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4 October 2019

Pennsylvania State University Directorial Techniques of Lois Weber’s Suspense (1913)

Alexander Forge

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Lois Weber—historically this has been a name synonymous with the phrase “star maker.”

Throughout Weber’s career in the early 1900s she was famous for her ability to discover actresses and elevate to them stardom. But this legacy as a star maker paints deceptively one- sided picture of her talents. In reality, as a director, Weber was at the forefront of innovation in the filmmaking world along with her husband, Phillips Smalley (Stamp). One particular genre that she left her creative mark on is the thriller. In their short film Suspense, Lois Weber and

Phillips Smalley make a series of innovative directorial decisions, using both shot framing and narrative pacing to create a feeling of tense unease in the viewer.

Suspense begins with a shot deliberately framed to evoke a common fear: intrusion of privacy. In the scene, the maid, about to leave her position, takes a last look at the Wife and her baby through a keyhole and the audience sees from her point of view. The Wife, unaware she is being watched, continues to tend to her baby. The maid then removes her eye from the keyhole

and the scene continues. For not

immediately obvious reasons, the

shot produces an emotional reaction

in the viewer that will impact their

viewing of the rest of the film. By

looking through the keyhole and

behind a closed door, the shot

creates the impression that the

“Suspense”: Point of view shot as the maid peers through the keyhole. audience is seeing something they are not meant to see. This taboo is subconsciously enticing and draws the viewer into the film.

The natural frame of the keyhole isolates the Wife and her baby in the shot, further focusing the Forge 3 viewer’s attention on them. In this way the shot functions as an introduction to these characters.

However, the shot also evokes a sense of unease in the viewer. The audience knows the Wife is unaware that she is being watched, leaving her in a state of vulnerability. This gives the camera’s gaze a more sinister connotation and the audience worries the Wife may be in some sort of danger. In this context, the natural frame of the keyhole takes on another meaning entirely, trapping the protagonist in the narrow confines of the shot. This manipulation of space within the shot to create a subconscious effect on the audience is something that the directors continue to experiment with throughout the rest of the film. The keyhole shot is interesting because psychologically it puts the viewer in the position of both the watcher and the watched. Overall, it establishes the tense tone of the film to come and poses the question central to the film’s premise: what if you’re not even safe in your own home?

Leading up to the confrontation between the evil Tramp and the Wife, Weber and

Smalley stage shots to play up the tension. Upon discovering that the maid has left and her husband will be home late, the Wife walks around the house locking the doors and windows.

These wide shots emphasize her smallness in comparison to the big empty house. One of these shots in particular is very important to building the tension. As the Wife walks back into the room with her baby in it, the Tramp can momentarily be seen peering through the window in the background before disappearing again. This clever use of depth staging makes the audience’s skin crawl. Weber and Smalley have purposefully adopted this technique which was traditionally used by European directors in the 1910s (Thompson 60). Rather than separating this moment into two shots, it’s much more visually impactful to see the Tramp enter and exit the shot without the Wife noticing. His initial appearance in the window surprises the audience and makes subsequent shots feel unsafe, as if the Tramp may be lurking in the background. This type of shot Forge 4 is likely the ancestor of the modern horror movie jump-scare. The framing of the shot also reflects the directors’ understanding of a key narrative technique used to create suspense. By giving the audience important information that the protagonist on screen doesn’t know, it creates anticipation for the moment in which the protagonist finds out. In this case, the audience wants to scream to the Wife: “The Tramp is right behind you!” But as is the curse of the of horror movie watcher, these warnings stay unheard.

A point of view shot allows the audience to experience the fear the Wife is feeling when she discovers the Tramp attempting to break into her house. This sequence begins as the Wife looks out the bedroom window located above the back door of the house. As she does so, she sees the Tramp directly below her and the two make eye contact. This moment is visually represented by a point of view shot looking down on the

Tramp. The shot lingers as if in shock while the Tramp slowly looks up into the camera. This gives the impression that the he is staring directly at the audience. The close-up framing of the “Suspense”: The tramp makes eye contact with the wife looking out the window. shot makes him dominate the composition, showing the scruffiness of his face and the craziness of his eyes in vivid detail. The vertical angle from which the shot is taken and the Tramp’s perpendicular position relative to the bottom of the shot add to the disconcerting nature of the framing. The directors are choosing to break the fourth wall in order to make the viewer experience the terror the wife is feeling. Prolonging the shot before cutting to the Wife’s reaction Forge 5 is used to amplify the discomfort of having the Tramp stare at you. Point of view shots were becoming increasingly common in Hollywood productions of the 1910s (Thompson 59). This shot however has an added visual flare that puts the audience in a state of unease.

