Directed by Lois Weber • 1921 • United States
Starring Claire Windsor, Louis Calhern, Philip Hubbard
The last film made under the banner of Lois Weber Productions, this moral drama, also written by Weber, is a biting commentary on economic inequality. Through her portrait of the Griggs family—an underpaid college professor, his long-suffering wife, and their daughter Amelia, a young librarian—Weber reveals a society where “keeping up with the Joneses” is an issue of basic nutrition rather than material possession. Examining issues of class through the varied stations of the three men vying for Amelia’s heart—an affluent college student, a middle-class “boy next door,” and an impoverished minister—THE BLOT reveals both Weber’s trenchant social insight and her powerful command of visual language.
Directed by Germaine Dulac • 1923 • France
Starring Germaine Dermoz, Madeleine Guitty, Jean d'Yd
Considered one of Germaine Dulac’s most feminist films, THE SMILING MADAME BEUDET is also a crucial step in her continuing de-emphasis of traditional narrative structures in favor of visual associati...
Directed by Olga Preobrazhenskaya and Ivan Pravov • 1927 • Soviet Union
Starring Kuzma Yastrebitsky, Olga Narbekova, Yelena Maksimova
Returning to a pre–Russian Revolution mode of narrative storytelling, this melodrama focuses on two peasant women—one the victim to an abusive father-in-law and t...
Directed by James Gist and Eloyce Gist • 1930 • United States
HELL-BOUND TRAIN is arguably the most significant rediscovery in Pioneers of African American Cinema. The film is the work of self-taught filmmakers James and Eloyce Gist, African American evangelists who employed cinema as a tool for...
