During the early years of the movie industry in the US, filmmakers were still feeling their way, trying to find the grammar of the medium.

The early films were nothing more than single strips of film of things like workers exiting from a factory or a train barreling down the tracks towards the camera. That one apparently was so frightening to the early movie goers that it caused many to flee the theaters in fright for fear the train would burst through the screen.

Gradually the filmmakers learned to juxtapose different pieces of film to indicate things like “Meanwhile” and soon films began to tell stories as the art of editing began to take hold and the directors of films could now cut back and forth between a long shot of a scene and a closeup to show more detail in a person’s face. And directors could count on audiences to follow the action when they cut back and forth between two or more locations.

Many of these early pioneers of the movies were women; in fact, some of them were secretaries, who, after finishing up with their daytime duties, would experiment in the evening with putting together a short movie. Probably half of the silent era movies were written and/or directed by women. It wasn’t until menfolk noticed how much money the movies were raking in, especially once the talkies became a thing, that the women were forced out and men took control.

One of the early pioneers of the cinema was Lois Weber, who in 1913 wrote, directed, and starred in a short ten minute film called Suspense.

The film is among the first to use split screen techniques and a car chase. It also makes very effective use of some camera angles that Alfred Hitchcock would later become well known for.

It starts out with the maid leaving because the house is so isolated she doesn’t feel safe, so the wife is now alone with her infant. A tramp spies the house and gains entrance, so the wife calls her husband for help, but in the middle of the call the tramp cuts the wire. 

The husband steals a car to try to get home and is chased by the police. Meanwhile, the tramp is climbing the stairs and getting closer to where the wife has hidden herself and her infant.

There are many copies of the film on YouTube; here is one of them.

The cast:

• Lois Weber as The Wife
• Valentine Paul as The Husband
• Douglas Gerrard as The Pursuer
• Sam Kaufman (1885-1972) as The Tramp

No credit is given for the maid or the infant.

You may want to check out some of the other YouTube versions as they have different soundtrack musical scores.