Gimme Some Truth* … Hypocrites (1915), Woman with a Movie Camera, BFI with Caroline Cassin

"Everyone told me that ...plays, aiming at anything like a moral, would never pay... Hypocrites was my first chance to prove that I was right."

Lois Weber from a Moving Picture Weekly interview in July 1915.

 

By 1915 Lois Weber was reaching a peak of popularity that would see her as one of the highest paid directors in Hollywood and also rival to DW Griffith for prestige. They were also both “Banned in Boston” but for completely different reasons one for her art the other for his racism (as clearly articulated at the time). But, as Anfield’s finest, Caroline Cassin, film programmer and MC at Women & Cocaine, pointed out in her introduction, Lois has been largely left out of cinema’s history books even as her competitor continues with more respect than he deserves.

 

Caroline quoted screen writer Clara Berringer in 1919 saying that no other industry has given women such an opportunity as the motion pictures had and it’s still an astounding statistic that more women were working in the first 20 years of the American film industry than are working now – and in more senior positions. Lois Weber made 40 feature films and 95 shorts in a 26-year career which compares well with Griffith’s 33 features and Cecil B DeMille’s 70 over his lengthy career. But this also means that she made almost as many features as Greta Gerwig (four), Katherine Bigelow (ten), Clair Denis and Chantal Akerman (14 each).

 

The problem is now and not then and, as Caroline said, looking back can be the most radical action especially in a world in which the progression of rights and equality is no longer a given. By 1920 California had given women the vote ahead of almost everyone else, women had the minimum wage and outnumbered men in LA but at the same time, the business of filmmaking was being consolidated into male-dominated consortia and accountants were getting an ever firmer grip on the means of creative production.

 

Blessed are the Marketers...

Weber had always been commercially successful and this film returned $133,000 at the box office¹ against a budget of $18,000 - a return on investment rarely found in today’s multiplex-driven portfolios in which even micro-management of from concept to edit does not guarantee success. In 1915, Griffith and Weber both had the final say throughout (which leaves him with no excuses and her with an extraordinary body of work tackling social and moral issues. If Shoes was about poverty, Where Are My Children family planning, then Hypocrites is about Weber’s view of Christian morality… and basically the way we live our rotten lives.

 

The moral underswell of the film is so much rooted in contemporary Christian belief that it is slightly obscure to modern viewers, especially those, like me, who skipped Sunday school and let himself down in O Level RE – I mean how can you go from 90%+ in mocks to a Grade C?! Anyway… the film’s publicity makes the aims clear, quoting from a “special report” from the National Board of Censorship: “This allegorical satire hits at the foibles and immoralities of modern society and asks for a recognition of the truth in all things…” This serious piece of “artistically-handled” symbolism only reveals itself if we understand the strict moral Christian teachings that were supposed to underpin American society the – actual – truth being now as then that the more these are trumpeted in church the more they are contradicted by the behaviours or ordinary citizens and, of course, by those in power.

So, whilst we might not all be fundamentalists we can certainly agree on the mass hypocrisy. We can also recognise Weber’s bravery in picking a fight with the immoral majority, especially given their role in distributing the film. Let he or she who is without sin or sense of perspective, cast the first stone…

 

Readers of this blog...

Hypocrites begins its twisty narrative in a small-town church in which an earnest priest (Courtenay Foote) is trying his upmost to connect with his mostly complacent parishioners. Weber’s camera focuses on groups in the audience, a bored businessman here, a distractedly faint-hearted family there and many caught up in everyday concerns who are just going through the motions, attending church as a social obligation whilst they think of better things to do. The preacher despairs of truly reaching them, the wandering attention of his own choir being aptly demonstrated by his discovery of a Sunday scandal-sheet featuring a story on Why the Truth has Startled Paris. This is a painting from 1914 by Adolphe Faugerson and is not Weber’s only illusion to classical art and literature in the film.

 

Truth is naked in the illustration in the paper… as she will be throughout as portrayed by Margaret Edwards, former winner of a body beautiful competition - "the most perfectly formed girl on the stage..." - who reveals pretty much all in misty double exposure… with Weber deploying a flesh-coloured bodysuit according to Stamp, to protect most of her modesty.

 

“I want to take exception to your statement that The Hypocrites was produced to attract by reason of the nude woman… I hoped that the picture would act as a moral force. The nude woman is too delicately carried through to act otherwise.”

Lois Weber, New York Mail, 23^rd January 1915

Myrtle Stedman wants to follow Courtenay Foote

Exhausted the priest falls asleep and starts to dream of his struggle, finding himself attempting to lead his parishioners up a steep hillside. Few follow, and as the people cannot make the journey to find the truth the priest asks for the Truth to come to them and the two descend into a story within the dream in which he is Gabriel the Ascetic, sculpting a statue of Truth which nearly blinds even his fellow monks once it is revealed to the public there is mayhem.

