Women Make Film 10: Melodrama, Sci-Fi, Horror and Hell

From Chapter 26: Melodrama: Døden er et kjærtegn / Death is a Caress / Edith Carlmar, Norway 1949. Screenshot from the Women Make Film website.

From Chapter 27: SciFi: The Handmaid's Tale: Offred / Reed Morano, tv series episode, US 2017. Screenshot from the Women Make Film website.

From Chapter 28: Horror and Hell: A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness / ਨਦੀ ਵਿੱਚ ਇੱਕ ਕੁੜੀ :ਮਾਫ਼ ਕਰਨ ਦੀ ਸਜ਼ਾ / Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, USA / Pakistan 2015. Screenshot from the Women Make Film website.

Women Make Film. A New Road Movie Through Cinema
Women Make Film. Uusi matka elokuvaan
GB © 2019 How To Make A Movie Ltd. PC: Hopscotch Films. P: John Archer. EX: Clara Glynn, Tilda Swinton. Assistant P: Sonali Choudhury. Associate P: Carl Beauchamp, Catherine Glynn Benkaim, Barbara Timmer.
    D+SC: Mark Cousins. Sound mixing: Diane Jardine. S: Joe Harfield. ED+script consultant: Timo Langer. Online: Chas Chalmers. Edit assistant: Scott Bilsbrough. P coordinator: Mhairi Valentine. P team: David Brown, Rowan Ings, Raja Kryda. World Sales: Dogwoof. Head of sales: Ana Vicente. Legal: David Burgess.
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    14 hours – HD – 16:9
    Festival premiere: 1 Sep 2018 Venice Film Festival
    Finnish telepremieres of the 14 episodes: 3.3.2020, 10.3.2020, 17.3.2020, 24.3.2020, 1.4.2020, 8.4.2020, 15.4.2020, 22.4.2020, 29.4.2020, 6.5.2020, 13.5.2020, 20.5.2020, 27.5.2020, 3.6.2020
 
Episode 10/14: Melodrama, Sci-Fi, Horror and Hell
Jakso 10/14: Lajityyppien salat
Narrators: Sharmila Tagore, Thandie Newton
Finnish / Swedish subtitles: Jaana Wiik / Anna-Sofi Pettersson

Chapter 26. Melodrama

Shoes / Lois Weber, US 1916
Døden er et kjærtegn / Death is a Caress / Rakkaus on kuolemaksi / Edith Carlmar, NO 1949
Chekhovskie motivy / Чеховские мотивы / Chekhov's Motifs / Tshehovilaistunnelmissa / Kira Muratova, UA/RU 2002
Ty i ya / Ты и я / You and Me / Sinä ja minä / Larisa Shepitko, SU 1971
Tiefland / Lowlands / Alamaa / Leni Riefenstahl, DE 1940–1944 / 1954
Zabitá neděle / Squandered Sunday / Drahomíra Vihanová, CZ 1969 [unreleased in Finland]
A byahme mladi / А бяхме млади / We Were Young / Binka Zhelyazkova, BG 1961 [unreleased in Finland]
Koibumi / 恋文 / Love Letter / Kinuyo Tanaka, JP 1953 [unreleased in Finland]

Chapter 27. Sci-Fi

The Matrix / Matrix / Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski > Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski, US 1999
Wonder Woman / Wonder Woman / Patty Jenkins, US 2017
Jupiter Ascending / Nouseva Jupiter / The Wachowskis = Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski, US/AU 2015
Tank Girl / Tank Girl / Rachel Talalay, US 1995
The Handmaid's Tale: Offred (Season 1, Episode 1, April 26, 2017) / The Handmaid's Tale – Orjattaresi / Reed Morano, tv series episode, US 2017
Unsichtbare Gegner / Invisible Adversaries / Valie Export, AT 1977 [unreleased in Finland]
Az én XX. századom / My 20th Century / Minun 20. vuosisatani / Ildikó Enyedi, HU/DE/DU 1989

