The Blot

Professor Griggs teaches at a college but his salary is not enough to live on. Next door, in the house of Olsen the shoemaker, there is money and there is food. The Griggs family tries to keep up appearances, and it is the mother who pays most for that. When Phil West, a wealthy student, falls for the professor's daughter Amelia, he sees the difference between the two houses up close. Directed and produced by Lois Weber, the film is one of the most direct treatments of a social question in silent cinema. Weber makes the low pay of teachers and academics an open subject. The telling is not about poverty but about having to hide it; what is really at stake is shame. Weber was one of the first women to direct in American cinema and one of the busiest filmmakers of her period.