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

The Lady of the Shadows… The Call of the Cumberlands (1916), Julia Crawford Ivers

“Mrs. Ivers has proved time and again that she yields the palm to no mere man megaphone manipulator.” Betty Compson

I don’t know about you but, like a lot of the compulsively inquisitive/acquisitive, I have a considerable archive of the un-read, the un-listened to and the un-watched. Watching Mark Cousin’s excellent new series, Women Make Film – a film school that just happens to be run by women – I reach out to the Kino Lorber *six* disc box set, Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers and select a film by a woman I’ve never heard of… this is a time to broaden our minds.

IMDB has The Call of the Cumberlands being directed by Frank Lloyd but it has now been identified as having been directed by Julia Crawford Ivers who, according to April Miller’s excellent biography on the Women’s Film Pioneer website, is chiefly remembered for scripting some twenty films for William Desmond Taylor (she was even one of those implicated in his murder in 1922).

Julia Crawford Ivers

Ivers was apparently introverted and not one to seek the limelight it seems with the few photographs that survive being testament to her reputation as “The Lady of the Shadows”. Yet, she still made her way in a notoriously male industry and directed at least four films of which Cumberlands was the second, and one of three she made in 1916. By this time, she had been working in Hollywood for three years and she’d clearly learned her trade for, whilst it follows much of the standard western feud formula, there are some unexpected twists and some impressive scenes.

 “If all scenario writers could direct at least one picture… and all directors could write just one scenario, motion pictures would benefit tremendously…”

Ivers clearly understood structure and Cumberlands fits a lot of scenes into a relatively modest running time, she wrote the scenario based on the novel by Charles Neville Buck, a Kentuckian who saw that changes was coming and that the traditional blood rivalries would be swept away. To Ivers credit, the source complexity doesn’t get in the way of the film’s range or flow and she covers the ground well. 

Dark deeds afoot...

It begins in the mountainous woodlands of Kentucky with the latest events of a family feud between the Souths and the Hollmans, no relation to the Hatfield–McCoys or the Hamilton–Burrs. The families have been in a truce for two years but dark deeds are afoot and Ivers shoots in near darkness as a sniper takes aim at Jesse Purvy one of the senior members of the Hollman clan. He’s badly wounded but asks his kin to kill Samson South to avenge him if he dies.

There’s further impressive use of shadow as Ivers’ cameraman, Dal Clawson, catches the dappled shadow and bright light on young Sally Spicer (Winifred Kingston), one of the South clan who is radiant innocence watching the birds in the woodland. She comes across an abandoned oil painting and finds its painter, George Lescott (Michael Hallvard) unconscious in the shadows having slipped whilst engrossed in his view.

Dappled shadows as Sally looks for the missing painter.

We cut to Samson South (Dustin Farnum), “a fighter and a dreamer…” who is perhaps surprisingly sketching his own less sophisticated picture of the glorious scenery. Here’s a tie back to Mark Cousin’s opening episode of Women Make Film on introductions, Ivers deflty establishing the main characters and the main thrust of the story all within three short and technically proficient scenes. Lescott will prove to be an agent for change just as the blood feud is a direct threat to Samson’s ability to progress with his art and with his love… Sally’s not just there for the doves and squirrels after all.

Sally takes Lescott back home to recuperate and whilst Samson’s father isn’t keen on allowing strangers to stay, he starts to bond with the painter over their love of art; trying to capture views that make the “eyes sing”. Meanwhile, the Hollmans are trailing the attempted assassin with bloodhounds and there’s some gorgeous night-shots of men with torches heading inexorably to the South’s land.

Richard L'Estrange, Dustin Farnum and Winifred Kingston

Samson’s useless/devious cousin, Tamarack Spicer (Richard L'Estrange) pops up trying to implicate him and to stake his own claim on Sally. The Hollman’s arrive and the hounds find no incriminating odours on Samson… as Sally, as you’d expect of a wild woodland spirit, hides in the trunk of an ancient tree praying for her love’s innocence. The identity of the gunman will remain a secret for later as the story shifts to focus more on Samson’s relationship with Sally and his artistic ambition when, Lescott invites him to New York to develop his art. There's an eye-popping scene involving gracefully draped semi-nude women, interesting that three of the prime examples of female silent nudity come from Ivers, Lois Weber (Hypocrites (1915) and Nell Shipman (Back to God's Country (1919)) who asked, "is the nude rude?" Not so much under the female gaze Nell.

Samson has a good look in the life class...

Here’s the nub of things, in New York, distant from the Cumberlands in time as much as space, Samson develops aesthetically and forms a bond with Lescott’s sister Adrienne (Myrtle Stedman) who decides to teach him the manners of polite society. But is Manhattan society polite? Not so much that they all tolerate Samson and there’s feuds here of a different more political and capitalist nature. Will Samson be drawn into these dirty deeds and will he forget about his Sally who, even as he is playing tennis with Adrienne, is teaching herself to read and write. None of the characters stop moving and that family feud isn’t going to stop either; will Samson go all soft when it comes to defending his family?

Sally confronts Tamarack

"Ye lies, Tam'rack," she said, in a very low and steady voice-a voice that could not be mistaken, a voice relentlessly resolute and purposeful. "Ye lies like ye always lies. Yore heart's black an' dirty. Ye're a murderer an' a coward. Samson's a-comin' back ter me.... I'm a-goin' ter be Samson's wife." From Charles Neville Buck’s original novel.

Ivers makes light work of Neville Buck’s overwrought prose - though many title cards reflect that local dialect - and adapts with a subtle dynamism. The story grabs the attention even now despite being plagued by some chemical deterioration in some of the middle sections – as you can see most of the film looks sharp! It’s a genre film made with confidence and confidence to take a few risks with images and storyline.

I love this shot through the window of Samson greeting Adrienne in a car...

I like Ivers treatment of Sally and she places her in a number of inventive shots that emphasise her connection to nature and commitment to her Samson; she's a key part of his loyalties and the highest of stakes when he's being lured by East Coast aesthetics, society and Adrienne. The painter's sister is herself a free spirit but one operating within the learned behaviours of classical music, etiquette and even the sport of kings. Ivers pre-figures Nell Shipman with Sally's imagined comparison of a similar life versus woodland frolics with friendly bears and she also lifts a shot or two from Lois Webber's Shoes as Sally looks into a mirror realising that she can't change who she is.

Influenced by Lois Webber and influencing Nell Shipman?

As April Miller notes, Ivers was generally well-reviewed and this film was no different with Margaret I MacDonald writing that whilst “the production is not an altogether perfect one… “there were “scenes that could scarcely be excelled”. Cumberlands is an exciting romp that takes in East cost cultural improvement and Western family values; a man can be true to both and still be true in love.

April Miller’s biography on Ivers can be found on the Women’s Film Pioneer website.

There is also a new Kino Lorber disc, The Intrigue: The Films of Julia Crawford Ivers which has four films including A Son of Erin (1916) which she directed after Cumberlands. It’s available from Kino Lorber direct and it's on my birthday list!

Bonus screen shots!!

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!