The Blot - 1921 - Film

Sunday, October 1, 2006

The University of Chicago's Doc Films, began its series, "The Women of Early Hollywood: Writers, Directors, Stars" on October 1st with Lois Weber's The Blot (1921), and other short films. For those unfamiliar with Doc Films, it is a student-run film series program "on record with the Museum of Modern Art as the longest continuously running student film society in the nation," according to the Doc website. The program also provides a glimpse into the Gothic buildings of the University of Chicago; housed in Ida Noyes hall, dark wood, thick draperies, and varnished stone floors are the first thing you notice when you enter the main building. I felt like I stepped back in time to the nineteenth century. This building, like most on the University of Chicago campus, has a regal, intimidating air. Later, as I wandered through some of the adjacent rooms off the common area, I stopped and admired an enormous wooden table that had the dimensions of a decent sized bedroom. Antique lighting shone brownish hues over it all, and any ambient sound was immediately absorbed into the dense atmosphere; it was quiet. I think ghosts live there.

Beyond a few sets of double doors, however, is a brighter scene. Pinkish carpet leads into the main theater, The Max Palevsky Cinema, bigger and more spacious than most theaters, and clean. It wasn't the lecture hall venue I always imagined. A shy student introduced the films, and a live pianist, a music student from the U of C, brought a kind musical compliment to the otherwise silent theater.

A House Divided (1913) and Matrimony's Speed Limit (1913) are two Alice Guy Blache films, who according to Doc notes is the "first person to direct a narrative film." A House Divided is a gem of a flick about a husband and wife whose bickering has become so volatile that they no longer speak, and instead resort to hand-written notes to communicate. The film is in long shot, cuts only when the scene ends, and was on an immaculate print. The image was a buttery black and white, with no over/underexposures, and for a moment I thought it was a cleaned up DVD copy of the movie. The same goes for Blanche's second film Matrimony's Speed Limit. A clean print of a film about a man who receives a telegram that he is about to inherit the family fortune. The hitch? Well, he's got to be hitched by 12:00 noon in order to collect. Ensuing are his vain attempts to lure random women off the street to marry him, intercut with his real wife-to-be at home and about town in search of him. The final scene stages their marriage as they stand up in the backseat of their car, one minute from the noonday chime, and blocking traffic. Now that's a wedding.

The last short was a Lois Weber flick, Suspense (1913), with director Phillips Smalley listed as co-director, who was also Weber's first husband (they divorced in 1922). The story is basic: a burglar is lurking outside a woman's home while her husband is away at work. There are split screen shots holding the woman, her husband, and the burglar in separate frames, and a brilliant scene of the husband speeding home in a stolen car, revealing the police in hot pursuit behind him in a shot that looks at them in the reflection of the car's side view mirror.

The Blot (1921) was the main feature, a film I had seen years ago, though not actually on film (I believe it was a DVD copy, or maybe video). The film, at heart, is about class; two neighboring families live under separate financial spheres, and therefore different social spheres. Weber illustrates a prosperous 1920s that is still leaden with a poor population; the class barrier is shown directly, placing the wealthy family next to the poor one, where only a thin fence separates the households’ properties. A romance between a wealthy student who falls for his professor's daughter finally closes the social gap between the two detached families, and all become friends. The film’s melodrama is deliberate to overtly show extant social perils among general prosperity.

The print of The Blot was also in immaculate condition, though one reel was spooled incorrectly and flipped the image of the film. The projectionist stopped and rewound it to start again, which didn’t bother me. Anybody who attends a silent film from 1921 at a south-side venue on a late Sunday night has to be a movie lover, so it gave me a moment to remember I was among a patient crowd who showed up at this aged building for the same simple reason as me, the movie.