 

The scene involving the public unveiling is a great set piece from Weber, her camera panning round a circle of assorted rich and poor, the royal family, soldiers, drunkards, working girls and the innocent. They are made up of the same faces from the church all deaf to the truth with the exception of a young girl, a woman who has fallen too far and a nun who loves Gabriel the man not the monk...

 

We see a lot more Truth as the narrative moves through the ages until Gabriel brings her to the modern world in order to hold her mirror up to scenes of politics, high society, relationships, and family. All are found to be flawed with the family facing the death of a child through their overindulgence. Weber’s composition is so strong and in one remarkable sequence, The Mote in the Eye, the camera focuses on the eye of Myrtle Stedman to show Gabriel's face: she wants to do the right thing but her feelings for him overwhelm her moral decision. It's a great bit of composition and if you look hard enough you can see the cameraman's hand whirring the camera's handle round.

 

Fashionable fibs...

Lois makes sure we get the point, again and again... and Courtenay Foote convincingly holds the hope and despair of the pious whilst Myrtle Stedman is also convincing as the woman with the Ascetic in her eyes, Adele Farrington covers a range of roles with assurance and Dixie Carr makes for a mournful Magdalene. Of course, Miss Edwards deserves a special mention for great posturing and Lois is right, her appearances do not present in a salacious way: what the viewer sees is what they wants to see and a decade before Hitchcock, Weber was making voyeurs of her audience.

 

Naturally there was naked controversy and in spite of scrupulous efforts to ensure that religious and secular authority were won over by the moral message Ohio banned the film and the Mayor of Boston reputedly asked for Truth to be painted over - so that the whole truth was less revealed? Nevertheless, Hypocrites was a smash and Mr de Mille was no doubt taking notes about classicism and fleshy displays.

 

The film opened on 20th January 1915 at the Longacre Theatre in New York with an actor dressed as a monk providing a live prologue... this was serious and very popular, stuff. The New York Times called it "daring and artistic" whilst the Evening Telegram went so far as to say it was "...the most remarkable film ever seen". Margaret Edwards even appeared at the Los Angeles opening, dancing between the screenings - it was an event.

 

Can you see the cameraman?

As it established Weber’s reputation – securing her “authorial signature” as Stamp puts it– it was also “a meditation on her own enterprise” with Paul D. Young² saying that Hypocrites “embraces its own constructedness, the better to elevate the filmmaker to the status of an artist.” So, as Weber later said, it was she as well as Truth that was holding a mirror of truth that her audience might see themselves. Surely a more worthwhile endeavour than re-telling the alternative facts about the formation of the KKK?

 

Weber remains a vital historical figure for such revelations about the emerging motivations of “art-house” filmmakers as well as what her successes show of the appetite of audiences to be challenged. America’s first homegrown woman film director needed to pay her way in this business and for a good while she did just that, the story of Lois Weber is one of ground-breaking success and it’s that vibrant career which still informs the period and should be celebrated just as we did tonight!

Two Weber shorts were also screened, Fine Feathers (1912) and the immaculate Suspense (1913) which fits together so many advanced cinematic technique that Griffith fans really do need to give their heads a proper wobble!

 

The film was screened as part of the Woman with a Movie Camera strand and more details can be found on the BFI website.

More classical allusion... Rodin or earlier?

 

^1. As per Shelley Stamp in Lois Weber in Early Hollywood, (2015) University of California Press – the definitive text on the filmmaker’s work and recommended reading as is Anthony Slide’s Lois Weber: The Director Who Lost Her Way in History (1996), Greenwood.

^2. Yours Sincerely, Lois Weber: Hypocrites and the Passionate Recognition of Authorship, Cinema Journal 55, no.1 (2015) as quoted by Shelley Stamp in the above! 

*John Winston Ono Lennon

St Patricia… Little Old New York (1923), with Morgan Cooke, The Barbican

As Jeanine Basinger has written, from a historical perspective, no one has it worse than Marion Davies; “…she was a big success in silent movies, and popular with audiences… but nobody believes it.” Whilst this is partly, as Basinger says, the curse of Citizen Kane, William Randolph Hearst was not Charles Foster Kane and nor was he the one doing the acting on screen. Right from the get-go Marion made films for Hearst and he was seen by contemporary reviewers as controlling her career.

Thankfully we get the chance to see for ourselves how good Marion Davies was not just in comedies such as The Patsy and the sublime Show People but increasingly in the kind of historical romantic dramas her wealthy lover liked to see her in and which were box office successes. When Knighthood was in Flower (1922), recently released on BluRay, was an enjoyable romp uplifted by the tonally-varied exuberance of Davies’ performance and was one of the biggest films of that year. Today we watched another smash which ended up the seventh highest grosser of the year.

