Yours Sincerely, Lois Weber: Hypocrites and the Allegorical Mode of the Transitional Feature Film

Lois Weber’s episodic feature film Hypocrites (1915) poses a challenge to one principle that is thought to have guided American cinema toward classical narrative: the self-effacement of narrative discourse. Weber’s film, and its critical and financial success in a year of such proto-classical landmarks as DeMille’s The Cheat and Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, reveals the viability, however brief, of a reflexive, allegorical model for the feature-length film during the transition to classical form.