Monday Minute
No. 32 | February 15, 2010

Women Behind the Camera I

In 1896 young Alice Guy was working as a secretary for Léon Gaumont’s photography company.  Gaumont wanted to make a motion picture film for the fledgling arcade business and he needed someone to oversee production.  The job went to Guy—with instructions that the work not interfere with her important secretarial duties.  (The auteur theory, you might have guessed, had not yet been formulated.)  The world’s first woman director went on to be a pioneer in the development of narrative film.  Guy made hundreds of pictures over several decades and just recently she was the subject of a retrospective at the Whitney.  Times, though, have changed.  They don’t give directing jobs to secretaries anymore.  Nor, as often as they should, to women.

Gender inequity in film directing has a long history.  The reasons for that we may cover at another time, but for now here’s a question:  Does it matter?  Of course, it matters to the women who aren’t getting the jobs. But does it matter to the average moviegoer?  Does it matter if a movie was directed by a woman or a man, or does it matter only whether a movie is any good?

The short answer is:  Yes, it matters who made the picture.  I don’t think it matters much on any single film, but the more movies we watch, the more it matters.  Film is arguably the preeminent storytelling medium of our time, and storytelling is one of the most deeply personal ways we communicate as humans.  It’s a loss for everyone if almost all our movie stories are told by men.

Maybe things are changing, though slowly.  For 61 years the Directors Guild of America gave its annual awards for outstanding achievement in feature film to men.  Two weeks ago the DGA gave the award for the first time to a woman.  No movie directed by a woman has yet won the Oscar for Best Picture.  This year two films directed by women are nominated, and one of them is considered a favorite.  Awards are nice, but as we know, money talks in the film biz.  The past year saw four films directed by women cross the $100 million threshold at the worldwide box office.

This week’s theme will focus on directors of noteworthy films from 2009.  I found it impossible to make a list of five women directors.  Instead…I made a list of ten.  It was a good year.

Ten, if my math is correct, is twice the number of weekdays in the typcial week, so here is the plan:  this week we’ll feature five of the directors, and the other five the week of March 8 February 22 [Update (2/16)=> A change of plans:  no need to split it up, let's do the ten women directors in back-to-back weeks].

A list of ten, by the way, is hardly an all-inclusive roster.  Notable directors not covered this time around include:  Mira Nair, Amelia; Catherine Breillat, Bluebeard; Rebecca Miller, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee; Jennifer Lynch, Surveillance; and actresses-turned-directors Drew Barrymore, Whip It; and Nia Vardalos, I Hate Valentine’s Day.  Note that other women directors who didn’t release a film in 2009—e.g., Sofia Coppola, Julie Taymor—are also topics for another day.

Our theme this week
Women directors of notable films from 2009

Lone Scherfig

The essentials
Notable 2009 film:  An Education; nominated for 3 Oscars, including Best Picture.

Danish director Lone Scherfig made her first English-language film a memorable one.  An Education is a teenage girl’s coming-of-age story set in early-1960s London, noted for its fine writing and fine performances, particularly the lead played by relative newcomer Carey Mulligan and her seducer played by Peter Sarsgaard.  How did the Danish director get to make an English film?  By luck of having the same agent as Nick Hornby, whose screenplay adapted an autobiographical story by British journalist Lynn Barber.

Scherfig was best known previously for Italian for Beginners, a 2000 movie following the romantic pursuits of a few lonely hearts in a Danish town.  A low-budget affair—shot for about $600,000, roughly one-tenth the budget for An Education, itself a modestly budgeted production at best—the film was certified by the Dogme 95 board (Dogme #12, if you’re keeping score at home).  Unlike some other Dogme films, the tone was not grim but comic and endearing.  It was an international hit and one of the most profitable Scandinavian films ever.

In addition to working in Danish television, Scherfig directed the films Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself (2002) and Just Like Home (2007).

Beyond the final credits
Celebrated Danish writer and artist Hans Scherfig was the director’s great-uncle.

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An Education (2009)
Lone Scherfig, director
Trailer

 

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Interview with Lone Scherfig 

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Quote of Note
“Doesn’t it ever enter a man’s head that a woman can do without him?”
— Lily Stevens (Ida Lupino), Road House (1948)

…58…59…60.