Over the past month, I have been strolling through the history of Hollywood to uncover the unsung women of the movie industry to pay homage to Women’s History Month. The exercise has provoked me in many ways. I was inspired by reading about adventurous movie pioneers such as Kathlyn Williams, Gene Gauntier, and Grace Cunard, who wrote and starred in their own adventure serials, often doing their own stunts. I was disconcerted that the names of these women seldom show up in standard histories of film. And, I was — and still am — disturbed to discover that more women worked in positions of power and creativity before 1920 than any other time in history, including now. This statistic comes from Ally Acker’s book Reel Women, an overview of pioneering women in the film business that I highly recommend. (There are some factual errors in the book, which is always a problem in film history, because it is very difficult to separate fact from legend, and you have to be a researcher par excellence to filter out the difference. But Acker was very successful in uncovering some key women who have never been sufficiently recognized.)

The statistics compelled me to delve more thoroughly into the issue of women in today’s Hollywood industry. I have known for a long time that not enough women work behind the scenes in positions of power or creativity, but the statistics were still surprising to uncover. In an industry whose participants pride themselves on liberal attitudes and politics, and in an era when a woman and an African-American ran for president, it defies belief that women make up only 15% of directors, writers, producers, editors, and cinematographers working in Hollywood. This statistic was compiled from a study of the top 250 Hollywood films of 2007 by Martha M. Lauzen, Ph.D., of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. And, it seems the numbers are falling, because in a similar study from 1999, the figure was 17%.  (More women work behind and in front of the camera in independent film, in which filmmakers get their own funding by any means necessary and are also free from any creative interference.)

LINA WERTMULLER ON THE SET

 Looking at recent Academy Award nominees and winners also reveals that the number of women in creative behind-the-camera positions has decreased. In 2004, there were 11 women up for Oscars who worked as directors or screenwriters on films nominated in the eight major award categories (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor and Actress, Original Screenplay, and Adapted Screenplay). This year, there were only four female nominees who worked as a writer or director on films nominated in the major categories. This past weekend, I finally saw Slumdog Millionaire and was reminded that a woman  — Loveleen Tandan — served as co-director for this charming little movie that cleaned up during awards season. However, only Danny Boyle received the Oscar for Best Director. Tandan was originally hired as casting director, so perhaps her additional duties as codirector were slight in comparison to Boyle’s and did not qualify for a nomination. Plus, the Academy has a rule that only one person can be nominated as Best Director. Still, I would have expected the production team to make a bigger deal of her participation during the barrage of media attention that the film received.   

One of this year’s female nominees, indie filmmaker Courtney Hunt, directed Melissa Leo’s Oscar-nominated performance in Frozen River. Hunt did receive a nomination for Best Original Screenplay, but she was not nominated for direction. Given the statistics, the odds were against her — and Tandan for that matter. Only three women have been nominated as Best Director in the entire history of the Academy — Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties, Jane Campion for The Piano, and Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation.  

Another statistic claims that only about six percent of the films directed for Hollywood studios are directed by women. Some speculate that the low percentage has to do with the industry’s blockbuster mentality in which each studio puts all of their financial hopes on big-budget, effects-laden movies to make enough profit to drive the rest of their film output. Conventional wisdom — and I use that phrase loosely — around the studios is that most blockbusters tend to be action-oriented genres, and women filmmakers don’t, or can’t, direct action. Apparently, the studios have overlooked directors such as Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, Near Dark, and Strange Days), Mimi Leder (Deep Impact and The Peacemaker), or Catherine Hardwicke (The Lords of Dogtown and Twilight), who are far better craftspersons than many current action directors. The inability of current studio favorites like Michael Bay and Zack Snyder to master the most basic filmmaking techniques such as matching action, maintaining screen direction, or respecting the axis line never ceases to amaze me.  

LOIS WEBER ON THE SET

The lack of female directors contrasts sharply to what I have learned about women in the industry prior to 1920. In his book called Early Women Directors, Anthony Slide notes that women had a lot of creative control in the silent era. In an era when women could not even vote, both major and minor female stars formed their own production companies to take charge of the films that they appeared in. Some devised their own scenarios; others directed, codirected, or produced their own films. Interestingly, many of these actress-writer-directors worked in adventure serials, including Kathlyn Williams, Gene Gauntier, Grace Cunard, Neva Gerber, Ruth Roland, and Helen Holmes. Heavy on chases, thrills, and stunts, serials seemed to be a woman’s format in the early silent era — a marked contrast to perceptions of action films today. One of my favorite film stills of the silent era is a long shot of Helen Holmes, who hailed from Chicago, standing on the edge of a speeding car as she is about to jump on a moving train — no CGI, no stunt double, no  mats to break her fall. And, she is wearing a dress! (See the photo at the top of the post.) 

Serials were not the only type of films that women directed. They also tackled dramas, social problem films, and comedies. Of all the big studios and production companies in the early silent era, Universal seemed heavily committed to women directors. Lois Weber, Ida May Park, Cleo Madison, Ruth Stonehouse, Elsie Jane Wilson, Grace Cunard, and Ruth Ann Baldwin worked at Universal as directors in the mid-1910s. Universal head Carl Laemmle was especially fond of Weber, who was the first woman to direct a feature-length film, Merchant of Venice, which she did for Universal in 1914. I wish more of the work by these women was available to see; it would be interesting to see how the films reflected a woman’s touch. (See clip at the bottom of the post.)

 By the sound era, when the industry had become standardized and ruled by systems and practices set forth by the big studios, many women had been squeezed out of creative positions behind the camera. But, the Golden Age still produced some of film history’s larger-than-life female stars, several of whom acted for six decades. Joan Crawford began her career in the silent era and ended it during the film school generation, being directed by the likes of Steven Spielberg. So, women were well represented in front of the camera in a variety of genres. This certainly isn’t true now.

