Synopsis
A young working girl, struggling to support her family on her meager salary, desperately wishes for a new pair of shoes.
1916 Directed by Lois Weber
A young working girl, struggling to support her family on her meager salary, desperately wishes for a new pair of shoes.
鞋, 독류
i’d love to say i’m eva, getting that coin by any means necessary, but i’m actually her useless father who stays at home and does nothing but read books all day and contributes zilch to the family and who eva desperately wants to strangle with her bare hands.
The scene where she puts her hair up and stares into the mirror with a gaze of utter hopelessness, knowing what she is about to resort to, struck me to the core. That is the defining scene for me.
Happy International Women's Day to the one and only Lois Weber who, two years previous of this film, was the first American woman to direct a feature length film with The Merchant of Venice (1914).
Her 1916 film, Shoes, is also an adaptation and prime early twentieth century feminist cinema; though I dare say I don't think it truly aspires to be "Feminist Cinema" as it were - just realism with a small splash of the fantastical. The oldest daughter of a family of five is made to support her family with her job while her worthless father sits home and pouts and yells while reading books all day. There is no money for food, much less the new pair…
Weber's SHOES opens with a closeup of Jane Addams' 1914 book "A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil" and an anecdote about a shopgirl who yielded to the advances of a man in return for a new pair of shoes. It's a fascinating way to open a film and presents the viewer with two pieces of information:
1) By linking this film to a story rendered in a sociological study, Weber wants us to see this was a real world problem rather than a fictional story. IT isn't quite documentary but at the same time it claims to reflect current socio-economic conditions (the equivalent today of being 'inspired by actual events' or 'ripped from the headlines');
2) We know the…
“Whatever happened, life must go on. Whatever boats are wrecked, the river does not stop flowing to the sea.”
Really beautiful and devastating as hell.
Everytime the print was decayed around the edges or even fully into the centre I wanted to cry! Poorly stored films are the burning of library of Alexandria of our time!
Shoes is beautiful in the way it uses the depiction of the hopeless conditions of an impoverished family's life as a rousing call for social change outside the screen. The family is at the mercy of a patriarch who refuses to work, which keeps them all miserable and scrabbling to make ends meet. This in itself wouldn't be as much an issue if women were afforded an opportunity to acquire employment that would allow them to undertake a breadwinner role, but instead the mother is stuck at home doing laundry and the best the oldest daughter, our heroine Eva (Mary MacLaren) can hope for is a menial job in a 10 cent store.
As her own pair of shoes wear…
There isn't much of a plot and they pretty much reveal it all in the intro. "Sold herself for a pair of shoes". So the rest is Lois Weber using her visual brilliance to illustrate the girl's social situation of supporting her poor family, with the lazy no-good father, and focusing on her hole infested shoes which leaks in the soaking rain like there is no tomorrow. A highly moral tale, but you get why she goes for the bait.
Weber realizes a tragic story of class and gender with an uncannily modern eye; the actors move and behave with a toned down sensitivity and understatement that elevates what would be common melodrama fodder in the hands of less capable or creative directors. There are a few devastating shots that move in closer than the period’s characteristic tableau staging, Eva’s gaze one of seething resentment towards her father and longing for a new life. It impressively balances its literary intertitles, more words on the screen than an average silent film, with visual and nonverbal gestures that transcend language. I’m interested too in the ending’s suggestion about Eva’s solitary suffering and in her sharing of secrets with her mother, a kind…
My heart: aching
My eyes: watering
The tiny goblin that resides in my brain: shoes.......shoes....shoes.......OH MY GOD! shoes.......let's get some shoes!
On a serious note, this was devastating as all hell.
I find these early silent films particularly hard to rate and/or review, but while I’ve only seen a small handful of silents, I must say I was really quite impressed with this one. I was surprised at the clarity of the restoration I watched, it was pretty beautiful and good quality for the most part – aside from some badly decayed shots towards the end, but I think it adds to the character of it.
There were some stunning shots in this, one of my favourites in particular being the shot of Eva looking in the small mirror in her bedroom after doing her hair, looking completely despondent. Not only was that shot exquisitely done and so very striking, that…
Tour de force of a film. Sometimes when life just throws so much bullshit at you, all you can do is just shrug it off and carry on.