The Devil's Needle & Other Tales of Vice and Redemption

The jacket copy here states: “Derived from the only known surviving copies, some of the films presented here suffer significant wear and nitrate decomposition. This collection is a sobering reminder of the importance of film preservation.” Amen to that, because if this historically important trio of silent “white slavery” films hadn't been rescued from oblivion by the Library of Congress, they almost certainly would have been lost forever, like half of all films made before 1950. Produced by Bret Wood and featuring liner notes by noted film historian Richard Koszarski, The Devil's Needle & Other Tales of Vice and Redemption serves as a potent reminder that early silent films were capable of addressing controversial subjects with considerable frankness; in fact, 1916's The Devil's Needle was one of the first films to directly confront the issue of drug addiction. Supervised by D.W. Griffith and directed by his protégé, Chester Withey, the film stars Norma Talmadge as a morphine-addicted artist's model, with Tully Marshall as an ill-fated painter who willfully gives in to her druggie persuasion. Some parts have almost completely decomposed, but plenty remains in this film that scandalized audiences one year after Griffith's controversial The Birth of a Nation. Next up is director Frank Beal's The Inside of the White Slave Traffic (1913), a notorious film made “without exaggeration or fictional indulgence,” in which ruthless pimps lure unsuspecting women into prostitution. Praised by social reformers at the time, it was produced by noted sociologist Samuel H. London. Finally, John H. Collins's Children of Eve (1915) tackles the subject of child labor exploitation, climaxing with a tragic canning factory fire inspired by the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. Remastered from archival film elements, all three films feature newly commissioned musical scores. Extras include outtakes from Children of Eve and the unrestored footage of The Inside of the White Slave Traffic (included here for comparison to the Library of Congress restoration). Recommended. (J. Shannon)