Marion was big box office and the intimacy she still establishes with paying customers explains why.

Today’s screening featured a fine print from the Irish Film Institute and was supported by Culture Ireland as part of GB18: Promoting Irish Arts in Britain. The fact that it was screened the day after a St Patrick’s Day drubbing of the English rugby union side by the team in green was purely co-incidental.

The accompaniment was provided by Galway musician, Morgan Cooke who also introduced the film discussing the work of the prolific director Sidney Olcott, who was Hollywood’s go-to-fella for features of Irish origin. Marion herself was a first generation American with parents both from Eire but y’all know that surely just from the glint in her emerald eyes…

Little Old New York is a sub-Dickensian tale that has many a twist in just under two hours’ running time with a slightly clumsy plot taken from Rida Johnson Young’s play. For it to work, you have to be able to believe that people could accept Marion Davies as a young man… she might be wearing trousers and a bobbed haircut but, what can I say; “dude looks like a lady…” Probably she finishes last in a silent cross-dressing chart featuring Asta Nielsen (Hamlet), Ossi Oswalda (I Don’t Want to be a Man), Mary Pickford (various) and Louise Brooks (Beggars of Life), but you have to go with it.

Yep, totally a boy

Marion plays Patricia O'Day the sister of Patrick (Stephen Carr) who has inherited millions by way of his estranged Uncle’s dying wish to atone for cutting old man John O'Day (J. M. Kerrigan) out of the business they both started in America. John has returned to Ireland whilst his brother has prospered and has nursed a sizeable grudge over this time as he has struggled to look after his own. At the reading of the will, step-son Larry Delevan (Harrison Ford – no, not that one (again)) obviously has high hopes but he can only inherit of Patrick fails to turn up to claim his prize within a year.

That year is just about up and Larry is celebrating with his pals but there’s a knock on the door and in walks John O’Day and his son Patrick who has turned remarkably feminine since we last saw him. We learn later that Paddy had died on the crossing and John, desperate to get his just deserts, persuades Pat to drag up.

Pretty soon Pat is making large eyes as Larry (what could Lubitsch have made of this?!) who just thinks the lad is a bit soft: “Patrick, what did you do in Ireland?!”  asks one character later but the Americans remain fooled.

There’s a sub-plot involving Larry’s investment in a mad invention – a steam-powered paddle steamer invented by Robert Fulton (Courtenay Foote) who did indeed exist and do this thing. Various know-it-alls think it’s crazy but it’s Larry’s shot at making it given that Pat has inherited his inheritance.

Not That One and Such a Fine Comedienne

It all bobs along nicely and really takes off when Larry bets his house (literally) on an unlikely victory for his pal Bully Boy Brewster (Harry Watson) in a boxing match against the ferocious Hoboken Terror (Louis Wolheim).

There’s a good balance of comedy and drama and it has an amiability due in no small part to the star presence of Marion Davies. She’s an extraordinary pretty boy and once she’s back in feminine clothes there are numerous close ups of her tear-stained face that guarantee an emotionally immersed ending.

Morgan took the bold step of asking a mostly English audience to participate by singing along to the song Marion Davies plays on her harp “Do you hear me callin' when the dews are fallin'...” – the rehearsals went well but we were a little quiet when the moment came! Never-the-less, it’s not often you get to join in. In addition to the harp, Morgan played piano and melodica lingering on the many magnificent close-ups of Marion and pummelling the keys during that boxing match.

For those of us who missed the Quiet Man for St Patricks, this was a good old scrap that descends into a free-for-all… before love saves the day.

For me it was another important part of Davies’ career slotting into place. The film was placed fifth in the – non-Hearst - New York Times top ten and Marion was voted fifth in Quigley’s Box Office Stars list; she came second the following year. None of which fits in with the narrative of her only finding her feet with comedy – she was funny all along and even in these historical dramas there was gurning, fighting and dancing. Whether William Randolph approved or not is another matter…

An inconvenient truth… Hypocrites (1915)

"...the most startlingly satisfying and vividly wonderful creation of the screen age..." New York Evening Journal January 1915

Ah Lois Weber, this time you’ve really upped the ante: this is a film ostensibly about Christianity but which boils down to the simple battle to live true to yourself as well as your beliefs. Let he who is without sin and a sense of perspective… cast the first stone.

Naked Truth examines political honesty...

Weber was a supremely accomplished film-maker as well as being a direct and opinionated one and whilst this film was entirely an expression of her own philosophy it also contains some marvelous technique and not a little humour. It was an incredibly successful because its simple, robust message chimed so well with contemporary beliefs but also, possibly..., because of its daring use of female nudity. The Truth is naked throughout and she is played by one Margaret Edwards, former winner of a body beautiful competition - "the most perfectly formed girl in the world..." - who reveals pretty much all in misty double exposure… I’m sure Lois knew what she was doing and, because of the religious  content she got her way… mostly.

