Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Life's Shop Window/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Graham Beards via FACBot (talk) 15:58, 22 October 2015 .

Nominator(s): Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 20:11, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

This article is about... the first film actually produced by the company eventually known as Fox. And, depending which sources you believe, the debut of once-famed silent-era director J. Gordon Edwards, part of my grindingly slow effort to bring his works to featured status. With all that in mind, Life's Shop Window is still a very obscure, and very lost, piece of cinema. I've scoured a variety of contemporary and modern sources to put together what is almost certainly the most comprehensive treatment of the film available anywhere.

Some things expected in a modern film's article are necessarily absent. As far as I can tell, the actors who played John and Bella Anderson were never publicly credited. Public box office statistics were still years in the future; except to acknowledge that it was "successful", it's impossible to say how much money the film made. I don't even believe there's a surviving film poster (if there was ever one in the first place). But thanks to a surviving piece of advertising ephemera and a publicity still reproduced in a film magazine, readers can at least get a feel for the film's character. And although it is grainy and poorly-contrasted, a newspaper advertisement allows readers to see what a 1914 film thought a Native American woman looked like.

Eventually, J. Gordon Edwards's films get a lot more exciting, and a lot more fun to talk about at FAC. But we're not there yet, and this is still an important piece of forgotten film history. One that, I hope, I've been able to present to the FA standard. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 20:11, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Images are appropriately licensed and captioned. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:04, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Concise, interesting and evidently well researched. I have a few quibbles:

• "Wilton is accused of adultery after giving birth, although her private marriage was legitimate." I was confused by this sentence in the lead, although the meanong became clearer when I read the plot summary. I think it's the word "adultery" that causes the problem. Lydia was accused of having a child out of wedlock, which is not the same as adultery. Also, it seems that the marriage was secret rather than private. I'd advise some reconsideration of this lead sentence.

• Rewrote the lead summary of the plot entirely, because it was terrible and I know better. "Private" changed to "secret" as the descriptor of the marriage throughout the text, which is supported by the sourcing. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:34, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

• "... the corporate predecessor to Fox Film." I'd extend this to say something like "which later merged to become 20th Century Fox" or some such wording, since the latter name is known worldwide.

• I can do this if its really deemed important, but I'd rather not, personally. I know everyone has heard of 20th Century Fox, but the post-merger company really didn't have anything to do with this film. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:34, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

• You should provide a source for your present-day values.

• Fixed. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:34, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

• The comment about the poor musical accompaniment should not be included as a criticism of the film, as in 1915 the music would have been provided independently (some poor bloke playing the piano in the dark, probably)

• Strongly disagree, actually. Silent film music is a complicated topic well beyond the scope of this one article. While music was often indeed performed live, it was rarely "independent", at least in prestigious venues. In any case, contemporary reviewers did at times consider the accompaniment for or against the overall quality of films. That's especially true with a case like this, where one of the major studios evidently botched the music at its gala premiere showing. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:34, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

That's about it. Well done – I see no problem in supporting when these points are attended to. Brianboulton (talk) 10:34, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

• Support: The lead summary is a lot better. I accept what you say about the musical accompaniment, and the point about 20th Century Fox is trivial. Subject only to a successful sources review I'll be happy to see this article promoted. Brianboulton (talk) 21:03, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Didn't know you were interested in film Squeamish, a pleasant surprise. For such an obscure film (not even I've seen it ;-)) this generally looks in good shape. I would prefer it if User:ChrisGualtieri, an excellent writer of silent film articles, could assess how comprehensive it is. Often a lot can be gleaned from Newspapers.com for such films.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:10, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

• Pinged him when I first listed this, in fact! And, yeah, I try to keep diverse interests around here. Keeps the article research interesting. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:43, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

• Comment (having stumbled here from my FAC). Quite high quality, only minor quibbles really: File:Life's shop window still.jpg says it's uncategorized. Notes sect, no need for more than one column here when there are so few entries in that sect. Missing: Review analysis from Rotten Tomatoes (just kidding). :P — Cirt (talk) 03:12, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

• Fiddled with the Commons categorization templating, so that image no longer shows as uncategorized (it already was in a category, but claimed it wasn't). Columns removed from notes. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:11, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

• Support. These were only minor quibbles and now I feel I can agree with Brianboulton, above. Good luck, — Cirt (talk) 16:58, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

