Her Defiance

Her Defiance is a short silent film directed by Cleo Madison and Joe King. The film was released January 14, 1916. Starring Madison as an innocent young country girl who becomes involved in a love affair, the film is noted for its use of the "matte process" which Madison uses to explain time and distance in the narrative. This powerful feminist melodrama was released around the same time that many suffragette films were produced. Her Defiance is usually associated with other feminist melodramas that Madison produced in this year including Alias Jane Jones, A Soul Enslaved, and A Heart's Crucible. Motion Picture News claimed Her Defiance was "a sympathetic subject along conventional lines but benefited by several original situations that add much to its value," on January 15, 1916.[1]

Plot

Adeline Gabler (Cleo Madison) is a young farm girl whose brother is scheming to marry her off to an elderly rich neighbor, "Old Scapin" (Willis Marks). When Adeline falls in love with a city boy, Frank Warren (Edward Hearn), her brother Theron (Taylor N. Duncan) takes the first opportunity to trick his sister into believing her lover has abandoned her. Adeline, pregnant, is forced to marry Scapin, but at the conclusion of the ceremony, she creates havoc by pushing her husband away and escaping in a buggy to the city. Scapin and Theron pursue her, but their buggy crashes and Scapin is killed. Not knowing she is now a widow, Adeline works as a cleaning woman to support herself and her son. She is sent to work in her former lover's office, where he finds the baby. Adeline confronts Frank, who explains, in a flashback inserted on one side of the screen, how he wrote her a crucial letter that she never received.[2] The sequence can be read as representing the point of view of the woman as she weighs the statements of her lover against her memories of the events.[3]

Film techniques

Her Defiance was extremely notable for Madison's use of "matting," a process she desired to signify time and distance passing in the short silent film. The matte process is a very old technique, dating back to the late 1890s. It is used in photography and special effects filmmaking, combining various images into a single image.[4] Madison uses this in her final scene when Adeline and Frank are speaking, while on one side of the screen past actions are shown.

Character traits

Madison's character in Her Defiance is a strong willed woman, but she was usually cast as needy heroines, much different from the attitude the actress portrayed in her real life. Photoplay journalist William Henry reported,

Cleo Madison is a womanly woman – if she were otherwise she couldn't play sympathetic parts as she does – and yet she is so smart and businesslike that she makes most of the male population of Universal city look like debutants when it comes right down to brass tacks and affairs." Cleo Madison had answered Henry with, "One of these days men are going to get over the fool idea that women have no brains and quit getting insulted at the thought that a skirt-wearer can do their work quite as well as they can. And I don't believe that day is very far distant, either.[5]

Madison's time as a director and actress was short, and by the 1920s she was back to playing minor roles in small films. She quit acting in 1924 and died of a heart attack in 1964.

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References
  1. Slide, Anthony (1996-01-01). The Silent Feminists: America's First Women Directors. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810830530.
  2. "Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers - Episode 8: Her Defiance". Netflix. Retrieved 6 May 2019.
  3. Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey (1995-01-01). Women Film Directors: An International Bio-critical Dictionary. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 234. ISBN 9780313289729. her defiance.
  4. Fry, Ron; Fourzon, Pamela (1977-01-01). The Saga of Special Effects. Prentice-Hall. ISBN 9780137859726.
  5. "Cleo Madison – Women Film Pioneers Project". wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-19.
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