Lois Weber's Suspense (Spoilers!)

    After watching Lois Weber’s Suspense, there are several afterthoughts I had. Lois Weber was a silent film director who created the short movie, Suspense, which she created in 1913, over one hundred years ago. The story is about a woman at home with her baby while the maid packs up and leaves. While she leaves we see a robber enter the scene around the same time the wife gets a call from her husband saying he won't be home until late. While the wife is doing housework, we can see the robber look into the house from the window. The wife looks out the window and sees the robber. She then calls her husband when the robber suddenly cuts the phone line. We see the husband scramble to get home while the robber is looking through the house. The husband gets back just in time. The robber then gets greeted by the police at the house. This short movie was fascinating to watch and inspired many more movies.  

    The scene where the robber is looking up at the camera and we're looking down on him having the wife's perspective was very creepy to me. It was almost like we were in the situation of feeling the panic of looking into the eyes of someone trying to break into our home. The themes I got were fear, suspense, and quite stressful. The film has gender roles that show the men as strong and powerful and women as weak and helpless. Since this film was made by a woman it's a little disappointing how the roles are, but given it was 1913 it makes sense why they were what they were. These were standard gender roles for the early 1900's. Today I think there are many different outcomes this story could have had. An outcome that could have been from today could be the woman taking down the robber. Or maybe even have a woman robber. 

    Overall, I think it was a great short film and loved how it was created and presented. Lois Weber is an inspiration, especially to women, showing that you can dominate and be successful in a male dominated field. I think she is a fascinating person as well as very creative. This film was engaging and had my eyes glued to the screen the whole time. It was quite fast paced and engaging, even though there was no dialogue. This film was great and I recommend giving it a watch for it shows how far we have come in the movie and film making industry.