The history of women in the film industry.
Let's start at the very beginning, after all it is indeed a very good place to start, which would be the year 1895. In 1895 the Lumiere Brothers built the first ever Cinematographe which in turn led to the birth of the Silent movie. It wasn't just the year of the first silent movie (which happens to be ‘Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory’) but also the year that Alice Guy Blache came to work for Leon Gaumont, a french inventor, as a secretary. Blache began to film and direct small “little acted scenes”(Fell, 1988) making her the first female director, Blache would go on to become a key figure within the industry and won a legion of honour award in 1953.[1] In 1922 Tressie Souders became the first African American woman to direct a film. That film was ‘A Womens Error’. Unfortunately little is known about Souders and how got into the business and why she didn't direct any other films.[2]
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‘The Jazz Singer’ was released in 1927 and started the type of film that would become known as ‘talkies’, atleast to the average early 20th century Cinema goer anyway. Not long after in April 1929 ‘The Wild Party’ which was directed by Dorothy Arzner was released. Arzner had already directed multiple silent films, some of which were synced to vocalised music, however ‘The Wild Party’ was her first Foray into the world of the so-called ‘talkies’. It was during the production of ‘The Wild Party’ that Arzner invented what we know today as the ‘Boom Mic’, a long pole with a microphone attached to one end that is normally hung over a set, allowing the microphone to be easily moved around. It was partly designed to help the actress Clara Bow who was nervous about stationary ‘centre stage’ microphones. Arzner became the first ever female member of the Guild of Directors, and for a long period she was also the only female member.
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It wasn't long before the start of the 1930s and with that brought invention of ‘Technicolour’. Technicolor had actually been around for some time prior but it wasn't used widely in feature films until the 30s. One of the most well known of those early Technicolor films was 1939’s ‘The Wizard of Oz’ starring Judy Garland as Dorothy. Garland was referred to as “our little Hunchback” by M-G-M’s Louis B Mayer as well as being forced to take pills such as Barbiturates and amphetamines which she became addicted to.[3]
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When the second world war started on 1st September 1939 it started the genre of ‘Women's Films’, these films were designed to appeal more to a female audience as women made up (insert number) percent of moviegoers during forties, this being a possible knock on effect of all the men going off to fight in the war. The films themselves were often quite dark, the sort of thing you would have expected was almost exclusively male at the time. In 1944 a film called ‘Phantom Lady’ was released, the producer of ‘Phantom Lady’ was Joan Harrison. Harrison had previously been nominated for two academy awards for writing the screenplay for ‘Foreign Correspondent’ and ‘Rebecca’, making her the first female screenwriter to be nominated for an oscar. Harrisons work on ‘Phantom Lady’ also meant that she was also one of the first female producers taking an executive role in one of the last male dominated sectors of the movie industry. However Harrison was actually one three female producers active in Hollywood at the time Harriet Parsons and Virginia Van Upp had also made a name for themselves particularly in magazines and newspapers. This publicity was used as a way to promote the films towards a female audience. Almost like an influencer promoting a product on social media today.[4]
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Moving onto the 1990s, 1992 saw Spain make the move from being a dictatorship to being a democracy, and with that came new creativity. The number of women directors working in the Spanish film industry had tripled from ten at the end of the 80s. Some of these films included Gracia Querejeta’s 1992 film; ‘Una estación de paso, Icíar Bollaín Hola, ¿estás sola?’ From 1995 And Azucena Rodríguez’s ‘Entre rojas’ which was also released in 1995. All three of which could be classed as middlebrow films, they’re neither bad nor amazing but still enjoyable, consider it as somewhere between ‘CATS (2019)’ and ‘Avengers: Endgame’ in terms of audience ratings!
Looking back over the past two decades of the twenty-first century it's clear there has been a, while we’ve had some setbacks on the way, like the Weinstein case and pay-gaps, it's clear to see a definite change, from the times where actresses were forced to take drugs to play a role.
These days movies like the most recent all female remake of ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Avengers: Endgame’ are constantly breaking the outdated stereotype that Hollywood set for itself in the 1890s. While we still have a long way to go, that's for sure, we should keep working to improve the gender equality of the film industry.
Bibliography
[1] Fell, J. (1988). Reveiw. Film Quarterly, [online] Vol. 41(No. 3), p.p62. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1212533 [Accessed 3 Mar. 2021].
[2] hobson, J. (2002). Viewing in the Dark: Toward a Black Feminist Approach to Film. Women’s Studies Quarterly, [online] Vol. 30(No.1/2), pp.p.45-59. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40004636 [Accessed 3 Mar. 2021].
[3] Mapes, J. (n.d.). Judy Garland: Troubles From the End of the Rainbow. [online] Biography. Available at: https://www.biography.com/news/judy-garland-troubles-from-the-end-of-the-rainbow-20860565#:~:text=Sep%2030%2C%202020- [Accessed 4 Mar. 2021].
[4] Stamp, S. (2019). Film noir’s “gal producers” and the female market. Women’s History Review, [online] 29(5), pp.801–821. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2019.1703536 [Accessed 4 Mar. 2021].
[5] Faulkner, S. (2020). Middlebrow cinema by women directors in the 1990s. Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, [online] 21(1), pp.63–77. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14636204.2020.1720985 [Accessed 7 Jan. 2021].