GRACE CUNARD

 Another study conducted by Martha Lauzen in 2002 reveals that only 28% of the characters in the top 100 studio films were female. And those few films that do feature a largely female cast are dubbed “chick flicks,” be they romantic comedies, dramas, or teen flicks. I loathe the term chick flicks because it marginalizes films with women or about women– as though stories with a female perspective are not mainstream and therefore have nothing to offer men.

 Actually, underrepresentation on the big screen is only half the problem. Jane Fleming, president of Women in Film, an advocacy group promoting women filmmakers, claims that studio heads tend to believe that women don’t go to the movies. Their logic seems to be: Why produce movies with female leads if they do poorly at the box office, which must mean that women don’t go to the movies. (Of course, it couldn’t possibly be shabby filmmaking on the part of the studios!) Despite the success of films such as The Devil Wears Prada, Sex and the City, Mamma Mia, and Twilight, studio execs are not convinced that women go to the movies by themselves or with each other. They turn a blind eye to the implications of the success of these films, because it would mean that they would have to admit that their marketing and business models are wrong. Because many studio execs — even the women execs — have business and marketing backgrounds and are trained in corporate practices, they don’t understand the function of popular culture beyond its money-making value. They don’t know that groups want and need to see themselves represented in art and culture. Whether it be women, minorities, men, teens, or seniors, all groups of human beings feel validated when they see their likenesses, issues, and problems fairly depicted in popular culture, including the movies. African-American filmmaker Tyler Perry (the Medea films) has built a successful entertainment empire because he understands that. Underrepresented by the Hollywood studios, black audiences flock to see Perry’s films, which showcase a wider range of African-American archetypes. Women, too, are underrepresented, and we wait patiently to have themes, issues, and heroines relevant to us depicted on the big screen.

 Aggravating the problem are the movie reviewers. According to a new study by Martha Lauzen, 70% of the reviewers examining popular movies for the top 100 newspapers in 2007 were male, meaning less than a third of reviewers were women. Lauzen’s findings expose that film criticism in America’s newspapers is largely a male enterprise, which echoes the male dominance in creative positions behind the scenes as well as on the screen.

RUTH STONEHOUSE

 This could explain why traditional women’s genres such as romantic comedies and romantic dramas are rarely reviewed with the same forgiving consideration as comic-book films or Judd Apatow’s male-targeted comedies. The latter reflect male-oriented subtexts and themes such as male bonding, sexual posturing, and masculine identity; they revel in foul language and scatological humor; and, they idealize or idolize male characters stuck in arrested development who will never have to grow up. The ability of male reviewers to relate to these themes and characters seems to help them overlook the weaknesses of some of the films, including offensive depictions of women, flat editing, and a lack of a tight comic pacing. On the other hand, romantic comedies — perhaps the only female-driven genre still made by the studios — are habitually underrated by male reviewers. Unable to recognize — let alone relate to — female-driven themes such as relationship issues, loss of identity in marriage, female friendship, and self-esteem, male reviewers over-criticize the films’ weaknesses.  The comedy Bride Wars, released earlier this, provides a good example. Misrepresented by the studio’s marketing campaign and instantly slammed by reviewers, the movie tanked at the box office. So many assumed it was a romantic comedy because the word “bride” was in the title and the leads were women that they completely missed the boat on this film. I’m not sure if I would call it a romantic comedy; if it is, then it is one that toys with the conventions of this genre, which is the point of the movie and the angle from which it should have been critiqued. It is what made the movie interesting. The film nicely validated the importance of female friendships in the face of life-changing events, such as marriage. Yet, no review made that point. Even well-reviewed female-driven films, such as Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona, weren’t discussed with much understanding of the characters and what they represented. Few talked about the major female-driven issues, falling back on safer ground by merely describing the plot or the characters and then noting it was good.

 Lauzen’s study of male versus female reviewers did note that women wrote about romantic comedies more often than men, so some of the bad reviews of Bride Wars and other female-dominated movies were penned by women. But, I think the point of a study like this is to also think about who determines the nature of film reviewing — its conventions, criteria, patterns of discourse, and writing styles. And, with 70% of reviewers being male, it is fairly obvious that the voice of film reviewing is a male one.

 Pondering these statistics left me in a bleak mood. Having watched Hollywood movies of all genres my entire life, I am sorely disappointed at the utter lack of diversity in tone, genre, star, perspective, and even visual style in today’s movies. So what can female audiences do, or all audiences for that matter? Well, a much wider range of voices, styles, and perspectives exist in independent films, and I have begun to actively seek out indie films over studio-made ones. I also avoid opening weekends of blockbuster movies like the plague — not only to steer clear of the target audience of male teenagers who invade the cineplexes but also to avoid contributing my hard-earned dollars to the box-office take of these behemoth blockbusters. I will, however, take the opportunity to see a movie with a female lead on opening weekend to contribute to its box office success.

I am also hopeful that uncovering the work of pioneering women in the film industry — the Kathlyn Williamses, the Margaret Booths, the Lois Webers (see clip below), and the Joan Harrisons — will not only bring attention to their contributions but will cast a light on the abysmal state of women in the film industry today.

Acker, Ally. Reel Women. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1991.

 Barbour, Alan. Saturday Afternoon at the Movies. New York: Bonanza Books, 1986.

 Blakely, Kim. “Up Close and Personal: Women Directors.” Forbes Magazine, 19 February 2009.

 Dargis, Manohla. “Is There a Real Woman in This Muliplex?” The New York Times, 4 May 2008.

 Lauzen, Martha M. “The Representation of Women Film Critics in the Top 100 U.S. Daily Newspapers,” Thumbs Down Report. www.moviesbywomen.com.