White slavery (genre of fiction)
White slavery shall not be treated. --March 1930 version of the American film Production code
Related damsel in distress - exploitation film - early exploitation film - white slavery - women in prison films
Traffic in Souls (1913) - George Loane Tucker [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Traffic in Souls (1913) - George Loane Tucker
(1913 - silent) dir: George Loane Tucker; w/ Jane Gail, Matt Moore, Ethel Grandia. · · · Being an exposé of the sordid world of white slavery, in which a heroic policeman saves his sweetheart's sister from a fate worse than death and cracks a vile kidnapping and prostitution ring operated by one of the city's most eminent men. Immigrant girls and unfortunate waifs are abducted by bad men and forced by wicked women into a life of sin, but our young hero uses high-tech (the grandpappy of all bugging devices and a wax-cylinder phonograph) to bring the evil traffickers to their just rewards. Ahem. Part crime drama and part morality play with a just a teeny hint of exploitation, the script is pure silent-era schmaltz. The editing, however, is a tad abrupt & bewildering, as we bounce all over the city following the progress of many different people. And in a time before pans & dollies, the photography may at first seem clunky, but the director shows how to use a deep stage and efficient set-ups to cram a lot of story information into a static scene. A remarkably fast-paced script and plenty of exaggerated melodrama makes it actually fun to watch even for modern audiences. --http://www.cathuria.com/bcd/bcsilent.htm [Jun 2005]
Among the many films that were popular among women were the "white slavery films" of the teens (Lindsey, 1991), a cycle that was indisputably stimulated by the anxiety provoked by the visibility of women on metropolitan streets (Lindsey, 1991; Gunning, 1997). This small "genre" of white slavery films was spawned by Traffic in Souls (1913), a film that Tom Gunning has suggested, initiated the "urban thriller" genre that we now associate with film noir. Gunning argues that the city in Traffic in Souls prefigures the omniscient underground systems that Fritz Lang would develop in the 1920s. He describes these networks as "impersonal systems of entrapment, both legal and illegal, a traffic which pulses beneath the city's surface, determining direction and circulation beyond our will or even our knowledge." In the narrative logic of the film, this system "has its origins in the contradictory relation of the figure of the prostitute to the categories of visuality and urban space" (1997: 52).
Lindsey, Shelley Stamp (1991)Wages and Sin: Traffic in Souls and the White Slavery Scare, Persistence of Vision no. 9, pp. 90-102.
--http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/film/scopearchive/articles/parallax-historiography.htm [Nov 2005]see also: white - slave - white slave - prostitution - 1913
White Slaves of Chinatown (1964) - Joseph P. Mawra
White Slaves of Chinatown (1964) - Joseph P. Mawra [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0129598/ [Jun 2005]
What Ilsa was to the 1970s, Olga was to the '60s: the ultimate female embodiment of roughie cinema. Born as the sadistic protagonist of the successful bondage and domination film White Slaves of Chinatown, she immediately spawned a line of sequels which increased the sleaze tenfold.
Portrayed by the formidable Audrey Campbell, the resourceful dominatrix/interrogator returned for Olga's House of Shame and the most widely distributed title, Olga's Girls, before switching actress personas for Olga's Dance Hall Girls and the elusive Madame Olga's Massage Parlor. Here Olga lends her cutting-edge skills as the kinky muscle for a crime syndicate intent on uncovering the rat who's been squealing on them to the cops. As it turns out, the guilty party is one of Olga's Chinatown ladies of the evening, so she embarks on a systemic plan of torture and sexual abuse before fate steps in to throw a few unexpected curveballs. --http://www.mondo-digital.com/olgasgirls.html [Jun 2005]
see also: Olga - exploitation - exploitation film - roughie - sexfilm - sexploitation - sleaze - 1964
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