Richard J. Brzostek - 04/01/2011 
Captive Women (Kobiety nad Przepascia) is a shocking story about white slavery. The topic is alarming, but it also one that audiences find captivating. White slavery was a popular topic in the early 1900s around the world in both books and films. Captive Women, directed by Emil Chaberski and Michal Waszynski, was made in 1938 and is also based on a novel by Antoni Marczynski. The moral of the story serves to alarm women so that they may be cautious of this potential threat. The story is startling, although such events happened then and now.
The main storyline has to do with a woman named Marysia that gets a letter from her sister. Marysia doesn’t know that the slave traders re-wrote the letter from her sister who is held captive in Brazil. The forged note says she is doing well and to join her in America. Marusia leaves behind her life in Poland thinking her new one will be better, but her true fate is far worse.
We also get to know the seedy ring that is behind the human trafficking. The network uses the cover of a dance studio to find pretty girls who get “awarded contracts overseas.” The slave traders use manipulation to trick the girls into thinking they are getting a job in America, but they end up in a brothel in Brazil.
Just like the other Polish movies from the 1930s, Captive Women isn’t crude or vulgar. Although the film delicately handles such a sensitive topic, it does so with much left off-screen. It gives a glimpse of the whorehouse these women get stuck in, much of the details between the scenes are left to our imagination. Although the term “white slave” is used once, there is no mention of them being “sex slaves.” |
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