The Price (1911) User Reviews

Early Weber-Smalley Short

[boblipton · 5/10 · 15 September 2021]

Stableman Phillips Smalley meets and marries beautiful Lois Weber. They have a son, but a man from the city seduces her to the High Life, and Smalley is left alone, eventually with a dead son.

This early effort by Weber and Smalley, supervised by Edwin S. Porter, is not an outstanding piece. It uses the "chapter heading" technique that was falling out of favor, telling the audience what they were about to see. The acting is very broad. Yet in its pacing and the writing of the titles, there is a hint of the poetry that the two, particularly Miss Weber, would soon learn to translate into visual terms.

Early Works of Film Directors-Review # 12: Edwin S. Porter, Phillips Smalley, and Lois Weber's The Price

[tavm · 6/10 · 11 December 2021]

Lois Weber was a pioneer among American female film directors. She made many distinguished pictures during the silent era. Working with Edwin S. Porter and her husband Phillips Smalley, they helmed this tale of a farm woman meeting a ranch man as they marry and have a child. Five years later, a male stranger meets that same woman and then takes her to town. I'll stop there and just say that while the story seems simple enough, it's filled with some touching anguish-especially near the end-that makes this worth seeing. The way some scenes are lighted-in shades of blue and light brown-are quite effective. The acting by the real-life married couple of Phillips and Lois does what it does quite effectively for the time. Perhaps some more time could have been done to make the narrative more compelling. Still, I recommend The Price.

The Price review

[JoeytheBrit · 5/10 · 22 June 2020]

A familiar tale well told by Edwin Porter with the help of Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley, who also play the leads. It's well-acted and shot but not particularly memorable.

Another Lovely Print from the Well of Lois Weber's Oeuvre

[Cineanalyst · 15 March 2021]

"The Price" is an early production from Edwin S. Porter's Rex company. Besides later becoming part of Universal Pictures, the main legacy of the studio is that it hired Lois Weber, who probably deserves most of the credit for this short, although some sources also variously list Porter and her husband Phillips Smalley as co-directors, but, my understanding is that Porter was more of a production supervisor at this point, while Smalley is generally agreed to have been the lesser talent in the married directing team. Regardless, Weber is credited with the scenario (apparently, adapted from a poem), as well as starring in front of the camera, and the attention to lighting and not-entirely-theatrical acting in this good-looking print screams Weber as the dominant force behind the film given that it's consistent with the rest of her oeuvre.

Other than a lovely tinted print featuring some nice lighting compositions, the melodramatic story of adultery and death and plot spanning many years within one reel is pretty hard to swallow. I prefer the lighter opening as the couple meet, marry and have a child. The very first shot is a standout for how Weber suggestively strokes the phallic rope tied to a well bucket, as if anticipating her sexual awakening moments later as her future (and real-life) husband walks into the scene.

Straightfoward morality play

[MissSimonetta · 6/10 · 13 February 2022]

THE PRICE is an extremely straightforward morality play. A wife and mother is seduced by a rich man. Her husband and child suffer while she enjoys the high life as a mistress. She is cast away by her lover when she becomes too old and then she dies of an unspecified illness, only to be forgiven by her husband in her last moments. It's not exactly subtle, either as a story or in terms of the acting. Don't expect any of the dizzying cinematic flourishes of SUSPENSE here either. It's okay but nothing more than that.

The action depends largely on leaders quoting the ballad

[deickemeyer · 24 May 2016]

This picture was adapted from the poem "Ostler Joe," author's name not given. It is not a dramatic picture and the action, at least for a large part of it, depends largely on leaders quoting the ballad, and that is neither very poetical nor very human. However, very good work on the part of the players and of the producer give life to the separate scenes of what was not a very strong scenario. The argument is as follows: An ostler was happily married and a son came to the home; as shown a very comfortable home. The lad grew to be about five years old and made friends with a stranger and brought him into the yard. Later, the mother was tempted by this stranger and ran away with him, becoming a famous prostitute. The child died shortly after the mother ran away. The woman at length fell upon hard times and lay dying in poverty, when her hostler husband heard of it. He forgave her and she died in his arms. The scenes are beautiful without exception. - The Moving Picture World, December 2, 1911

The Price...of the langorous lily of soulless sin (what else?)

[kekseksa · 2 April 2017]

This film is in the EYE collection but was previously misidentified as Lost Illusions. The identification is now correct.

It concerns a young married couple in the country, who have a young child. The wife is seduced by a city-man and goes off to become his mistress, abandoning husband and child. She at first enjoys considerable social success but her lover tires of her and she endured the usual fate of the fallen woman (poverty and sickness). In the meantime, back in the country, her child has died but the husband remains heart-broken. When the doctor lets him know of his wife's approaching death, he rushes to town but only arrives in time to witness her decease.

Despite the ignorance of the contemporary reviewer in this respect, the poem on which the film is based, "Ostler Joe", is a perfectly well-known and rather bloodthirstily puritan effort by George Sims:

I stood at eve, as the sun went down, by a grave where a woman lies, Who lured men's souls to the shores of sin with the light of her wanton eyes; Who sang the song that the Siren sang on the treacherous Lurley height, Whose face was as fair as a summer day, and whose heart was as black as night.

Yet a blossom I fain would pluck today from the garden above her dust - Not the languorous lily of soulless sin, nor the blood-red rose of lust,.... and so on.

One contemporary newspaper described it as "The Poem Which Shocked Washington Society" I doubt if it has such shock value in 1911.

Such film-versions of poems were not uncommon but it is interesting to note that one of the contemporary reviewers seems somewhat irritated by the poetic intertitles and feels they detract from the effectiveness of the film. He would perhaps have been happier with this Dutch version which dispenses with the doggerel.