Shoes (1916)
Shoes : Summary and initial thoughts How far would you go to get what you need? How do you reconcile duty and independence? How much do you owe your family? These are some of the questions explored by Shoes , a silent film about a young woman who has to support herself, her parents, and her siblings on a paltry shopgirl’s salary, all while desperately needing a new pair of shoes. Shoes follows Eva Mayer, a young woman who works at a five-and-dime store and is the sole breadwinner for her three sisters and her parents (including her long-suffering mother, who struggles to hold the family together on Eva’s salary, and her lazy and neglectful father, who refuses to seek work in favor of lying in bed and reading all day). In addition to her family’s poverty and Eva’s feelings of responsibility, Eva’s shoes are falling apart at the seams. She regularly crafts new soles for her shoes out of cardboard, and she has to remove splinters and mud from her feet at the end of every ...