Once upon a Hollywood time, one of filmdom’s biggest directors was Lois Weber. Woodrow Wilson was president, and women couldn’t have voted for him even if they had wanted to, but inside the movie industry, women thrived, and Weber thrived above all others. An auteur before that word entered the cinematic lexicon, she wrote, directed and edited films and was admired for her sensitive work with actors, her on-set meticulousness and her stories about women. Her name was invoked alongside the likes of D. W. Griffith, yet, like most female directors of that era, she faded into obscurity.

This weekend, the Anthology Film Archives is giving New Yorkers a chance to discover Weber again with the premiere of a beautiful restoration of her 1916 film “The Dumb Girl of Portici.” A lavish historical drama from Universal — with pictorial sweep, revolutionary conflagrations and severed heads bobbing atop spikes — the film was considered to be that studio’s most ambitious production to date. It’s also notable for being the high-profile Hollywood debut of the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (“the Incomparable”), though Weber finally seems to have received better reviews than her star did. Some critics deemed Pavlova not camera-ready, but Weber was seen as a titan.

Although Weber developed a lot of her own original material at Universal, where she was under contract, the studio assigned her to take on “The Dumb Girl of Portici,” one of the 10 (!) features she directed that were released in 1916. (The studio boss Carl Laemmle said he “would trust Miss Weber with any sum of money that she needed to make any picture.”) She wrote the film, adapting it from an 1828 opera, set in Spanish-controlled Naples in 1647, that tells the story of Fenella, a mute woman seduced by a Spanish nobleman, who promptly abandons her. As passion sours into betrayal, a personal affront quickly feeds a political outrage that, in turn, ignites a violent peasant uprising.

Pavlova stepped into the role providentially. In 1915, with World War I making a return to Europe difficult, she was touring with the Boston Opera Company, when it nearly went under. She apparently helped save it by accepting Universal’s offer — and a $50,000 payday — to star in “The Dumb Girl of Portici.” Weber started shooting the film in Chicago (the production later moved to Los Angeles), where Pavlova was performing. Pavlova and her company are said to have worked on it in the morning before going off to give matinee performances. One account claims that the film features the Hollywood debut of Boris Karloff, although it’s hard to pick him out among the hundreds of thronging extras.