#lois weber

[marypickfords]

Hypocrites (Lois Weber, 1915)

[fibula-rasa]

Hypocrites (1915)

[letterboxd | imdb | kanopy (US)]

Director: Lois Weber

Cinematographers: Dal Clawson, George W. Hill

Lois Weber’s ambitious allegorical film, laden with special photographic effects, tells the mirrored stories of a harried minister with a wayward flock and an ill-fated medieval monk whose work scandalizes his village.

[citizenscreen]

Lois Weber with her crew making THE ANGEL OF BROADWAY (1927).

[oldfilmsflicker]

"These women used mass media to critique the damaging effects of unfettered capitalism on women’s lives."

Moviemaking Before Men | Playgirl

Elinor Glyn, June Mathis, Alice Guy-Blaché, Lois Weber: The many women who achieved dazzling success in the first years of Hollywood.

[4fingeredfisherman]

Hypocrites (1915) dir. Lois Weber

[gregorygalloway]

The Phantom of the Opera premiered in New York City on 6 September 1925, before its official opening in November.

The film adaptation of Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel, took at least 8 screenwriters and 4 directors. Lon Chaney and prestige director Rupert Julian disagreed about much of the filming, to the point where Chaney refused to talk to Julian and used cinematographer Charles Van Enger as a go-between (according to Van Enger, Chaney refused to follow Julian's direction and "did whatever he wanted").

After a poorly received screening in January 1925, the film was rushed back into production, with a new script and a new director, Edward Sedgwick, which turned the film into more of a "romantic comedy." After another poor screening, Maurice Povar and Lois Weber were then brought in to salvage the film, returning much of the Julian version (with some long debated omissions).

The film is of course best known for Lon Chaney's makeup (which reportedly make audiences scream in 1925) and its use of color (almost 17 minutes in the original version).

Now considered to be one of the greatest silent horror films, no original print exists, with the film being reconstructed from 16mm "Show-At-Home" versions sold in the 1930s.

[dontbestingybaby]

“The story that Hays-era Hollywood told itself—that female filmmakers were an anomaly, that progressive-era Hollywood was a period of ‘hi-jinks’ and infancy, and that female glamour defines Hollywood—has evidently been internalized by many film historians—both popular and scholarly—and risks being internalized by another generation of film students.”

from “‘Exit Flapper, Enter Woman,’ or Lois Weber in Jazz Age Hollywood” by Shelley Stamp

[scholarofgloom]