WOMEN IN EARLY HOLLYWOOD

Enjoy this PowerPoint presentation!  It contains plenty of information about Alice

 Guy-Blache, Lois Weber and Dorothy Davenport, and a short look at Dorothy Arzner,

 plus--more generally--a quick overview of the work that women did--beyond acting--

 in early Hollywood when industry roles were not rigidly defined, either by gender or

 by job description. (Added 11-11-2021)

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vSlE8k04YGa8rJOqbcFsLwFJl9m498A83rY0OxVrtZ7MqxUlHFBe0W8sbULGYUR_kaq-QR1EnIkL1H8/pub?start=true&loop=false&delayms=10000

Sofia Coppola--The Beguiled (2017)

I expected great things of this film, since I had read about the response to it at Cannes and had read several positive reviews. I was disappointed and I was puzzled regarding the hoopla. 

I've not read the original novel, nor have I seen the 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood, so I had few preconceptions going into the theatre. I understand that Coppola's focus on the relations between the women and girls on the decaying estate housing a girls' school in Civil War Virginia is a unique approach to the story. The film fails to fulfill that promise, though, because the beautiful cinematography of Philippe Le Sourd disguises a very conventional film. 

What is revealed about the women and girls? That they all lose their minds when a wounded Union deserter is brought into their house to be nursed back to health. Unleash the repressed desires. Prepare the coquetry. Let loose the petty jealousy and competition among the women. Bring out the glad-rags. The film taps every possible stereotype about male-female relations. 

Corporal McBurney, the solder played by Colin Farrell, is actually a character of greater depth than any of the women. He masks his true thoughts; his duplicity is enacted for viewers. His apparent wily intelligence made me wonder who he really was and what he really wanted. Even as the film went on, I wondered about his motives. That is more than I will say about any of the female characters. All of those glances among them add up to precisely what you would expect. 

Each woman and girl is given a certain kind of individuality, but it's the individuality of labels (here's the one with the budding sexuality, here's the one who resents the attention given a Yankee, here's the one younger than the others whose fascination with him takes a more juvenile form). I had read in one review that Edwina, the character played by Kirsten Dunst, "wants something different." No she doesn't. It's the same thing that the characters played by Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning want. They may want it in age- and social position-appropriate ways, but it comes down to the same thing. 

This story is an opportunity missed. I anticipated some injection of modernity into the proceedings, but from interviews given by Coppola it appears that this effort was lavished on costumes and hairstyles. Nothing unexpected happens here, though there was plenty of room to introduce greater complexity and some uniqueness into the portraits of these ladies. 

The film's best qualities are 

• The performances of Dunst and Farrell 
• The performance of Oona Laurence as young Amy who finds the soldier 
• The cinematography, especially of the natural world 
• The final scene, when the camera draws back from the porch to the gates 

In Birth of a Nation (1916), D.W. Griffith showed a very different picture of a Virginia family that outlasted the war. I could not help but think of young Flora Cameron decorating her worn dress with "Southern ermine" (cotton) when the women of The Beguiled dragged out their finery and jewels to beguile the young man in their midst. Those costumes are finally just window-dressing for a set of tired conventions.

Patricia Rozema--Into the Forest (2015)

I’ve loved some of director (and writer) Patricia Rozema’s works and that love started with I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing in the late 1980s and surged again with Mansfield Park (1999). Her writing for Grey Gardens (2009) was brilliant. I so wanted to love this one, which stars Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood as sisters who live with their father in a remote forested area. We don’t know why. The sisters are several years apart in age and are very unlike in every possible way: appearance, temperament, interests, talents, and stage of life. While Nell (Page) studies for the SAT, Eva (Wood), the elder by several years, prepares endlessly for her dance audition. Dad (Callum Keith Rennie) is a good-tempered, upbeat fellow who will not be in the film for very long.

One day a power outage hits the area, probably the whole continent, maybe the whole world. We never know. The family lives far from town and when they make one trip to the decimated grocery store and to the empty gas stations they have ominous encounters with some men who are either creepy, up to no good, or both. The characters themselves seem to be remarkably uninterested in what the problem is. First, it’s an inconvenience and as the outage stretches over weeks, months and then more than a year, it appears that the situation may be permanent.

The film is a character study with small and large moments of drama. It dwells on the ups and downs of the relationship between the sisters, how they deal with tragedy, how they deal with deprivation; their responses could hardly be more different. While Nell is practical, steady in temperament, and willing (to a degree) to figure out how best to act in the situation, Eva is quite the opposite. She is rarely anything other than self-centered, whiny, weak-willed and selfish. After a variety of bad things happen, Eva makes a decision that, depending on the viewer’s perspective, is either the ultimate in selfishness or a small vote for hope.

The film takes no interest in why or how the electrical outage has occurred because that’s not the story that’s being told. I applaud the novel choice to tell a big story through the experiences of just a handful of characters on a limited stage. There are no zombies, mutants or aliens in the film. For a film that focuses for the most part on the relationship between two people, though, its emotional tone and impact was far too muted.

