Lois Weber Lois Weber

Lois Weber (June 13, 1879 – November 13, 1939) was an American silent film actress, screenwriter, producer, and director, who is considered "the most important female director the American film industry has known",[1] and "one of the most important and prolific film directors in the era of silent films".[2][3] Film historian Anthony Slide asserts that: "Along with D.W. Griffith, Weber was the American cinema's first genuine auteur, a filmmake...(展开全部) Lois Weber (June 13, 1879 – November 13, 1939) was an American silent film actress, screenwriter, producer, and director, who is considered "the most important female director the American film industry has known",[1] and "one of the most important and prolific film directors in the era of silent films".[2][3] Film historian Anthony Slide asserts that: "Along with D.W. Griffith, Weber was the American cinema's first genuine auteur, a filmmaker involved in all aspects of production and one who utilized the motion picture to put across her own ideas and philosophies."[4]

Weber produced an oeuvre which Jennifer Parchesky argues is comparable to Griffith's in both quantity and quality,[5] and brought to the screen her concerns for humanity and social justice in an estimated 200 to 400 films,[2][6] of which as few as twenty have been preserved,[7][8] and has been credited by IMDb with directing 135 films, writing 114, and acting in 100.[9] Weber was "one of the first directors to come to the attention of the censors in Hollywood's early years".[10]

Weber has been credited as pioneering the use of the split screen technique to show simultaneous action in her 1913 film Suspense.[11] In collaboration with her first husband, Phillips Smalley, in 1913 Weber was "one of the first directors to experiment with sound", making the first sound films in the United States,[12][13] and was also the first American woman to direct a full-length feature film when she and Smalley directed The Merchant of Venice in 1914,[14] and in 1917 the first woman director to own her own film studio.[15]

During the war years, Weber "achieved tremendous success by combining a canny commercial sense with a rare vision of cinema as a moral tool".[16] At her zenith, "few men, before or since, have retained such absolute control over the films they have directed – and certainly no women directors have achieved the all-embracing, powerful status once held by Lois Weber."[17] By 1920, Weber was considered