Suspense

 

When we think about older films we think of the Alfred Hitchcock's of the world, the main blockbuster films produced. We think of the movie psycho or more recently the movies like the original Star Wars trilogy. Although those are all time classic films we still have to look prior to that, the true old films. These films are what brought us and inspired the films we love today. The Filmmaker I chose to take a deeper look at was Lois Weber, she was an early innovator and the first American director, male or female, to make a narrative feature film. She was a very innovative director and she helped make large strides in the film industry. The film I took a look at was her Film Suspense, released in 1913. The film is quite an interesting film, it's a good intense story with a very suspenseful ending. 

The story is suspenseful in multiple different ways. It first starts off with the tramp outside of the house and lurking around. While he does this the wife notices and calls her husband at work to come home to save her. The tramp gets inside and cuts the phone line. This causes panic to ensue from the wife and the husband. This is the feeling of suspense we are left with, this then continues when the husband decides to steal a car to get back home to his wife and baby. After this occurs, he is then promptly chased by the police, the cops add to the suspense. “will he get caught, will he escape?”. This helps us feel not only scared for the baby and the wife but also the Husband. The way she adds suspense for both parts of the story is very creative, not only are we scared for the people in danger, we are now scared for the person coming to the rescue. This suspense is then added on when the cops almost catch up to the husband. He then gets a gain on them during the chase, we get a second to calm down for being nervous for him. But just when we think the suspense is over it cuts back to the tramp and the suspense builds back up, we get nervous for the wife and the baby again. He is in the house breaking in the door with a knife, “will she be okay? Will the husband get back in time?”. This then leads to the intense final scene when the husband and cops fight off the attacker and they make sure the wife and baby are safe. The last bit of suspense is relieved when the man who had his car stolen pats the husband on the back when he finds out why he did it. The whole film is based on this suspense and the storytelling uses this in a very good way to depict this emotion. 

Moving on to my favorite part of analyzing films, the cinematic aspect. This film is very revolutionary for its time, it essentially created the first split screen in film history. It takes place when the tramp is looking around and trying to get into the home, the husband is on the phone with the wife. They are split into triangles, one the bottom and the other two on the sides. Now this doesn’t look like the best editing to us but for film at the time, this had never been seen before. It was innovative, it showed three different emotions and perspectives all at once. The fear was shown at the same time as the action creating the fear, it helps the viewer understand the story. Especially with the inability to have sound on film at the time, the more emotion and perspectives we could see, helped us understand the movie better. This also helps build the suspense of the film, this can be argued that she used shots like these due to trying to build suspense. The film's name is suspense so it does make sense that she would try to do this. The shot of the Tramp when he looks up at the window and the wife is looking down is magnificent, the way they show her looking out, to then him walking in the frame. This shows what she sees right away. Still in frame he looks up at her wide eyed, she then runs to call her husband. The shot of the camera directly above the tramp to show him looking up, is innovative and a whole new perspective for the film. It demonstrates the ability that Weber had to think outside the box. Her creativity of shots and different angles really shows here, and it is highlighted really well in this film. Another shot I liked is the over the shoulder shot of the Husband driving home and it shows him and his side mirror. The side mirror is used very well here to show the cops chasing the man after he stole the car. This helps create the depth that these shots were missing, the depth is important because of the feeling of distance. It feels like he is so distant from his wife and the house, but the cops are so close to him, right behind him. The final shot I really enjoyed is after the husband hits the kid trying to smoke we get to see the distance between the cops and him. The way it goes from the tight shot of him hitting the kid, to the wide shot of the cop car far in the background. It helps us understand how far this journey is and how far they are from each other. This is a perfect use of a wide shot because it sets up our scene so well. 

The cultural relevance is that the man will do anything to protect his kid and woman. He will break the law and risk himself getting caught to be able to save her. This also shows us at the end that people should be able to forgive. The man who got his car stolen forgave the husband due to the man looking out for his family. Sometimes we can help others without even knowing, this is the message they are trying to portray. This is part of that culture of trusting your neighbor, they want people to be able to trust each other. Along with looking out for each other. We also see the woman do anything in her ability to protect her baby, she locks the door to be safe. She proceeds to barricade the door with the heaviest thing she can, all to protect her child. Overall the film was innovative for the film industry as a whole, and it deserves more recognition than it gets. Its use of cinematography to keep the viewer in suspense and glued to their screen was remarkable. And it really lived up to its name, Suspense by Lois Weber.