Den hvide slavehandel

This film is called Den hvide Slavehandel (The White Slave Trade) not Den hvide Slavinde (The White Slave-girl). The latter was an eight-minute 1907 short made by Nordisk and directed by and starring Viggo Larsen. All three films have very much the same plot because all three were based on the same 1905 novel by Elisabeth Schøyen (called Den hvide Slavinde but repubished with the title Den hvide Slavehandel in 1914).

Den hvide Slavehandel, a twenty/thirty minute film (not forty-five minutes), was indeed first filmed by Fotorama and directed by Alfred Cohn while Nordisk brought out this scene-by-scene remake just four months later although, unjustly perhaps, it seems to have been the Nordisk version that had the greater success. A 45-minute sequel, Den hvide slavehandels sidste offer (In the Hands of Impostors) was made in 1911, also directed by Blom.

As far as I can see, company details and casts are currently correct on IMDb for all three films.

European legislatures began implementing laws on forced abduction of women for prostitution aimed at addressing a vast societal problem in the early 1900's. But there weren't any movie studios who wanted to touch the subject until two Danish companies produced films on the underground industry.

Nordisk Films in August 1910 released "The White Slave Trade." The movie was a result of the Denmark studio's owner, Ole Olsen, viewing the movie of his competitor, Fotorama Films, with the same title his studio would use in its own production. Olsen hired actor August Blom to study the movie and direct his own. Blom not only studied the film carefully, his "The White Slave" is practically a duplicate scene-by-scene copy of the Fotorama Film (Copyright laws then were practically nonexistant in Denmark).

Blom's 32-minute film dramatizes a family's angst when the daughter answers an ad in the newspaper, only to disappear. She ends up in London where she is forced into prostitution against her will. Blom uses a new technique to cinema a three-panel split screen shot to show the two operators of the prostitution ring talking between Denmark and England, and the woman abducted in the middle panel. Nordisk Films' primary market was outside of Denmark. The movie was wildly successful in Europe, showing the existing criminal enterprises in stark terms as well as being artistically entertaining. "The White Slave Trade" also was cinema's first in the study of prostitution as well as a primary example of the first vice movie to ever be shown on the screen.

American movie goers never got a chance to see "The White Slave Trade" since a stricter national censorship in film was forming. Nordisk Films, however, was so encouraged with the picture that it produced two sequels, "In The Hands of Impostors" and "The White Slave Trade lll." Nordisk Films Studio is the fourth oldest movie production company still in existence. The other three are France's Gaumont Film Company and Pathe, and Italy's Titanus.

Nordisk's scene-for-scene remake (or rip-off) of Fotorama's no longer extant version is an enjoyable, slightly lurid, potboiler reminiscent of the serials that would in a few short years become a staple of the cinema industry's output. At 32 minutes it is more than twice as long as most movies then being released, but the pace of its far-fetched, sensationalistic plot makes the time fly by.

Ellen Diedrich sees an ad for a traveling lady's companion. She obtains her doting parents' permission and goes off. But alas! She has fallen into the clutches of a white slavery ring! After she strangles the first man who tries to have his way with her, she smuggles a letter out to her parents. She doen't know where she is, but there's a clock tower across the street. This information allows Lauritz Olsen to find and rescue her, and she returns to her relieved parents.

This Nordisk film directed by August Blom is a remake of an identically titled film from Fotorama (information from Luke McKernan). It is carefully photographed with a nice triptych shot, and the usual doors that wobble when they are shut because they are painted on the backdrop. The acting is good, and its success betrays the middle-class obsession with white slavers, evil gypsies and so forth.