Lois Weber--Suspense (1913)

In 1909, D.W. Griffith made The Lonely Villa, which features perhaps the earliest effective use of cross-cutting (aka “parallel editing”) to generate suspense. In my film history course, I show several earlier films that use cross-cutting to some degree, but do not show an awareness of how it can be used to add suspense and dynamism to plots where it would be appropriate. For instance, in Porter’s Great Train Robbery from 1906, the action switches to different scenes but their length and the editing does not exploit the quick cuts that would generate greater anxiety in viewers by quickening the passage of time during simultaneous action. In 1911, Griffith would again use cross-cutting to heighten suspense in The Lonedale Operator.

Lois Weber
Wikimedia Commons

The foregoing information is given to provide the background for my astonishment in my recent viewing of Suspense, a one-reeler made in 1913 and co-directed by Lois Weber and her husband, Phillips Smalley. The plot is a knock-off of the concept of The Lonely Villa (which was itself a knock-off of a French original, but let us not digress*): a country house with a family inside is threatened by evil-doers while the man of the house is away. In the case of Suspense, a woman and infant are home alone when a tramp sneaks into the house. A phone call to the husband, just as in The Lonely Villa, starts his frantic trip home to try to save his family. Spoiler:  In both cases, he succeeds.

It’s interesting to consider the title of Weber’s film, Suspense. This points not to plot but to a promise of visceral thrills. There are some elements of plot that differ from Griffith’s and could be said to add suspense. For instance, while Griffith’s film features a mother and several children, both young and older, Weber’s scenario (she is credited with the writing) allows for only a woman and infant in the isolated home. Plus, Weber enhances the plot with an added layer of suspense.  The question is not just “will the husband get home in time to rescue his family?” but “will the husband, despite the fact that he is being pursued by police because he’s driving a stolen car, get home in time to rescue his family?” Where Griffith found suspense in the race to the destination, Weber, creates tension among different sources of suspense, through the rush toward the destination, an accident en route, and the attempt to elude pursuit. This last is heightened as the husband constantly looks in his rear-view mirror to judge how close his pursuers have come. These effects function as multiple sources of anxiety for viewers.

Weber’s more provocative achievement though, and the one that did (really!) startle this jaded viewer, is through camera work and the framing of images. Scattered throughout the 10:35 of the film are multiple images presented for maximum destabilizing, anxiety-producing effect (the film gives no photography credit). There is nothing like these shots in The Lonely Villa.

The film opens with the family’s housekeeper writing a note saying that she won’t work in this “lonesome place,” which reinforces the connection between the two films. Without a word to her employer, she picks up her suitcase and leaves. She closes the door and the next shot (1:48) is outside; it’s a high-angle shot through the open top of the porch as she steps away. The effect of this camera angle at first seems a mere curiosity. It seems unmotivated, a destabilizing move from the horizontal to the vertical, but just a camera trick. At 4:50-4:53, though, a shot from the same high angle but slightly closer shows the tramp stepping onto the porch and onto the mat, under which a key is hidden.

At 5:07, the woman, spooked by the presence of the stranger, has retreated to the second floor bedroom with the baby; she steps to the window and two seconds later the shot changes.

What happens next is particularly unsettling for several reasons. First, the viewer may expect an eyeline match, since the woman is at the window presumably looking down, but in that case the unshaven face looking up in a perfectly vertical angle implies that the bedroom window is directly above the porch. This is belied by how close the man’s face is, though. It is so close that the slats of the porch’s roof are not visible.  The shot is a medium close-up showing his threatening face, his foreshortened body and his clutching hands held near his abdomen.

While the implication is that she looks out the window and sees him as the viewer sees him, there is a jarring mismatch between what the diegesis demands and what is needed to produce the maximum startle effect in the viewer. It is also unsettling to realize that the high angle view of the porch has been reserved specifically for viewers. It originates neither in the upstairs window nor at the ground level. It’s a supremely unnatural point of view in limbo belonging only to the camera and the viewer. The angle, the degree of closeness and the detachment of the point of view from any known source work together to strengthen viewer anxiety.

As the woman steps away from the window, Weber reverts to a triple-split-screen matte shot showing three actions happening simultaneously: the tramp picks up the key, the woman phones her husband, and he speaks with her on the phone. Weber uses this unusual effect several times, though it did not originate with her according to a quote from Kevin Brownlow displayed before the narrative begins.

The final scene I want to examine in this kind of detail begins at 9:00. Weber makes good use of the stairway by positioning the camera at the top and filming as the tramp ascends. The man approaches step-by-step until his face—always in focus, eyes challenging the camera and the viewer--almost fills the frame, with an effect reminiscent of the famous close-up in Griffith’s Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912). The view shifts briefly to the inside of the bedroom and the fearful woman; then, to the fist punching through the door, in front of which she has moved a chest. The extended arm punches the door and moves the chest. Back to the screaming woman, then outside to her husband arriving, pursued by cops and an angry car owner. Back to the hand reaching through the door to turn the key; back to the screaming woman. The tramp enters the room, clutching a big, shiny butcher knife. Outside, though, the officers begin to shoot at the husband as he runs to the house. Alarmed, the tramp tries to escape, threatening the husband with the knife at the foot of the stairs, but he is overpowered by the husband and police, and all ends well.

In many ways, this is a far richer film than The Lonely Villa and there is much more that could be said on that score (for instance, the fact that this film is strongly situated in the woman’s experience). Weber is not content to film the action as it takes place before a static camera. While it’s equally true that both directors rely on editing (basic shot/scene editing, as well as parallel editing) to increase the impact of their suspenseful films, Weber’s work is enriched with a wider range of shots, angles, distance and in-camera effects than is Griffith’s. While it’s also true that Weber’s film comes four years later and much changed in those years, this short film seems to demonstrate a unique sense of composition and of deliberately chosen image details (the upturned face, the fist through the door). They are manipulated with the specific aim of inducing in the viewer a very personal sense of uneasiness. Where Griffith is the master of narrative, telling his story but telling it at a distance, Weber shows her talent for narrative but also her strong awareness of how best to use the camera to transfer elements of suspense and destabilization from the screen to the viewer.

*To anyone who does wish to digress, I suggest reading Tom Gunning’s “Heard over the Phone: The Lonely Villa and the De Lorde Tradition of the Terrors of Technology,” Screen 32 (1991): 184-96. The article discusses the sources of The Lonely Villa and then focuses on the importance of telephone technology in the way it can be used to play with time and space and, thereby, add suspense. 

Notes:

The film is available here ( https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-lois-weber/ ) in a restored print. While you’re there, read Shelley Stamp’s profile of Lois Weber.

I want to give a special shout-out to Rick Kelley, whose blog, Luddite Robot, and article on Suspense and horror films started me thinking about what I saw in this film and its relationship to Carol Clover’s and Linda Williams’ discussion of “body genres.”