Opinion: we should remember all the women who have contributed to the joy of cinema - both those whose names we know and those we don't
Claire Denis, Agnès Varda, Lois Weber, Alice Guy-Blaché, Emer Reynolds, Ida Lupino, Dorothy Arzner, Lucille Ball, Agnieszka Holland, Antonia Bird, Penny Marshall, Nora Ephron, Germaine Dulac, Jane Campion, Chantal Akerman, Elaine May, Céline Sciamma, Kelly Reichardt, Sofia Coppola, Margarethe von Trotta, Kathryn Bigelow: these are just some of the great film directors of the past 100 years.
Better known as an actress, Ida Lupino made a number of films in the early 1950s including the black and white thriller The Hitch-Hiker. Lois Weber was one of silent cinema's pioneers whose films dealt with controversial issues such as birth control and drug abuse. Elaine May's misunderstood Ishtar (1987) was the last of four films she directed.
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From Timeless Classic Movies, Ida Lupino's 1953 film The Hitch-Hiker
Margarethe von Trotta started her career as part of the New German Cinema movement in the 1970s and went on to make films about Rosa Luxemburg and Hannah Arendt. Emer Reynolds is the Irish director of The Farthest, a film which encouraged young women to write to her saying that it had inspired them to want to make their own films. Agnès Varda, who passed away in 2019, started her directorial career in the 1950s and who made her last film the Oscar nominated Faces, Places in 2017.
All of these women contributed to the joy of cinema. They gave and give us stories to enjoy, to think about, to help us learn more about the world.
Apart from these female film directors, there are innumerable women who have contributed to the making of films. In the early days of cinema, many films were hand-tinted or hand-coloured, a job that was deemed more suitable for women than for men due to their smaller hands.
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From StudioBinder, editor Thelma Schoonmaker on the art of film editing and working with director Martin Scorsese
As the industry developed, many women became film editors and gained considerable control over the finished film due to their skill in cutting the film strip. Frances McDormand gives a wonderful performance as one of these unsung heroines in the Coen brothers' Hail, Caesar! Today. multi Oscar winner Thelma Schoonmaker is as well known for her work as Martin Scorsese, the director she most frequently works with.
In the golden age of Hollywood, many women had power in the film industry, but this power often did not come with a corresponding title. For example, Alma Reville was the barometer for all of Alfred Hitchcock's decisions about the movies he made and the choices he made when making these films. While her influence over Hitchcock was acknowledged during his lifetime, it was overshadowed by her role as his wife. Reville was working in the film industry before Hitchcock and she held the more senior role when they met. She is just one of the women whose contribution to the movies we love is now being acknowledged as important.
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From Close Up, profile of Alma Reville, 'la maîtresse du suspense'
On International Women's Day, let’s celebrate all the women in film, both those whose names we know and those we don't. We can discover through sources such as the Women Film Pioneers Project from Columbia University, a resource exploring women’s global involvement at all levels of film production during the silent film era. There is also Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema, Mark Cousins' documentary from 2018.
But there are also those women whose names have now been lost, or whose jobs were considered minor or unimportant in the history of film. Jobs such as script ‘girls’ or continuity ‘girls’ were vital to the production of a film, but the diminutive naming of the female contribution mirrored the importance or lack of it, given to the position. These jobs which were considered 'women's work’ and thus sidelined.
As well as the women who made the films, there are the women who made going to the cinema so enjoyable. Our mothers, aunts, sisters, cousins and friends who gave us cinema money, talked about films, recommended films and went to the cinema with us. The usherettes who lit the way in the dark and showed you to your seat. And for Irish people, the unforgettable 'Collette' of "roll it there" Late, Late Show fame, the perfect example of the powerful invisible woman in charge of film. To all the ‘Colettes’ out there: happy International Women’s Day - and thank you for the films.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
