RetroClips

Shoes takes its title's central symbol and makes it literal in this one striking visual-effects shot, expressing poverty and desperation without a word of dialogue. Lois Weber adapted it from a Stella Wynne Herron short story with input from social reformer Jane Addams, and by the mid-1910s Weber was reportedly the highest-paid film director in Hollywood, male or female, and the first woman inducted into the Motion Picture Directors Association. It's her second film on the site alongside Suspense (1913).