Lois Weber and D. W. Griffith: Pioneers of Silent Film
During the years 1911 and 1920, the silent film era was in full swing. Also at its peak during this time were the number of women working in the motion picture industry (Slide 1). Author David Meuel writes, “Among all these women, perhaps the most financially successful and critically acclaimed was Lois Weber, a social moralist whose films tackled such subjects as birth control, child labor, capital punishment, and spousal abuse” (Meuel 6). Like Weber, D. W. Griffith’s film aesthetic was also steeped in the dramaturgy of Great White Way producer par excellence David Belasco (Mast and Kawin 68). In fact, the films of Lois Weber were marketed under the moniker, “The Belasco of the Screen” (Slide 67). However, dramatic structure was not the only thing Griffith and Weber had in common (Mast and Kawin 68). They also were pioneers in the “grammar and rhetoric” of film (71). Weber, however, was able to improve upon Griffith’s camera and editing techniques in a way that transcended, rather than aped, his landmark discoveries.
According to Paul Schrader, “The American film considered to contain the first close-up is a Griffith two-reeler called The Lonedale Operator in 1911” (Schrader). This groundbreaking close shot serves to make known to the audience that the telegraph operator’s “gun” is, in fact, a wrench (Mast and Kawin 76). Had this imitation iron remained at a distance, the audience would not be able to recognize the full worth of the ingenuity behind the operator’s ruse. Lois Weber’s Suspense (1912), on the other hand, utilizes the close-up shot to serve a different perspective. “Suspense,” according to Anthony Glide, “[is] a tightly constructed suspense drama, in which Weber uses the camera both in an objective and subjective fashion” (48). For example, when the wife (Lois Weber), looks outside her upstairs window, there is a high-angle shot from her point of view in which the tramp looks up into the camera. The audience, in turn, experiences the same shock as the wife (50). This close up does not contain a hand tool, although it certainly ratchets up the tension of the plot (Thompson and Bordwell).
Another dynamic that serves to accelerate the plot is the tracking shot, which, according to Mast and Kawin, was aptly named “because the camera’s platform often rolled along, railroad-style, on tracks” (71). This definition is especially poignant regarding the “race for life” sequence in The Lonedale Operator, as well as the police chase in Suspense (72). In the former, Griffith mounted his camera behind the engineers of the speeding locomotive, effectively photographing an over-the-shoulder tracking shot (Dancyger 6). When compared to the “moving shot from the police car” in Suspense, there is a similar perspective (Slide 51). The camera, positioned behind the two policemen in the front seat, captures the movement as they catch up with the husband driving the stolen car. This scene still looks ahead of its time, and its unique perspective drives a sense of urgency into the plot. This is also due in no small part to the cross-cuts of the heroine in peril (50).
Cross-cutting is another Griffith editing innovation which improved the fluency of cinematic language. Mast and Kawin note “Griffith discovered that-as with words-there was a way of combining film shots to produce clarity, power, and meaning” (71). Once again, The Lonedale Operator and Suspense are alike in that they both use cross-cutting to span the narrative gulf of space. These films also share trifectas of tramps, distressed damsels, and separated sweethearts. “A schema is a pattern that we find in an artwork, one that a later artist can borrow,” points out David Bordwell in regard to cross-cutting. “In effect, [Weber and Smalley] revise the crosscutting schema . . . by putting several actions into a single frame” (Thompson and Bordwell). For example, Griffith produces a parallel montage of action by cross-cutting between the tramps breaking into the depot, the telegraph operator under duress, and her suitor stoking his train full steam ahead (Mast and Kawin 76). Weber, however, streamlines her action by cutting less, thanks to the innovative use of a triangular split-screen. Key in hand, the tramp fills the upper left of the frame, the wife on the phone occupies the upper right, and the husband receiving her distress call occupies the pyramid framed in the middle (Glide 50).
D. W. Griffith and Lois Weber are two of the most important auteurs of silent film dramas in the early days of American film. This commonality can be found in their film’s themes. “Lois Weber was, like Griffith, a Victorian moralist,” writes Glide (12). “[J]ust as Griffith hailed the motion picture as the Universal language, Weber recognized ‘the blessing of a voiceless language’” (11). And while Griffith’s contributions to The Seventh Art are often obscured by the racial issues he incited with Birth of a Nation, it should be noted that Weber, in 1927 (at her career’s nadir) refused the offer to direct a film adaptation of the racist stage play Topsy and Eva (12). Her career ended in 1934, but her integrity was intact.
Works Cited
Dancyger, Ken. The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice. 4th ed., Focal Press, 2013, books.google.com/books?id=338Fzxj_kO4C&pg=PA1&dq=the+lonedale+operator+camera+mounted+on+train&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q=the%20lonedale%20operator%20camera%20mounted%20on%20train&f=false.
Mast, Gerald, and Bruce F. Kawin. A Short History of the Movies. 11th ed., Pearson, 2011.
Meuel, David. Women Film Editors: Unseen Artists of American Cinema. McFarland & Company, 2016.
Schrader, Paul. “Game Changers: The Close-Up.” Film Comment. www.filmcomment.com/article/the-close-up-films-that-changed-filmmaking/. Accessed 16 Sep. 2018.
Slide, Anthony. Lois Weber: The Director Who Lost Her Way in History. Greenwood Press, 1996.
Thompson, Kristen, and David Bordwell. “Observations on Film Art.” David Bordwell’s website on cinema. www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2008/08/29/lucky-13/. Accessed 16 Sep. 2018.