The film opened on 20th January 1915 at the Longacre Theatre in New York with an actor dressed as a monk providing a live prologue... this was serious and very popular, stuff. The New York Times called it "daring and artistic" whilst the Evening Telegram went so far as to say it was "...the most remarkable film ever seen". Margaret Edwards even appeared at the Los Angeles opening, dancing between the screenings - it was an event.

In spite of scrupulous efforts to ensure that religious and secular authority were won over by the moral message Ohio banned the film and the Mayor of Boston reputedly asked for Truth to be painted over so that the whole truth was less revealed. Never the less, Hypocrites made Lois Weber's name and Mr de Mille was no doubt taking notes...

Courtenay Foote as the priest and the monk

 Hypocrites begins its slightly convoluted narrative in a small-town church in which an earnest priest (Courtenay Foote) is trying his upmost to connect with his mostly-complacent parishioners. Weber’s camera focuses on groups in the audience, a bored businessman here, a distractedly faint-hearted family there and many who would just rather be somewhere else. There’s knowing looks and watch-checking whilst afterwards a senior figure asks for the priest to be removed but to “keep my name out of it”.

These are people caught up in everyday concerns who are just going through the motions, attending church as a social obligation whilst they think of better things to do. Yet there are some who try – a woman in black who looks mournful and another in the choir who gazes with zealous love at the priest, his every word caressing her belief.

And some fell on stoney ground...

But it’s not enough for the preacher and he despairs of truly reaching them, the wandering attention of his own choir being aptly demonstrated by his discovery of a Sunday scandal-sheet featuring a story on Why the Truth has Startled Paris (Truth is again naked in the illustration in the paper… Lois was thorough in her imagery and this allegory is controlled from start to finish).

Exhausted the priest falls asleep and starts to dream of his struggle, finding himself attempting to lead his parishioners up a steep hillside. Few follow, the woman from the choir and the woman in black but the family fail as the father cannot carry their sick child and the banker is weighed down by his money. As the few climb higher and higher the difficulty increase until only the singer remains – near the hill top she reaches out for the priests help but she needs to find her own way to the truth.

Myrtle Stedman asks for help on the path to truth...

As the people cannot make the journey to find the truth the priest asks for the Truth to come to them and the two descend into a story within the dream in which he is Gabriel the Ascetic…

He sculpts a statue of truth which nearly blinds even his fellow monks once it is revealed to the public there is mayhem. The scene involving the unveiling is a great set piece from Weber, her camera panning round a circle of assorted rich and poor,the royal family, soldiers, drunkards, working girls and the innocent. They are made up of the same faces from the church all deaf to the truth with the exception of a young girl, a woman who has fallen too far and a nun who loves Gabriel the man not the monk...

The outlook turns black as the people reject Gabriel...

For the closing section we see a lot more Truth as Gabriel brings her to the modern world in order to hold her mirror up to scenes of politics, high society, relationships, and family. All are found to be flawed with the family facing the death of a child through their over indulgence.

In one remarkable sequence, The Mote in the Eye, the camera focuses on the eye of Myrtle Stedman to show Gabriel's face: she wants to do the right thing but her feelings for him overwhelm her moral decision. It's a great bit of composition and if you look hard enough you can see the cameraman's hand whirring the camera's handle around.

The mote in the eye of Myrtle Stedman

Lois makes sure we get the point, again and again... but her technique is so very polished you have to admire the film even if you don't want the preaching.

There are good, if mannered, performances particularly from Courtenay Foote without which the whole enterprise would fall apart.  Myrtle Stedman is also convincing as the woman with the Ascetic in her eyes whilst Adele Farrington covers her range of roles with assurance and Dixie Carr makes for a mournful Magdelan. Of course, Miss Edwards deserves a special mention for sheer commitment...

Margaret Edwards, Courtenay Foote and Adele Farrington

I watched the Kino DVD which is available direct or from Amazon. It comes with a suitably earnest new score from Jon Mirsalis who helps the film hold its mirror up to the modern viewer... we can scoff at the century-old conceits but, all that aside, are we being true? Lois Weber is hardcore even now...

"Everyone told me that ...plays, aiming at anything like a moral,would never pay... Hypocrites was my first chance to prove that I was right." Lois Weber from a Moving Picture Weekly interview in July 1915.

I would heartily recommend Anthony Slide's excellent biography Lois Weber - The Director Who Lost Her Way in History which is also available from Amazon as an e-book. Thanks to him, she's finding her way back...

Spot the cameraman!