We move from incident to incident. There are struggles between these two very different women over any number of things (let’s use one of our last gallons of gas to fire up the generator and listen to music for a few minutes; no, we have to save it for when we really need it) and there is one particularly hard-hitting moment of quietly devastating disappointment when they discover what might be a note left by their father. There are some decisions that seem to exist for their symbolic value and left me thinking, “You idiots!” When Nell decides to go along with a decision insisted upon by her sister at the end of the film, it’s clear she is giving in against her better judgment. For what it’s worth, I think it’s an awful decision too. Her sister’s (former) passivity seems to have shifted to Nell. Maybe she’s tired of doing every single thing and making every single decision that keeps them alive. Just a thought on my part, because neither the acting nor dialogue provide a clue. This ending, too, seems to be symbolic rather than natural, in the sense of flowing from the dynamics of both story and character. It simply does not seem to make sense.

The real problem for me was that while this was a character study, neither of the characters really had much depth. Their dynamics seemed very superficial and lacking in intensity where it was needed. I didn’t feel that the two actors were a match that ever felt natural or real. Character was built mostly from brief scenes of action and short scenes with dialogue. The film needed more dialogue to create greater complexity in the characters and their interactions.

I did enjoy the moody, nature-friendly photography of cinematographer Daniel Grant.

Rozema’s decision to focus on character is a gutsy choice and the existential situation provides an opportunity for some creative, unusual storytelling but ultimately she has little success. These characters need a lot more development and the narrative lacks both force and intensity that would draw in the viewer.

Karyn Kusama—The Invitation (2015)

I approached this film with no expectations, not having seen any other film by the director, not even the acclaimed Girl Fight (2000). I am not even sure how it ended up on my Netflix viewing list, possibly it was because Netflix classifies it as a “psychological thriller” and it was available, through streaming, for instant gratification.  But I did not expect much gratification. The scores on Netflix and IMDB do not indicate an overwhelming positive response.

I enjoyed The Invitation more fully than I have enjoyed any movie in quite a while. Maybe this is because my expectations were low, but I have been recommending it to everyone I know who has the patience to wait for the plot to develop beyond the stage of “Oh, it’s just another group of neurotic, over-privileged Californians.” While it IS about a group of neurotic Californians, it touches on several profound issues (death and dying, coping with grief and loss, the lack of cell coverage in many California neighborhoods) in ways that feel surprising and realistic at once.

At the heart of the film is a now-divorced couple who are meeting again at the invitation of the ex-wife, Eden, and her new husband. Eden has invited many of the old friends from whom the divorced couple has fallen away. Will, the ex-husband, and the one who is very uneasy about the meeting, brings his girlfriend, Kira. Just to add to the weirdness, the dinner is taking place at the gorgeous house once shared by Eden and Will. Will’s nervousness about the meeting is not dispelled by the necessity of killing an injured coyote, practically with his bare hands, after striking it with the car. I would have turned around right there. He soon has a lot more to be uncomfortable about.

Kusama interjects tidbits of information designed to make viewers more curious and heighten the suspense. Some of the hints point to the reason for the divorce:  a child who died. Eden announces that she has gotten beyond her grief with the assistance of a long spiritual retreat in Mexico with David, her new husband. Will, in contrast, obviously is still mired in depression, grief and guilt.

While most of the old friends make their best efforts to reconnect, there are missteps and embarrassed silences that add to the underlying unease of the whole evening, and the particular focus is on Will. When Eden and David unexpectedly sit their guests down to watch a video made during the retreat, the guests are introduced to a rather anodyne view of death, though it is clear the move to over-share strikes them as tasteless. The view of death seems both soothing and bland, though its personal nature leaves the guests squirming and unhappy. Death is not loss or darkness, they are told. Death is not to be feared but rather to be welcomed because it means safety, reunion, and an end to suffering. We all become part of one another, etc.. The guests react in several ways, all of which indicate that they did not enjoy the video. Tense discussion follows.

Everyone is on edge, plus there is a guest who is known only to Eden and David.  That guest, Pruitt (played by John Carroll Lynch, with an unsettling combination of reticence and menace), is someone they met at the retreat. Will becomes more paranoid and does a few things that nice guests do not do. Or should not be caught doing.

Kusama guides the narrative development very effectively, so from one moment to the next, the viewer does not know if Will is totally unhinged by his grief and getting worse in this environment or if there really is something weird going on with Eden, David and Pruitt. Time after time, viewer expectations of resolution are aroused and deflated.

In one short scene, Will watches with curiosity as David lights and hangs up a small red lantern in the yard. It is only apparent how significant this at the very end of the film. The underlying tension develops into high anxiety and a series of shocks, but Kusama expertly handles our apprehension by keeping our desire to know what’s really happening suspended between…well, you have to watch the film.

I appreciated Kusama’s rejection of plot and character stereotypes in the final scenes; more than that though, I was knocked out by the quiet, powerful visual image that ends this film.  The slow-dawning of its significance has really stuck with me. This deep discomfort seems just right for the current emotional climate.