• Support Squeamish Ossifrage, thank you for submitting this article to FAC, as it is certainly fitting. I've completed a thorough and comprehensive review, and I assess this article to be well-written, comprehensive, well-researched, and to be neutral and stable; and its lede, structure, and citations all conform to Wikipedia's style guidelines. The media is also suitable, as an image review has been completed by Nikkimaria. Per Wikipedia:Alternative text for images, the images of the herald should have alternative captions. All issues raised above have been addressed as Cirt and Brianboulton stated, and I can find no aspects of the article that would keep it from being passed to Featured Article status. Congratulations on a job well done, and thank you for all your hard work on this one. -- West Virginian (talk) 16:22, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

• "Fox selected J. Gordon Edwards to direct, in what may have been his directorial debut. Credit for St. Elmo, a film produced earlier in 1914, is disputed; sources disagree whether Edwards or Bertram Bracken directed". I'm not sure this second sentence stands up particularly well—it seems like it wants to be a continuation of the first, either bracketted or following a dash, or it may serve as a note appended to the first. But this is a very minor nitpick.

• Attempted a rewording here. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

• You mention several times that the original novel was censored for "controversial sexual elements". Not to be salacious but the mentioning of content while avoiding that content does prompt curiosity in a reader—my assumption is that the idea of an extramarital affair, even in the hypothetical, is the crux of the problem, but if this is the case it might bear specifying ("Like many of Cross's novels, it attracted controversy for XYZ"). Obviously there's no need to go into details but omission can make things seem more scandalous than they are.

• I tried to do that with my general statement amount Cross's works: "Adultery and female sexuality are common themes in her works, which often reversed the expected gender roles of the time, permitting female desire to motivate the plot." The problem with being more specific here is that my sources aren't more specific here. And since the film isn't extant, its difficult to determine what was cut. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

  Understandable. GRAPPLE ^X 14:56, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

• "The film's budget was small, with the cost of production reported as $4,500 or $6,000". Given that we're dealing with a film in great retrospect, is it possible to judge whether these figures different due to uncertain estimates or due to writers giving them years later and assuming inflation? I ask only because there's a +33% difference between them, which seems significant.

• Impossible to determine. Ramsaye, with the lower value, is more-or-less a contemporary source (originally published in 1926). Solomon is a modern source, and is pretty much the definitive study on Fox Film's early work. Both authors likely had some access to internal figures (this is way before publicly-announced film budgets), but got different values; it would be entirely original research for me to speculate as to why. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

  Certainly wouldn't want speculation, just checking in case the information was known. No problem. GRAPPLE ^X 14:56, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

• "as did Fox's greatly inflated claims of the cost of production—over thirty times what was actually spent". I feel this might be worth introducing when the budget is first discussed, then referenced again here—something along the lines of "The film's budget was small, with the cost of production reported as $4,500 or $6,000 at a time when films of comparable lengths generally required between $20,000 and $30,000 to produce; however, Fox exaggerated the cost of production by up to thirty times its true amount in advertising the picture", followed by removing the text after the dash later. It just seems strange to introduce budgetary information here and not earlier, although its relevance to the film's release is clear.

• Entirely agreed. Corrected. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

• The infobox mentions a running time of "5 reels", but there's no mention of this elsewhere. I'm aware the film is lost so an accurate time can't be given but whichever source was used for this reel length could be repeated somewhere in the body, probably in the last paragraph of "Production". This might also open up the possibility of a note giving the average length of a reel at the time for a reasonable margin of what the running time may have been, should you wish to include that, but at the very least the number of reels used should be mentioned in the body.

• Run-time in reels included in text, citing Solomon, shortly before comparing Life's Shop Window to "films of comparable length". I'm inclined to think that a discussion of why film lengths in this era are given in reels is out of context for this specific film. The short version is, basically, that there was not a standardized projection speed. Depending on the theater, equipment, and the preferences and competence of whoever was running projection, film speed could vary widely. Accordingly, consensus in most sources discussing these films (including here) has been merely to indicate the length of the film stock (often in reels, sometimes more precisely in feet). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:49, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

  I think I had misunderstood this, then; I assumed the reel figure was simply the most that was known (and that it was therefore longer than what four reels held, shorter than six, so we had a ballpark). If it's the standard measurement, don't go into the why, but so long as the number of reels is in the article as well as the infobox, we're good. GRAPPLE ^X 14:56, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

• The multiple image template for the herald could do with some alt text. Just something broadly useful, perhaps quoting the key phrases in each.

• Hopefully compliant with WP:ALT#Images that contain words now. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:37, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

  Above and beyond, looks (sounds?) good. GRAPPLE ^X 14:56, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

• Overall it's looking good to me. GRAPPLE ^X 13:20, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

  Happy to support this given the changes that have been made. GRAPPLE ^X 14:56, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Graham Beards (talk) 15:58, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.