Suspense (1913)
A tramp stalks a house after the maid leaves a young mother home alone with her baby, and as he breaks in, the husband steals a car and races the police to reach them in time.
Suspense used a three-way split screen and one of cinema’s earliest car chases to build its tension, directed by pioneering filmmaker Lois Weber, who also wrote the scenario and starred. It was added to the National Film Registry in 2020.
Background
Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley co-directed Suspense, a 1913 short in which Weber also starred as the young mother left alone in the house. The plot follows a tramp who stalks the house after the maid leaves, and the husband races the police in a stolen car to reach his family in time. The short is an early example of the cross-cutting technique that became a staple of chase and rescue films. Weber was one of the few women directing films in the era, and she went on to become a major figure in American silent cinema.
What to watch for
Pay attention to the cross-cutting between the house and the police chase, which builds the rescue to its climax. The tramp’s stalking is handled with restraint, and the suspense comes from time pressure rather than from violence. Weber’s performance as the mother is central, and the staging puts the viewer inside the house with the frightened family. The short is a useful study of how early filmmakers developed the cross-cut rescue structure. Its running time of about ten minutes is typical of the single-reel films of the period, and it shows how much tension a short could hold.