Chapter 28. Horror and Hell

Huis-clos / No Exit / Suljetut ovet / Jaqueline Audry, FR 1954
Ellen / Mahalia Belo, tv, GB 2016 [unreleased in Finland]
Earth / अर्थ / Jaettu maa / Deepa Mehta, IN/CA 1998
Astenicheski sindrom / Астенический синдром / The Asthenic Syndrome / Asteeninen oire / Kira Muratova, SU 1990
Takhté siah / تخته سیاه  / Blackboards / Liitutaulut / Samira Makhmalbaf, IR/IT/JP 2000
Tore tanzt / Nothing Bad Can Happen / Katrin Gebbe, DE 2013 [unreleased in Finland]
Safe / Tillflykten / Antonia Bird, GB 1993
NabelFabel / Mara Mattuschka, AT 1984 [unreleased in Finland]
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night / A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night / Ana Lily Amirpour, US 2014
Mossane / Safi Faye, DE/SN 1996 [unreleased in Finland]
A byahme mladi / А бяхме млади / We Were Young / Binka Zhelyazkova, BG 1961 [unreleased in Finland]
The Babadook / The Babadook / Jennifer Kent, AU/CA 2014
Archipelago / Joanna Hogg, GB 2010 [unreleased in Finland]
Swimmer / Lynne Ramsay, c.m., GB 2012
A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness / ਨਦੀ ਵਿੱਚ ਇੱਕ ਕੁੜੀ :ਮਾਫ਼ ਕਰਨ ਦੀ ਸਜ਼ਾ / ਏ ਗਰਲ ਇਨ ਦਾ ਰਿਵਰ: ਦਾ ਪਰਾਈਸ ਆਫ਼ ਫੌਰਗਿਵਨੈਸ / Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, 40 min, dok, US/PK 2015
Samt el qusur / صمت القصور  / The Silence of the Palaces / Palatsin hiljaisuus / Moufida Tlatli, TN 1994
Lore / Lore / Cate Shortland, DE/AU/GB 2012
Outrage / Ida Lupino, US 1950 [unreleased in Finland]
Huis-clos / No Exit / Suljetut ovet / Jaqueline Audry, FR 1954

AA: In Episode 9 of Women Make Film Mark Cousins started his genre survey with comedy. In this episode he discusses melodrama, science fiction and horror.

My reaction is again deeply divided. The samples are wonderful, and they are the raison d'être of this series: it is a goldmine of treasures and discoveries. The clips from Lois Weber's Shoes, Kinuyo Tanaka's Love Letter, Valie Export's Unsichtbare Gegner, Ildiko Enyedi's My 20th Century, Jacqueline Audry's Huis clos and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy's A Girl in the River are memorable and revelatory. Sexual violence is portrayed in Edith Carlmar's Death Is a Caress, Ida Lupino's Outrage and Moufida Tlatli's The Silences of the Palaces, among others.

But the film historical survey across genres is erratic and half-baked.

Here we have melodrama, the most important genre in this context. It was called "woman's film" for a reason, and I think for an important reason. Melodrama, together with comedy and pornography, is the most physical genre. In the golden age of melodrama (before postmodernism) people went to the cinema to cry together. I have childhood memories of this phenomenon which has become rare or subdued in the Western world. Many memoirs testify that during wartime women cried out loud in the cinemas. The films gave them an excuse to cry, and they needed to. The directors may have been male, but those films were star vehicles: Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck were international stars, and every country had its own local stars and identification figures. It was a big deal.

Another clue is given by Robert Warshow in his essay "The Gangster as Tragic Hero". He discusses melodrama in one sentence, writing about "the continually reasserted strain of hopelessness that often seems to be the real meaning of soap opera". What lies at the bottom of this is a sense of a constitutional injustice, a world that is rigged so that women are bound to lose and fail. Melodrama recognizes this and at least provides a way to channel untold suffering and disappointment.

Cousins zigzags in the melodrama chapter and avoids issues. Science fiction has never been a women's genre, and Cousins does not manage to convince me otherwise. Kathryn Bigelow, yes, and the dystopia of A Handmaid's Tale, definitely yes. Fantasy is a genre of its own, and experimental film is a different approach entirely. The Wachowskys were brothers when they made the Matrix trilogy.

Horror certainly is relevant from a "women make film" viewpoint. Female Gothic has a profound place in fiction. Like melodrama, it channels huge issues. Home (already discussed in a chapter of its own in this series) is the feminine space par excellence, and female gothic provides devastating angles to the theme. The young and innocent woman enters the house of her husband, and it turns out to conceal sinister secrets. The man turns into a stranger, and the woman becomes a stranger in her own home. Such themes are missing in Cousins's chapter.

Women film directors have made important contributions to horror, including Kathryn Bigelow, Mary Lambert, Antonia Bird, Mary Harron, Julia Ducournau, Jennifer Kent and Ana Lily Amirpour, well represented here. Reflecting on Finnish cinema it is worth remembering The White Reindeer: Erik Blomberg is credited as the sole director but he always insisted that he should have shared equal billing with his wife Mirjami Kuosmanen. In their team Erik was in charge of production and photography, Mirjami of the screenplay and direction of actors. The concept of The White Reindeer was Mirjami Kuosmanen's who also starred in the film. Another Finnish film that might be relevant in this context is Auli Mantila's The Collector. This series only focuses on directors; influential producers in genre cinema have been Debra Hill (with John Carpenter and others) and Gale Anne Hurd (with James Cameron etc.).

Vampire romance fiction would have deserved acknowledgement: Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer have revived a big trend of horror fiction. Not forgetting the mother of Gothic horror, Mary Shelley.

The horror chapter blends with tales of real-life hell. Personally, I see a fundamental difference: horror fiction shapes experience via dreamwork. It is nightmare cinema.