An interesting early short film directed by pioneer filmmaker Lois Weber. The story simply surrounds a woman who conducts research about male courtship rituals. There may have been more footage that was lost but the surviving print carries the story. Its kind of silly for today's standards but an interesting piece of early cinema nonetheless. It is also worthy in that it features a rare surviving performance of Margarita Fischer, a matinee star of the silent era.
3 Reviews
cute short film, the general idea of which is still being used today
FieCrier17 May 2005
According to the liner notes to the Origins of Film box set, in which this is included, this is thought to have been directed by Lois Weber, but it is not certain.
Three men meet together before they go out to propose to their sweethearts. One departs, proposes, and his fiancé takes the ring and takes a photo of herself out of a frame to give to him. After he leaves, she replaces the photo with a new one. The next man leaves to propose, and as it turns out, it's to the same woman. The same happens, and she signs a "2" with her fingers, perhaps as an aside to the audience? While the third man proposes, the other two men have met back where they started and discovered the photos to be identical. When the third man gets back and learns they've all proposed to the same woman he begins to faint, being caught by the others.
They go to the woman's home together, but she has departed and left identical notes that she was doing an article on "How Men Propose" for a magazine, and that they're welcome to keep her photo (it seems she will keep the rings?).
It's a cute little short, and it's interesting that this sort of movie is still around today; for example, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), in which a woman is writing an article sharing the movie's title for a magazine.
Three men meet together before they go out to propose to their sweethearts. One departs, proposes, and his fiancé takes the ring and takes a photo of herself out of a frame to give to him. After he leaves, she replaces the photo with a new one. The next man leaves to propose, and as it turns out, it's to the same woman. The same happens, and she signs a "2" with her fingers, perhaps as an aside to the audience? While the third man proposes, the other two men have met back where they started and discovered the photos to be identical. When the third man gets back and learns they've all proposed to the same woman he begins to faint, being caught by the others.
They go to the woman's home together, but she has departed and left identical notes that she was doing an article on "How Men Propose" for a magazine, and that they're welcome to keep her photo (it seems she will keep the rings?).
It's a cute little short, and it's interesting that this sort of movie is still around today; for example, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), in which a woman is writing an article sharing the movie's title for a magazine.
How Women Make Movies
Cineanalyst17 March 2021
"How Men Propose" is usually attributed to Lois Weber, as director, writer and producer, but this remains unconfirmed according to scholars and the U.S. Library of Congress. Neither Anthony Slide or Shelley Stamp mentions the film in their books or their filmographies on Weber, although the film is listed as unconfirmed on Stamp's webpage for the filmmaker at the Women Film Pioneers Project website where it's said that there's "no clear indication that she worked with Smalley during his brief tenure at Crystal." Phillips Smalley being Weber's husband at the time, and Crystal the studio producing this film. Indeed, Smalley at least appears in front of the camera in this one, or, as Slide argues at least, he never really directed much of anything despite continually being listed as Weber's co-director.
Regardless, If one assumes the film were hers, it'd seem Weber was past the point where she made pictures more in the style of an Alice Guy-Blaché or Edwin S. Porter, the two pioneer filmmakers she formerly worked under at Gaumont and Rex, of long shot and take compositions with little in the way of scene dissection or closer camera views. "How Men Propose," made after Weber's "Suspense" (1913), is more in the school of the emerging classical style of filmmaking practiced by D.W. Griffith and others. Hence the considerable crosscutting and the camera being set closer to the action in the film's brief runtime. I don't know whether this was originally a split-reel or whether the film was subsequently edited over the years, and it's said to be missing its original title cards. As it is, the average shot length amounts to a little over 12 seconds (my count) whereas the last-minute-rescue (a genre exemplifying crosscutting) film "Suspense" isn't much quicker at a little over 10 seconds per shot (cinemetrics website counts); in other words, the pacing here for its era is somewhat quick.
Nevertheless, the scenario remains clear, of three men proposing marriage to and being accepted by the same woman--the aforementioned crosscutting taking place between their two apartments as this ruse and its discovery goes about. Turns out, the woman was just doing research for an article she's writing on how men propose, but they may keep her pictures. If there's anything to suggest that Weber was behind this production, it's that the woman-writer character (as played by Margarita Fischer) on screen was doing much the same in driving the narrative--being its surrogate author within the film and addressing the spectator by directly looking towards the camera--that Weber did behind it in screenwriting and directing motion pictures.
Regardless, If one assumes the film were hers, it'd seem Weber was past the point where she made pictures more in the style of an Alice Guy-Blaché or Edwin S. Porter, the two pioneer filmmakers she formerly worked under at Gaumont and Rex, of long shot and take compositions with little in the way of scene dissection or closer camera views. "How Men Propose," made after Weber's "Suspense" (1913), is more in the school of the emerging classical style of filmmaking practiced by D.W. Griffith and others. Hence the considerable crosscutting and the camera being set closer to the action in the film's brief runtime. I don't know whether this was originally a split-reel or whether the film was subsequently edited over the years, and it's said to be missing its original title cards. As it is, the average shot length amounts to a little over 12 seconds (my count) whereas the last-minute-rescue (a genre exemplifying crosscutting) film "Suspense" isn't much quicker at a little over 10 seconds per shot (cinemetrics website counts); in other words, the pacing here for its era is somewhat quick.
Nevertheless, the scenario remains clear, of three men proposing marriage to and being accepted by the same woman--the aforementioned crosscutting taking place between their two apartments as this ruse and its discovery goes about. Turns out, the woman was just doing research for an article she's writing on how men propose, but they may keep her pictures. If there's anything to suggest that Weber was behind this production, it's that the woman-writer character (as played by Margarita Fischer) on screen was doing much the same in driving the narrative--being its surrogate author within the film and addressing the spectator by directly looking towards the camera--that Weber did behind it in screenwriting and directing motion pictures.
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