Introduction to Film Studies by Nelmes Jill

Author:Nelmes, Jill [Nelmes, Jill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

No Job for a Woman - A History of Women in Film

The Early Years

From the beginnings of the film industry in the late nineteenth century it was usual for women to work in non-technical areas such as continuity and make-up or as production assistants, but they rarely worked as producers, directors, editors or writers. Recent research suggests that the role of women has not been as silent as was once thought and some women did, both directly and indirectly, exert their influence in these fields.

The only recorded early women filmmakers were in France and America – there were apparently none in Britain. Two well-known Hollywood movie actresses, Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, both directed films but did not want this known for fear of harming their image as stars.

France can claim to have raised the first woman director, Alice Guy Blaché, who gained access to equipment because she worked for Gaumont, a company that manufactured cameras. Her career began in 1896 with a one-minute short called The Good Fairy in the Cabbage Patch, which Blaché believed was the first narrative film ever made. After eleven years of working in the industry in France she left for America and the greater opportunities it would give her. There she wrote, directed and produced many films including In the Year 2000, a vision of the future in which women ruled the world. Blaché found working conditions in the USA much easier than in France, where a working woman was frowned upon. Her daughter, Simone Blaché, explained in an interview that: ‘Mother was really cherished in the US. She used to say that people treated her so wonderfully because she was a woman, because she was a woman in film. The situation in France was quite the reverse’ (Smith 1975: 6).

In the early 1900s the American film industry expanded rapidly and made large profits due to the vast audiences attracted to the new medium. Although the new industry was cut-throat and competitive, it was also much more receptive to change than the European film industry and there was significantly less discrimination against women. It has been estimated that there were at least twenty-six women directors in America before 1930, but there were probably many more who directed and acted or who were screenwriters and not credited with this role. One of the most highly paid screenwriters in Hollywood in the 1930s was female, Frances Marion. In the US between 1911 and 1925, women wrote half of all the films copyrighted, whereas in 2001 only 21 per cent of the scripts contracted were written by women.1

Lois Weber was the first female American filmmaker and probably the most famous, often writing, producing and starring in her films, many of which dealt with social issues such as abortion and divorce. Weber directed more than seventy-five films.

By the end of the 1920s the talkies had arrived. This, indirectly, brought about the demise of many women’s careers as filmmakers. Only the bigger studios could survive due to the expensive

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