Discussion of Shoes
My Essay:
Cine 20A
National Cinemas, Hollywood Classicism, and World War I (1913-1919)
Lois Weber’s crafting of Shoes (1916) used multiple crosscuts impressed me in her style of storytelling. The length of the crosscuts was sometimes very short, like Eva yelling to her mom from one room to another and cutting from one room to the other room and back again.
It was also very helpful to have a generous use of intertitles to keep the story going.
The crosscutting helped move the story along quickly and kept building up the suspense of when Eva was going to sell herself for a pair of shoes. Knowing this information and cutting to the family life, lazy father, concerned mother, and the shrew co-worker who keeps trying to pimp herself out build to us waiting when she would break.
This scene is unique in that it overlays the drudgery of the day job at the five and dime store with her co-worker tempting view of the Blue Goose, the easy way out for her to have everything she wants. It is the type of scene that is unique to moving pictures and can’t really be duplicated in another art form.
This shot shows a close picture of Eva and her co-worker talking from the waist up. In the shot of the Blue Goose it is also a closer up shot than a view of the whole entrance and stairs. It is a tight crop of the name of the nightclub and waist up of the attendant outside framing the columns, door and sign in the center. The ladies are also in the center. Their shot is larger and works in the overlay as they are just over the doorway as if saying, just go through this door way and all your troubles are over.
I believe Lois Weber is an auteur with her showing the point of view of a female and also using social issue as topics. The use of wonderful crosscutting and intertitle use among long, or close shots build to show Eva's emotions create a touching narrative that is her style. (Changed the last paragraph at the last minute)
Comment back from Student - Brian Clark
Hello Ida,
I found it interesting you're analysis of the Blue Goose when you mentioned the idea of "just go through this door way and all your troubles are over" this really go me thinking, whenever Eva fantasized about having a better life and more money it always involved and took place in the Blue Goose, I recall her sisters making an appearance during the farther back shot on the staircase before the scene transition.
My comment to Brian Clark on his essay:
Hi Brian,
Great shot of the hand over Eva. I didn't know what film technique was used thank you for explaining that it is double exposure. The special quality about this shot also is that she got Eva to look in the right place without the hand there, of course, to make it look like she is staring at the hand.
Excellent artistic description "she feels that she will never escape the hand of poverty." It also shows the theme that Weber made films based on social themes.
Savvy terms used by other students:
Weber uses a tight crop on the shoes for the duration of the scene
(Vincent Cheng)
Lois Weber’s Shoes repeatedly uses continuity editing, together with other techniques, to create spatial and temporal coherence and provide narrative clarity.
which then cuts to an establishing shot from the interior
Relying on staging in depth to allow for multiple figures moving or halting within the scene,
The shot then cuts to a medium shot of the father
The continuity editing, aided by intertitles and staging in depth, does not only paint a sympathetic picture of Eva’s situation but also helps communicates clearly to the viewer Eva’s psychology.
Relying on staging in depth to allow for multiple figures moving or halting within the scene,
he staging with the figures shown at a distance from one another suggests a sort of psychological disconnection
Shoes”, demonstrates her skill and mastery of the techniques used to provide successful narrative continuity to a film.
Between the repeated shot of the front door of their building with its broken glass
Contrast that with the
Weber’s depth staging her, we see people who are dancing to live music , eating, drinking champagne while
Your Answers:
The film featured in the Module shows a final scene of townspeople bearing a coffin across the ice as spring approaches?
Sir Arne’s Treasure (Mauritz Stiller, 1919)
What film featured in the Module shows a performance from Arthur Stross, "The Man Without Arms?"
Atlantis (August Blom, 1913)
Who is this character from Shoes and why does Eva resent him?
This is Eva Mayer's father. She supports the family and her father stays unemployed just reading and smoking his pipe. She can't get new shoes because all her money feeds the family.
How does Eva eventually earn the money to buy new shoes in Shoes?
Eva sells herself to a musician who was interested in her who worked at the Blue Goose
What is the name of the famous serial directed by Louis Feuillade about a criminal master of many disguises?
Fantômas (Louis Feuillade, 1913)
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