??). Her legacy, however complicated—and because it’s complicated—is one that should be more widely known. Weber’s film Shoes, in which a woman in dire poverty is forced to compromise herself in order to buy shoes, while still heavy-handed, is one of her more moving films. You can stream a restored version here.
Another fantastic site for early silent films and into the present day is Black Film Archive, curated by Maya S. Cade, while she was a scholar-in-residence at the Library of Congress.
And a poem for the week—was reminded of this when I saw there is a new film about Emily Brontë coming out. I’ve always loved the defying strength of her voice in this poem. Emily Dickinson asked that it be read at her funeral, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson recited it at her service.
No Coward Soul Is Mine
No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven's glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear
O God within my breast
Almighty ever-present Deity
Life, that in me hast rest,
As I Undying Life, have power in Thee
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts, unutterably vain,
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears
Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And Thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee
There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed.
---Emily Brontë
"why, white feminists, why??" <-- me, too, way too often than I'd like, always asking, "What is wrong with white women???"
Ugh, I know. It's so so maddening.