Weber and Smalley use a particularly clever “triangle shot” to show the nail-biting action unfolding simultaneously. After the Wife realizes the Tramp is attempting to break into the house, she calls the Husband in a panic. The shot then splits into thirds to show what all three main characters are doing at once. The Husband is placed in the middle of the shot with the advancing Tramp on the left and the helpless Wife on the right. This is symbolically asserting

him as the only thing standing between

the Tramp and his wife. The triangular

frames which capture each character

make the shot very aesthetically

pleasing while also devoting the most

space to the Husband. He is being

established as the hero which the

audience must count on for the rest of

"Suspense": A shot is broken into thirds to show action unfolding the film. The Husband’s reaction to simultaneously. news is the main content of the shot but the Tramp and the Wife on either side of him express the urgency of the situation as each moment passes. The threat of what the Tramp is doing as time goes by is the source of the suspense. This shot is also being used orient the viewer in time before the film begins crosscutting between all three characters in the climactic chase sequence.

During the chase sequence, the directors cut together complex shots in increasingly rapid succession to create suspense. After the Husband steals a car to rescue his wife, the police pursue Forge 6 him. In one particular shot, the camera is placed behind two policemen in a moving car. This framing leaves the two men stationary in the foreground while they appear to glide towards the

Husband’s car in the background. This shot, especially in the context of its 1913 creation, is visually exhilarating for the viewer. Moving camera shots had just begun to be featured in

American films at this time. Further development towards the type of elaborate camera movement shots featured in modern films wouldn’t come until Germany’s influential

“unfastened camera” technology in the 1920s (Thompson 96). Another shot used in the car chase is even more memorable, however. The "Suspense": The police can be seen in the rearview mirror closing in on the husband. policemen are shown in the rearview mirror of the stolen car extending their hands just short of catching the Husband. The audience’s eyes stay fixed on the mirror as the background continues to whiz by behind it. Once again, the Weber and Smalley are using their shots to immerse the viewer in the scene as if they were themselves looking back at their pursuers. At the same time, the shot proudly calls attention to the creativity of the directors and contributes to the overall spectacle of the scene. This fast-paced car chase adds to the suspense of the sequence by contrasting with the slow menacing movement of the Tramp. As the scene frantically crosscuts between its three subjects, shots of the Husband and Wife are brief, but the Tramp takes his time.

When he creeps up the stairs of the house, the scene is held until his face is within inches of the camera. Once again, he stares down the audience, leaving no space to run as he fills up the Forge 7 frame. Both the Tramp and the policeman are visually closing in on the protagonists, using forward movement to take up more space in the frame. Suspense is an illustration of the

“increasing complex ways” that crosscutting was used in Hollywood during the 1910s

(Thompson 58).

Split screen effects, depth staging, angled and even moving camera shots—Lois Weber and

Phillip Smalley use everything in their directorial arsenal to construct the tense sequences of

Suspense. Of course, the tension is resolved at the end of the film and the audience gets the happy ending they want. As Hitchcock would later say, “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” But Hitchcock, the master of suspense himself, owes a dept to those who paved the way before him. Who would have thought that Lois Weber, the “star maker,” would direct one of the first and most memorable home invasion thriller films, a genre that persists to this day (Century)? The answer to that question is Lois Weber.

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Works Cited

Century, Sara. “Lois Weber's Suspense and How It Impacted Horror History.” SYFY

WIRE, SYFY WIRE, 5 Oct. 2018, www.syfy.com/syfywire/lois-webers-suspense-and-how-it- impacted-horror-history.

Stamp, Shelley. “Lois Weber, Star Maker.” Reclaiming the Archive: Feminism and Film

History, edited by Vicki Callahan, Wayne State University Press, 2010, pp. 131–153.

Thompson, Kristin, and David Bordwell. Film History: An Introduction. McGraw-Hill

Education, 2019.

Weber, Lois and Phillips Smalley, directors. Suspense. Universal Pictures, 1913, www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfgiUvBaosg.