From Lois Weber to Kathryn Bigelow, and the “Chick- Flick” Reputation

Where are All the Women? From Lois Weber to Kathryn Bigelow, and the “Chick- Flick” Reputation Cathy Kostova, 9 March 2015 I. Intro Manohla Dargis argues[1] that Kathryn Bigelow’s two-fisted win at the Academy Awards, in 2009, for best director and best film, for “The Hurt Locker”, has helped dismantle stereotypes about what types of films women can and should direct. As much as I agree with her that this was a historic and exhilarating moment for women filmmakers all around the world, I find the fact that the Oscar was granted to a movie with no female point of view whatsoever and to a director who tries her best not to be identified as female when it comes to her job, proves that films with strong female characters, and women directors who create such characters, remain very rarely recognized. 1. The Academy Statistics There have been only 4 women nominated for best director, out of the 424 nominations in the history of the Oscars: 1976: Lina Wertmüller for “Seven Beauties” (1975), 1993: Jane Campion for “The Piano” (1993), 2003: Sofia Coppola for “Lost in Translation” (2003), and 2009: Kathryn Bigelow for “The Hurt Locker” (2008) A 2012 survey conducted by the Los Angeles Times found that overall, academy members are 94 percent white and 77 percent male, and that their median age is 62. Cathy Kostova 1 WHERE ARE ALL THE WOMEN? From Lois Weber To Kathryn Bigelow, and the “Chick-Flick” Reputation, 9 March 2015 Women make up 19 percent of the academy’s screenwriting branch and 18 percent of its producers branch, but only 9 percent of its directors branch. To the question whether those statistics mirror those of the industry, the Academy says, because it’s an honor society it only recognizes people who are getting jobs in Hollywood. And people who are getting jobs in Hollywood are older white men[2]. 2. The Chick-Flick Stigma Films about women of all genres are continuously dismissed as “chick-flics”, a pejorative term for a film genre mainly dealing with heavy emotions and romance and designed to appeal to a largely female target audience[3]. And chick flicks, as Dargis points out, are often the only movies that offer female audiences stories about women, female friendships and female characters who are not standing on the sidelines as the male hero saves the day[1]. My question is, why in order to survive in Hollywood, women filmmakers have to either create sugar-full rom-coms (like Nora Ephron, Nancy Meyers and unfortunately Sofia Coppola) or go to the other extreme and take femininity completely out of the picture (like Kathryn Bigelow)? Looking back in history, it seems something happened in the mid-1920s, and with the arrival of the talkies, the female voice got lost. 3. The Silent Era While Hollywood was starving for content and the audience was predominantly female, there seemed to be little gender bias in getting film jobs. Both men and women were welcome behind the camera and women were active at all levels of the industry[4]. Beginning in 1895 and continuing until 1919, Alice Guy-Blaché - the first female filmmaker in history, who was originally from France but eventually ended up in Hollywood - directed and produced nearly 300 films in all genres. She was amongst the first to make a science fiction film, titled In the Year 2000 (1912), in which women rule the world. She was the first director in movie history to make a narrative film (a fictional story put to film), The Cabbage Fairy (1896). She made one of the first movies shot in color, The Spring Fairy (1906) and around 100 sound movies, between 1906 and 1907; each movie ran one to two minutes in length using an early sound device called the “Chronophone”, which combined sound recorded on a wax cylinder with the filmed image. Mary Pickford (1894-1979) was the first actor - male or female - to become a millionaire. She also led the most successful independent production company in the early years of Hollywood, United Artists, along with Douglas Fairbanks, and Charlie Chaplain. A study done by the Writers Guild of America revealed that from the beginning of the 20th century until the mid-1920s, women outnumbered men as screenwriters by 10 to one. Cathy Kostova 2 WHERE ARE ALL THE WOMEN? From Lois Weber To Kathryn Bigelow, and the “Chick-Flick” Reputation, 9 March 2015 From that period, one of the highest-paid screenwriters and studio executives was June Mathis (1892-1927). Within seven years of starting her screenwriting career, she had become so valuable to the MGM Studio that owner Samuel Goldwyn insured her life for $1,000,000. Her talent revealed itself when she took a popular war novel, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and adapted it for film after every other major studio had tried and determined it was impossible to adapt. She persuaded MGM to pay $20,000 for the rights, promising she could turn it into a successful screenplay. Released in 1921, it became one of the most profitable silent movies ever made. Writer/Director Lois Weber (1879-1939) was the best-known and most prolific female filmmaker of this period, responsible for writing, directing, and sometimes acting in hundreds of shorts made between 1911 and 1916, and at least 44 feature films from 1914 through 1934, including The Merchant of Venice (1914), the first American feature directed by a woman[5]. At her peak in 1920, this remarkably talented woman was under contract by Paramount Studio for $50,000 per picture plus half of the profits[6]. Cathy Kostova 3 WHERE ARE ALL THE WOMEN? From Lois Weber To Kathryn Bigelow, and the “Chick-Flick” Reputation, 9 March 2015 II. Lois Weber (1879–1939) Director, Writer, Producer, Actress Lois Weber on the set of The Angel of Broadway (1927) with cinematographer Arthur Miller Lois Weber (center) on the set of The Angel of Lois Weber (left) with actress Billie Dove Broadway, 1927 Carl Laemmle, founder of Universal: “I would trust Miss Weber with any sum of money that she needed to make any picture that she wanted to make… She knows the motion picture business as few people do.”[6] At a time when many remained wary of cinema’s cultural impact, Weber believed in the medium’s narrative and dramatic power. Her “ideal picture entertainment,” she once said, was “a well assorted shelf of books come to life”[7]. She often talked of using motion pictures as a means of achieving political change, aspiring to produce work “that will have an influence for good on the public mind”[8][9]. Weber wrote and directed a series of high-profile films on social issues of the day, including religious hypocrisy in Hypocrites (1915), capital punishment in The People vs. John Doe (1916), drug addiction in Hop, the Devil’s Brew (1916), poverty and wage equity in Shoes (1916), and contraception in Where Are My Children? (1916) and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1917). Her name was routinely mentioned alongside contemporaries like Griffith and DeMille as one of the top talents in Hollywood. Cathy Kostova 4 WHERE ARE ALL THE WOMEN? From Lois Weber To Kathryn Bigelow, and the “Chick-Flick” Reputation, 9 March 2015 In 1916, she became the first and only woman elected to the Motion Picture Directors Association, a solitary honor she would retain for decades[10]. She continued to write and direct films heavily influenced by moral issues until the very end of her career, but already in the early 1920s, the American audiences were tired of these “sermons” and Weber’s continuous and explicit critique of Hollywood’s glamour didn’t serve her good either. E.g. the heroine in “Angel of Broadway” (1927) rejects stardom and artifice in favor of a more genuine engagement with life[11]. The dissolve of Lois Weber’s first marriage to Phillips Smalley in 1922 is often thrown as reason for the abrupt shift down in her career, and there have been multiple attempts to devalue her achievements by attributing them to her ex-husband. However such statements have been countered by multiple historians by taking a look at Smalley’s career after the divorce, which shows no behind the camera action from his part while Weber continued directing until 1934. Starting from the early 1920s, Weber’s focus on urban social problems, rather than entertainment, and on the complexities of marriage, rather than romantic comedies, was increasingly perceived as outdated, overly didactic, and dower. America’s rising attraction to escapism is a more likely reason for the demise of Weber’s directing career. “Why does Miss Weber dedicate herself, her time and her equipment to the construction of simple sermons?”[8][12] 1. Bio Born: Florence Lois Weber June 13, 1879 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, USA (since 1907 Pittsburgh's Northside neighborhood) Died: November 13, 1939 (age 60) in Hollywood, California, USA[13][14] Lois was the second daughter of George and Mary Matilda Weber. George Weber was an upholsterer and decorator, who headed a deeply religious family. The Weber name was prominent in the religious development of Western PA. The first church in Pittsburg, The German Evangelical Church was organized by Reverend Johann Wilheim Weber in 1782. Despite being the son of a preacher, George Weber did not match the stereotype of a Victorian father imbued with religious fanaticism. His hobby was to write stories for his two daughters and anxious that they might appreciate as much as he the beauty of a landscape or sunset, he would often take them out to the country.

Load more