Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows part of a silent black-and-white advertisement for Life Saver sweets. The clip opens with Williams and Betty entering her father’s ‘Mint Products Company’ building in New York City. Their story is punctuated by cuts back to Cudgy, Betty’s unrequited lover, letting down the tyres of Williams’s sports car. Betty shows Williams through the factory, with all its machines, workers and sweets. Williams tastes the Life Savers and Betty introduces him to the manager. Williams asks about the formula but the manager declares that it is a secret.

Educational value points

• The narrative, which provides a context for a series of otherwise documentary-style scenes inside the Life Savers factory, involves stereotypes that would have been familiar to a silent film audience: a smooth villain, whose secret agenda is to steal the confectionary formula, an heiress and an unrequited but honest lover. Exaggerated acting was used in silent films to ensure that the audience understood the plot and motivations of the characters, and where necessary intertitles were used to spell out plot developments or dialogue.

• The emphasis on hygiene in this clip, which includes shots of workers in white uniforms and with hair coverings, and the intertitles, which stress cleanliness, are aimed at a 1920s audience who were unused to mass-produced factory foods and suspicious of foods not prepared at home.

• A clever example of product placement can be seen in the factory truck, which has been customised to look like the product itself.

• Life Saver mints were formulated in 1912 by Clarence Crane, a producer of chocolates in Cleveland, Ohio. The following year Edward Noble bought the formula, manufactured the sweets and had them sold as Pep-O-Mint Life Savers. He established the Mint Products Company in New York City. With takeovers in the confectionary industry the formula has been resold many times but Life Savers survives as a distinctive product.

• This advertisement shows an enduring example of good product design: the ring shape of Life Savers represents a miniature ‘life preserver’ (a life buoy, vest or jacket), a safety device that originated in the mid-19th century. The sale of Life Savers in small aluminium-foil rolls contributed to their distinctive branding. Edward Noble encouraged retailers to place them next to their registers to promote them and increase sales, still a common practice today.

• This clip is an early example of cinematic advertising. Cinemas offered a new type of venue and form of advertising in the early 20th century. The branding focuses on the Life Saver v lifesaver pun, evident also in the ring shape of the mint sweets. The advertisement from which the clip is taken is much longer than those produced today.