America's First Quality Feature-Length Film
(originally posted on IMDb 29 August 2009)

This is one of the better feature-length films from before 1915 that I've seen, for the simple reason that it moves. I much prefer it to the plodding filmed plays, which so many early features were, such as "Queen Elizabeth", "From the Manger to the Cross" (both 1912), "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1913), and most of the rest. It's perhaps the most well paced longer film that I've seen predating D.W. Griffith's transition to feature-length productions. Much credit for that must go to director George Loane Tucker and co-writer Walter MacNamara, as well as producer and, apparently, editor Jack Cohn, who, after working for Carl Laemmle, would co-found Columbia Pictures.

The editing, however, is choppy in places, which may in part be due to missing footage, but it's clear that much of the choppiness was originally there. This isn't uncommon for early films, when editors had to rely on physically cutting the film without even a good viewing device, but "Traffic in Souls" is choppier than most. Regardless, there's a lot crosscutting in this film between various plots over the span—within the film—of only a couple days time. Additionally, there's some good continuity editing and cutting between suggested point-of-view shots and counter shots of the one viewing, which were not widespread techniques in 1913 as they are today. Ben Brewster ("Traffic in Souls: an experiment in feature-length narrative construction" printed in "The Silent Cinema Reader") counted the shots in "Traffic in Souls" and those in "Cabiria", which was the pinnacle of the literary/theatrical style of early features also used in the aforementioned filmed plays. "Cabiria" has an average shot length of 20.2 feet, while "Traffic in Souls" has an average of 7.9 feet. Despite being twice as long as "Traffic in Souls", it also has fewer shots overall while having nearly a third more title cards.

Today, the narrative of "Traffic in Souls" seems similar to later exploitation films (although, I'd say, better constructed than many such films made even several decades later). Of course, the subject matter of forced prostitution rings is treated quite sensationally. Reportedly, this was actually a big (mostly imagined) fear at the time this film was made—among progressive social reformers, at least. Additionally, I suspect "Traffic in Souls" was strongly inspired by the Danish three-reel film "The White Slave Trade" (Den Hvide slavinde) (1910) and its several sequels and derivatives, which were very popular, although I haven't seen those Danish films, nor heard anyone else make that connection before. Early Danish cinema was, in general, sensational, and from the examples I've seen, it seems likely this Danish sensational genre influenced the production of "Traffic in Souls". Another influence: Tucker had already employed a heroine plot involving technological devices resembling that part in "Traffic in Souls" in "The Rise of Officer 174" (1913).

Other than structure, this film is typically dated. The filmmakers do very little with the camera and return to the same camera position for nearly every scene for the respective locations (which was standard at the time). The mob scene, with a moving camera from an overhead angle, and the jail panning shot are exceptions. The acting is mostly no frills, which is preferable since even good actors back then could go overboard with histrionic projecting sometimes. The best characterization is of the duplicitous Trubus, whose large sideburns and appearance are said to be a mocking of John Rockefeller Jr., heir to Standard Oil and a social reformer who sponsored an investigation of prostitution contemporary to this film (which says something about the filmmakers' earnestness, or lack thereof, in regards to the forced prostitution scare).

The New York location shooting is rather interesting. At times, the film takes on an actuality, or documentary, feel; pedestrians in some scenes noticeably look directly at the camera, including a kid who waves at it from a trolley. Some of the sets, however, seem inappropriate. As William K. Everson ("American Silent Film") remarks, "There is a Victorian look to many of the interiors of homes and offices; ultra-busy wallpaper and a plethora of vases and ornaments. But it is inappropriate for an essentially modern story of organized crime, and the interiors clash rather notably with the exteriors shot in the busy streets of New York." Nevertheless, "Traffic in Souls" is a landmark film. If not so much controversial in itself, the film inspired a spew of copycat productions in the US on white slavery, which led to a 1916 ban by the National Board of Review on all white slavery films--a ban that was adopted by the Hays Code. The film was also comparatively expensive and profitable in its day: costing some $57,000 to produce and grossing near a half million. This film has also been selected to the US National Film Registry. Yet, the importance of "Traffic in Souls" lies more in that it's the first modernly constructed and edited feature-length film narrative and, thusly, America's first quality long film.