moon_custafer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moon_custafer) wrote2019-06-27 10:21 am
moon_custafer) wrote2019-06-27 10:21 am
I Need a Time Machine to Go Punch some Studio Execs
For a lot of things, really, but in this specific case, for re-releasing Lois Weber’s Shoes (1916) in 1932 as The Unshod Maiden, recut and with “satirical” voice-over commentary.
I already kind of knew there was a thing in the early thirties where silent films from fifteen or twenty years earlier got chopped down and given “hur hur, weren’t movies cheesy back then” soundtracks. This was pretty much the dismissive attitude that led to most early cinema not surviving at all. But Shoes* is especially galling – Weber, in her day, was considered the equivalent of D. W. Griffith, and Shoes was about a working-class woman driven to sex work because it's the only way she can afford to replace her only pair of shoes, which she needs in order to keep her main job as a shop clerk.
The closest analogy I can think of is if a modern studio were to rerelease Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, shortened and with wacky cartoon sound effects dubbed on.
*Note that the original title is a single word that becomes grim once you understand the context. Then think about someone deliberately giving it an archaic-sounding retitle, so they can mock it for its “sentimentality.”
I already kind of knew there was a thing in the early thirties where silent films from fifteen or twenty years earlier got chopped down and given “hur hur, weren’t movies cheesy back then” soundtracks. This was pretty much the dismissive attitude that led to most early cinema not surviving at all. But Shoes* is especially galling – Weber, in her day, was considered the equivalent of D. W. Griffith, and Shoes was about a working-class woman driven to sex work because it's the only way she can afford to replace her only pair of shoes, which she needs in order to keep her main job as a shop clerk.
The closest analogy I can think of is if a modern studio were to rerelease Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, shortened and with wacky cartoon sound effects dubbed on.
*Note that the original title is a single word that becomes grim once you understand the context. Then think about someone deliberately giving it an archaic-sounding retitle, so they can mock it for its “sentimentality.”
no subject
Fuuuuuuck.
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no subject
Does the original film survive? What success did the recut have? I'd love it to have been greeted with contempt.
editing to add: Now I see that the one surviving copy was found and restored. Blessings on the film restorers!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD4asgxuP5E
The film looks good.