Traffic and Souls • Film historian Shelley Stamp is interested in the history of silent films because they are a way to explore the human experience without words. • Traffic and Souls is one of the earliest films that Stamp saw and it inspired her to become a film historian.
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A little over 100 years ago, if you went to go see a silent film on a Friday night, this is the kind of thing you would have heard. No dialogue or booming sound system, but instead live piano or organ music accompanying this new invention.
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Film.
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And these silent films were what got people like film historian Shelley Stamp to start looking into this history in the first place.
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One of the first films I saw that really ignited this for me and that became a kind of Throughline Through a lot of many, many years of work is a 1913 film called Traffic and Souls.
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The traffic and souls is to be shown uptown at the Republic on West 42nd Street, a Velasco Theatre, upon the ending of the run of the temperamental journey in that house. Variety magazine December 5th, 1913.
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This film is shot on location in New York City in 1913. It was a film about the phenomenon that was then called white slavery, which is forced prostitution. It is immigrant women and women from rural communities traveling to larger urban centers who are particularly in danger of being kidnapped and sold into prostitution.
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When a film has no audible dialogue, reading faces, deciphering gestures and following lips is essential to following the storyline.Florence Lois Weber: Universal’s Top Director in the 1910s • Lois Weber was a director at Universal in the 1910s. • She was considered a child prodigy and toured the country as a concert pianist. • After acting in and directing her first silent film, her career took off. • She moved to LA to be part of Universal City and then became Universal’s top director in the mid1910s. • She made a series of very high profile, very controversial feature films on really key social issues of the day. • Some of her films include The People vs. John Doe, Capital Punishment, Hopped the Devil’s Brew, Drug Addiction, and Shoes. • One of her most famous quotes is “I see things that men don’t see.”.
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Lois Weber, who is Universal’s top director in the mid-1910s. I’m not saying she’s the top female director. She’s the top director at Universal in the 1910s. Florence Lois Weber was born in 1879 in Pennsylvania.
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She was considered a child prodigy and toured the country as a concert pianist, starting when she was just 16. When she was 31, she acted in and directed her first silent film.
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After that, her career takes off. She moves to LA to be part of Universal City and then becomes Universal’s top director in the mid-1910s. She makes a series of very high profile, very controversial feature films on really key social issues of the day. Movies like The People vs. John Doe. Capital Punishment. Hopped the Devil’s Brew. Drug Addiction. Shoes. Women’s Wage Equity. Where are my children? They’re all in abortion. She said something very simple and profound.
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She says, I see things that men don’t see.The Complicated Dance of Progress • Backlash can mean different things depending on the situation, and it can be difficult to know what progress means. • It’s important to be aware of the complexities of the dance between visibility and change.
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Star Wars The Force Awakens has faced racial backlash. I’m the winner of the movie from South Korea.
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This was a white lash. Black Panther has become politicized in some negative ways.
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Against a changing country, against a black president.
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Hundreds of books mostly focused on LGBTQ themes or racial issues have now been forbidden across the country.
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It’s tricky to know what progress means. It’s also hard to know what to make of a backlash. HBO’s House of the Dragon is one of the new shows that’s creating a firestorm over the role of diversity in fantasy and sci-fi series. Does a backlash mean that pushing for more representation is counterproductive?
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The Little Mermaid is getting a live-action remake with Halle Bailey, a black woman as the lead aerial. Critics have accused Disney of being too woke.
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Or is it a sign that things really are changing, that the status quo is shifting, or at least being challenged?
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I see it as an incredibly complicated dance. When I was young, I thought it was simple, the more visibility the more it writes, boom.
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This is Alison Bechtel again.
