The White Slave Trade

1910 Drama 33 minutes Directed by August Blom

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About The White Slave Trade

Anna (Ellen Diedrich), from a poor Copenhagen home, answers an advertisement for a well-paid post as a lady’s companion in London. Her fiancé Georg (Lauritz Olsen) does not trust the offer. She goes. The address is a brothel run by a madam (Ella la Cour). Anna fights off the first client (Svend Bille) but cannot leave. A maid smuggles a letter to her parents (Otto Lagoni and Julie Henriksen), who go to the League for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic. Georg and a detective (Victor Fabian) get her out a window; the traders recapture her and take her to a ship. The maid tips Scotland Yard. Georg and the detective board before sailing, and after a short fight Anna is free to go home.

Cast & crew

More about The White Slave Trade

Ole Olsen’s Nordisk copied, scene for scene, Fotorama’s Den hvide Slavehandel, shot in Aarhus in the spring of 1910 and now lost. August Blom, newly hired as head of production, directed the copy. It opened at the Panoptikon in Copenhagen on 2 August 1910. Fotorama threatened suit; Danish copyright did not cover films, and the companies settled out of court. Nordisk negative number 689.

Themes

  • A companion’s job that is a brothel
  • A letter smuggled by the maid
  • A rescue on the ship
  • white slave trade
  • Copenhagen
  • London brothel
  • Scotland Yard
  • Nordisk Film
  • Anna
  • Georg

Background

The Paris International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic was signed in 1910, the year this picture and the Fotorama original both traded on that panic.

Making

Blom’s third film for Nordisk, and the company’s first feature. Fotorama’s version had run about 40 minutes and shown the inside of a brothel, which is what Nordisk set out to match.

Audiences

Outside Denmark the Nordisk copy outsold the Aarhus original. American boards would not pass it.

Look

Axel Sørensen (later known as Axel Graatkjær) photographed the 603-meter negative. The print is tinted.

Music

Silent.

Preservation

Nordisk’s copy survives; it is the only Blom title from 1910 that does. The Danish Film Institute holds the record under negative 689, 603 meters, tinted. Fotorama’s film is lost.

Notes

  • The Danish Film Institute measures it at 603 meters, 35mm, 1.33:1, tinted. That length is about 33 minutes. Some catalogs still say 45.
  • Nordisk sold 103 copies abroad. A typical 1910 title from the company moved about 40.
  • It could not be released in the United States. Censors objected to the brothel scenes.
  • It is the only Blom film from 1910 that survives. Fotorama’s original, the first Danish multi-reel feature, does not.
  • Two Nordisk follow-ups used the title: In the Hands of Impostors (1911) and The White Slave Trade III (1912).
  • German exhibitors balked at a film longer than one reel. Olsen pushed the prints anyway; screenings drew crowds large enough that police were called to keep order.
  • Axel Graatkjær is credited as Axel Sørensen. Louis Schmidt is credited with the script on Wikidata.

Scenes

  • Anna overpowers the first client and still cannot find a way out of the house.
  • The maid gets a letter to her parents in Copenhagen.
  • She is pulled from a carriage and put on a ship, then taken off again after a fight on deck.

Influenced by

  • Den hvide Slavehandel (Fotorama, 1910)

Influenced

  • In the Hands of Impostors (1911)
  • The White Slave Trade III (1912)

Also available

  • Internet Archive (silent-den-hvide-slavehandel-aka-the-white-slave-trade)
  • Wikimedia Commons (Den hvide slavehandel (1910).webm)

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