Here we have stories of dreamy adolescence, and the struggles of emerging into womanhood. What I also witness is girls on films offering social awareness and refreshing hope. Pay attention to Part 6 of our 100 Films Made by Women:
The Ascent (1977) – Larisa Shepitko — Asif Khan
Soviet filmmaker Larisa Shepitko’s third and final film is a powerful account of sufferings endured by a group of partisans in Belarus during the winter of 1942. Released in 1977, this film became her most acclaimed work, winning the Golden Bear at the 27th Berlin International Film Festival. She died in a car crash, her planned film was completed by her husband Elem Klimov titled “Farewell”. The Ascent is a harrowing and bleak film that shows the fragile nature of human beings during severe times. How people react to survive, defiantly or cowardly. Based around a group but mainly about two men who inflict and endure different pain on themselves. Torturous men populates the cold and icy landscape. A film shot superbly, capturing the varied range of beauty and ugliness. It is a war film where the war is mainly of the morals among people. It’s a relentlessly horror-like account of these people and their inevitable fate. One of the most notable aspect of the film is its Christian allegory, the Christ like endurance of pain and sacrifice as well as betrayal and guilt-ridden existence. A film I would definitely recommend to those who haven’t seen it. The two films Larisa Shepitko made before The Ascent are the WWII female fighter pilot drama Wings and You and I.
Near Dark (1987) – Kathryn Bigelow — Marshall Flores
The 80s had its share of vampire films, e.g. The Hunger, The Lost Boys, and Fright Night. For me, however, one film stands out among its many fanged brethren of that decade: Near Dark. Long before she became the first woman to win a Best Director Oscar, Kathyrn Bigelow crafted a stylish thriller that blends vampires and westerns into a potent, often bloody cinematic cocktail. Near Dark centers on roving clan of vampire drifters (chief among them Bill Paxton, Lance Henrikson, and Jeanette Goldstein – all borrowed from Bigelow’s then-husband James Cameron’s Aliens), and their reluctant new addition Caleb (Adrian Pasdar), who must choose between his love for vampire beauty Mae (Jenny Wright) and keeping his humanity. Exquisitely shot by cinematographer Adam Greenberg, Near Dark has a lush, phantasmal texture on screen, which is then married to an equally beautiful, hypnotic soundscape of a score by Tangerine Dream. Bigelow paces the film thoughtfully, allowing her ensemble to shine with solidly sympathetic performances. That said, Bigelow pulls no punches with displaying violent vampire mayhem as needed – the infamous bar massacre scene remains one of the most intense, “finger-lickin’ good” sequences in Bigelow’s entire film repertoire. Near Dark is an underrated vampire classic — an essential viewing that demonstrates the rare, cinematic talent that Kathryn Bigelow has exhibited since the beginning of her career.
Vera Chytilová’s masterpiece among masterpieces, and a seminal film of the Czech New Wave. Nothing new there, but nothing false either – Daisies is a brilliantly energetic, technically innovative, deceptively profound work that achieves all that Chytilová’s contemporaries attempted to achieve, but has much more fun in the process. As will you, beholding a dazzling array of formal informality in the direction, subversive humor in the writing and joie de vivre in the acting. Giving Daisies its extra jolt of wonder is the uniqueness it holds even now, nearly 50 years on; for such an influential film from such an important filmmaker, Daisies’ techniques have yet to be truly exploited by subsequent generations of tiresomely-referential filmmakers – is it because Daisies is the work of a woman, or is it because it is the work of a genius, whose idiosyncratic talent imbues her films with an authenticity that no imitators could even approach. Too few still have heard of Chytilová – Daisies is the ideal starting point for those unacquainted with her canon.
Wife of the prominent Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Marzieh Meshkini is a filmmaker herself. This acclaimed feature from 2000 is her debut film, a feminist fable-like account of three women at different stages of their lives. The Day I Became a Woman as the title suggests is a film about the process of becoming a woman. A woman in a strict, patriarchal and fundamentalist society with codes and regulations to not only follow but live by. The setup of these three different stories can be called eccentric, Mr. Roger Ebert used the term “Fellinisque”. 1. A young girl on her ninth birthday can’t play with boys or step outside without wearing chador. 2. A married woman taking part in a cycling race with other women as her husband tries to stop her by threatening to divorce while pursuing on a horse. 3. An elderly widow has inherited lots of money so she decides to buy everything she has ever wanted to but never could. The women in all these accounts fiercely rebel in their own way to free themselves of the social constraints the best way they can. This is a film that in itself is free from constraints of narrative cinema and plot. The symbolism flows like a river that is free and quiet but slowly trying to carve a new path. It’s both minimalistic and grand in design. Wordless wisdom staged with such beauty. The only other film Marzieh Meshkini has made is a post-Taliban Afghan drama Stray Dogs.
Seven Beauties (1975) – Lina Wertmuller — Steve Schweighofer @banjoonthecrag
Lina Wertmuller’s magnum opus of survival and betrayal garnered her the first Best Director Academy Award nomination ever received by a woman, as well as a DGA, so why am I nominating her here, on a list containing lesser known gems directed by women? The answer is in the question, “when was the last time that Wertmuller was mentioned in the same conversation as her male contemporaries Altman, Fellini, Bergman, and Lumet?” The highly politicized Wertmuller opens her film with a dedication of sorts, read over archival footage of some of the horrors of World War II, including: “The ones who worship the corporate image not knowing that they work for someone else. Oh yeah. The ones who never get involved with politics. Oh yeah. The ones who believe Christ is Santa Claus as a young man. Oh yeah. The ones who keep going, just to see how it will end. Oh yeah. The ones who are in garbage up to here. Oh yeah. The ones who even now don’t believe the world is round. Oh yeah. The ones who say, ‘Now let’s all have a good laugh.’ Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.“ This is heady stuff that gives us no indication of the horrific, yet superbly entertaining, story that’s about to unfold. That Wertmuller’s mentor was none other than Frederico Fellini – she served as asst. director on 8½ – becomes obvious right at the start with nightclub frolics and a bouncing musical score that precedes the swaggering entrance of our “hero”, played by Wertmuller muse, Giancarlo Giannini. What unfolds is a domino-effect series of events that include prostitution, murder and dismemberment, insanity, rape, war and desertion, seduction in a concentration camp and, ultimately, betrayal, all in the name of survival. This sounds bleak, but under Wertmuller’s deft direction and writing, she manages to bring a very dark sense of humor to the whole thing. Never is this more apparent than in a scene where puppy-eyed Giannini , in a last effort of desperation, manages to seduce the female camp commandant, played by a cigar-smoking, riding crop-wielding Shirley Stoler. With his striped pajama bottoms at half-mast, he reluctantly climbs bare-assed onto the mountain of a monster who holds his life in her hands. How far does one go to survive? Where does one draw the line as to what is expendable and what is worth saving? And the Faustian, what is one left with when we have sacrificed and sold all, including conscience and self-esteem? Wertmuller doesn’t blink when she’s asking these questions. She’s not afraid to anger or offend to make her point, either. She has incurred the wrath of both the Right and the Left and been a fox in the feminist henhouse. Be it political, sexual or class, it’s all warfare to Wertmuller and we all play the part of the hound and/or the whore, if necessary, to make our way through this absurd maze of life. Oh, yeah.
Originally posted August 2015.