I saw an excellent print of 'Den Hvide slavinde' ('The White Slave') at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile, Italy, in October 2006. During the early 20th century, a popular theme in sensationalist literature was the crime of 'white slavery': white slavers were organised rings of criminals who abducted young women and forced them into prostitution, sometimes in a foreign nation where they had no friends and couldn't speak the local language. Undoubtedly, this crime genuinely existed -- and still does, in the early 21st century -- but I have difficulty believing that it was ever as glamorous or exotic as it was depicted in novels and films of the period. The 1905 novel 'Den Hvide slavinde' by Danish author Elisabeth Schøyen recounts the tale of a virginal Danish girl who is abducted to an Arabian sultan's harem; lest anyone think that Schøyen means to titillate us, the girl ends up a corpse in a medical school.
This 1907 one-reel film is clearly intended to cash in on the success of Schøyen's popular novel, but -- being unable to sustain a novel-length plot, and probably also to avoid plagiarism charges -- the movie deviates from Schøyen's plot line. Pigen, a small-town girl (Gerda Jensen), reads a newspaper advertisement offering well-paid employment in the big city to good-looking young women. She shows this to a young yokel who seems to be her unofficial fiancé (Viggo Larsen). He wishes her luck but clearly has some scepticism, as he gives Pigen the rather unusual going-away present of a homing pigeon. (I was hoping she would name it Walter. Boom boom!)
SPOILERS COMING. Sure enough: in the big city, Pigen is taken in hand by a sour-faced dowager who puts her into an evening gown and then conveys her to a cheesy Danish brothel. Conveniently, Pigen has managed to keep possession of her pigeon; now she releases the bird, who duly wings homeward to Viggo, who frees Pigen from her coop with implausible ease. Gustav Lund hovers about as Pigen's father.
Credibility is not this movie's strong suit, and I regret that most of the films in the white-slavery genre are so escapist and sensationalist that they make the real problem of sexual enslavement seem a joke. What this movie does have in its favour is some fascinating photography, depicting not only the scenery and railway of 1907 Denmark but also some intriguing female fashions. It's clear that most or all of the women in this film are tightly corseted, and their figures simply don't resemble modern women's at all. More for its historic value than anything else, I'll rate this potboiler 6 out of 10.
This 1907 one-reel film is clearly intended to cash in on the success of Schøyen's popular novel, but -- being unable to sustain a novel-length plot, and probably also to avoid plagiarism charges -- the movie deviates from Schøyen's plot line. Pigen, a small-town girl (Gerda Jensen), reads a newspaper advertisement offering well-paid employment in the big city to good-looking young women. She shows this to a young yokel who seems to be her unofficial fiancé (Viggo Larsen). He wishes her luck but clearly has some scepticism, as he gives Pigen the rather unusual going-away present of a homing pigeon. (I was hoping she would name it Walter. Boom boom!)
SPOILERS COMING. Sure enough: in the big city, Pigen is taken in hand by a sour-faced dowager who puts her into an evening gown and then conveys her to a cheesy Danish brothel. Conveniently, Pigen has managed to keep possession of her pigeon; now she releases the bird, who duly wings homeward to Viggo, who frees Pigen from her coop with implausible ease. Gustav Lund hovers about as Pigen's father.
Credibility is not this movie's strong suit, and I regret that most of the films in the white-slavery genre are so escapist and sensationalist that they make the real problem of sexual enslavement seem a joke. What this movie does have in its favour is some fascinating photography, depicting not only the scenery and railway of 1907 Denmark but also some intriguing female fashions. It's clear that most or all of the women in this film are tightly corseted, and their figures simply don't resemble modern women's at all. More for its historic value than anything else, I'll rate this potboiler 6 out of 10.
