Traffic in Souls

One of the most notorious melodramas of it's time, director George Loane Tucker's Traffic in Souls seemed to confirm everyone's worst fears about "white slavery". Social reformers leaped into action, while audiences quickly rushed to the theaters to see it. A tremendous box-office success, the film is credited with starting a trend of increasingly sexy films, or at least films that promised sex, since they discovered sex sells. This controversial film which was banned in many cities throughout America, nevertheless grossed half a million dollars.

It is both a pseudo-documentary that reveals how "50,000 Girls disappear yearly" into "white slavery," a criminal organization abducts poor and immigrant women, forcing them into prostitution. The chief crook is a seemingly respectable businessman (William Welsh) who handles the money while his underlings do the dirty work. When a young woman (Ethel Grandin) is drugged and kidnapped, her sister (Jane Gail) teams up with her policeman boyfriend (Matt Moore) to rescue her.

Today, Traffic in Souls has at least two claims to fame. First, its sensational subject matter linked it and number of other more or less contemporaneous films with a moral panic that eventually resulted in the inclusion of the "white slave trade" (the entrapment of young women into prostitution) in the list of topics explicitly barred under the Hays Office's Production Code. Second, and more important for this study, it is a relatively early American-produced feature-length film, apparently, in fact, the first released on Broadway not based on a famous novel or play. It is also the first film of more than three reels produced by the Independent Motion Picture Company, whose president Carl Laemmle was at this time, and for some time to come, publicly committed against the feature film.

Though contrived, it still holds-up to modern scrutiny of what we might think a good film should be like, and its nevertheless a milestone in film-making. It paved the way for the kind of action films Hollywood would soon become noted for making. And to comment on Tucker's great talent, in a period when most films were still overly theatrical, Tucker displays a relatively naturalistic, low-key style. For the most part, the actors behave like real people instead of mugging for the camera, and the expert cross-cutting shows that D.W. Griffith wasn't the only director in Hollywood who could edit with vigor. Though most of his work completely forgotten or lost today, with the work of Traffic in Souls, The Prisoner of Zenda, and the highly acclaimed lost film The Miracle Man, Tucker should easily be credited as one of the finest pioneers of film making.

The adage "sex sells" holds true today as it did in 1913 in Universal Film Manufacturing Company's distributed movie, November's "Traffic In Souls." The company's member studios had spent $7,000 on making the 88-minute movie and it earned $450,000, the top box office hit that year. This was United States cinema's first movie dealing with sexuality.

"Traffic In Souls" is about the illicit prostitution rings prevalent during the early 1910's, run by crime syndicates operating in the white slave trade. These organizations concentrated on young immigrant women or those found in poor living conditions, which "Traffic" addresses. The film shows a lot of money being passed around by the criminals but avoids the explicit scenes suggested by the subject matter.

The National Board of Review, which highlighted newly-released movies of importance, had given a stamp of approval by claiming the film had cast a light on a national disgrace. Its board members had expressed the hope "Trade" would enact reforms on the illegality of prostitution. Several years later, when the Hays Code was established, the topic of "white slavery" was banned.

Universal Pictures in retrospect has called "Traffic In Souls" the company's most important film it has ever produced. At the time, The Universal Film Manufacturing Company consisted of several movie studios, including Carl Laemmle's Independent Moving Pictures Company. "Traffic" generated so much money for Laemmle that it allowed him to start gobbling up the other member studios one by one to create the Universal Pictures we know today.

This may be the earliest American feature film that can be shown today without embarrassment; the technique is primitive, but it still holds your interest. Coincidence plays a huge role in the plot, but there's a genuine sense of danger, and the hypocrisy of the villain is a nice touch that should appeal to modern viewers. The camera doesn't move (the camera rarely did in 1913), but brisk editing helps keep the film lively, and Tucker directs with imagination. If you have any interest at all in silent movies, this one is worth a look.

The movie that put little Universal Studios on the movie-making map thanks to its lurid storyline of nice girls who work in sweet shops being abducted off the streets and forced into prostitution. Director George Loane Tucker keeps it moving at a cracking pace, and shows some sophistication in the editing of its opening stages as various girls fall into the hands of the unscrupulous white traders. The plot wanders off into the realms of fantasy at times, and the writing is lazy - the father of an abducted girl just happens to have invented a listening device that is key to foiling the villains, for example. But, despite being trashy and exploitative, Traffic in Souls is a fun watch that holds an important place in film history.

TRAFFIC IN SOULS (1913) is one of the first feature films to really define what feature films would become aesthetically. It depicts the story of several women who are lured into a house of ill repute, as well as the unmasking of a powerful figure who pulls the strings who is not all that he seems…

SCRIPT: The script of TRAFFIC IN SOULS juggles multiple narrative threads at a time when most movies were short features that only told one story. It handles the separate yet related stories quite successfully. One flaw I did notice is that the brothel doesn't have any clients – but there may have been some reason for doing so, so as not to offend the sensibilities of 1913 audiences. In any case, the story is fairly realistic and must have been shocking for its day. There are nice little details, too – like the police officer and the girl asking the window cleaner to look away while they kiss briefly, the shopgirl who gets fired and sticks her tongue out at her boss, among other things. A bit melodramatic at times, and with a little padding, but not too much. The story is told with brisk efficiency and the film moves along at a nice pace. It is actually quite suspenseful as well. There's an intriguing technological element as well, with a kind of telegraph pen that writes remotely and a phonograph that records conversations. SCORE: 8/10.

ACTING: The acting here is exceptionally naturalistic, at a time when many "feature" films were little more than stage plays with overly emphatic acting. Particular standouts are Jane Gail as Mary Barton, William Welsh as the "philanthropist" Trubus, as Ethel Grandin as Lorna Barton. There's very little hamming it up in this film, and the realistic, restrained performances help to give a documentary feel to the proceedings. SCORE: 9/10

CINEMATOGRAPHY/PRODUCTION: TRAFFIC IN SOULS shows a quite advanced sense of editing for its day, although some of it is a bit choppy (which was confirmed by a contemporary review). There is not a lot of camera movement in the movie, but the briskly paced editing keeps the movie from being too static (again, unlike other features of the time). We are treated to some unusual camera angles and tracking shots at various points of the film. There aren't really any tight close-ups, and this keeps the movie feeling a bit remote over the course of its run time. By far the most remarkable feature of TRAFFIC IN SOULS is its liberal use of outdoor location shooting, which gives it a remarkable realism that is still striking today. Although other features a few years later (including one I don't want to name) would use more advanced features like iris shots and tinting, TRAFFIC IN SOULS is still pretty advanced for its time. SCORE: 9/10

SUMMARY: TRAFFIC IN SOULS deserves more recognition as being a movie that helped set the standard for feature films, even before BIRTH OF A NATION. Its story is quite complex, but fast paced and engrossing. The acting is refreshingly and remarkably naturalistic. Its cinematography and editing are well executed, helping to pave the way for feature films to break away from the stage and come into their own as an art form in their own right. SCORE: 9/10