With actress Angelina Jolie recently directing In the Land
of Blood and Honey and Scarlett Johansson set to take her turn behind the
camera, today’s audience hardly seem to bat an eyelid at the fact that the
director chair may be filled by a well-known sexsymbol. At least not compared
to the 1960’s mixed reception that greeted a blonde Swedish actress, with a
well-established career in Sweden and Britain, when she decided to make the
same move. As her movies would show Mai Zetterling was not interested in the
typical depiction of females at the time but would challenge the stereotypes,
replacing them with strong and individualistic women who did not live
idealistic lives.
Mai Zetterling started out as an actress at the age of
seventeen at Dramaten, the Swedish National Theater. Its Director Alf Sjoberg
would play a significant role in Zetterlings career as he ended up directing
her in Frenzy/Tornment in 1944, which was her first feature film. Other
significant rolls would come in Basil Deardens Frieda and Ingmar Bergman’s
Music in the Dark.
Zetterlings feature film
debut as a director was in 1964 with Loving Couples. About the mixed reviews
that this movie received Zetterling wrote in her autobiography “ All Those
Tomorrows” that “I was horrified to read that ‘Mai Zetterling directs like a
man.’ What did that mean?” Further more she realized that “as an actress she
was considered no threat.” However when she decided to take charge behind the camera
“she was not the same any more in the eyes of men.”
I should mention that Loving Couples is a movie where Zetterling “attacks the
sexual double standard and images of marriage and childbirth”. This movie was
banned from Cannes film festival because it was deemed to “obscene”. Zetterling then made Night Games, a movie where she wrote the original script as well as
directed. Night Games just as Loving Couples was banned from a festival because
of its content, but this time it was the Venice Film Festival.
I have always been fascinated with strong professional women. It is empowering and inspirational for girls when they see that these women make a difference, a change to or an affect in their chosen career. Mai Zetterling made a difference to film and I believe she was very inspirational. Her power to get something said was bigger once she stepped behind the camera then when she was in front of it. About this she stated in her autobiography All Those Tomorrows "The change I had to make was positive and, in the end, the only way." (as quoted on: http://www.tcm.com)
I have always been fascinated with strong professional women. It is empowering and inspirational for girls when they see that these women make a difference, a change to or an affect in their chosen career. Mai Zetterling made a difference to film and I believe she was very inspirational. Her power to get something said was bigger once she stepped behind the camera then when she was in front of it. About this she stated in her autobiography All Those Tomorrows "The change I had to make was positive and, in the end, the only way." (as quoted on: http://www.tcm.com)
Debra
Zimmerman writes in Women Make Movies
that "sometimes to me what's most feminist is the thing that doesn't stand
up and shout feminism" and "filmmakers don't just live in the world
of production, they also live in the real world, which is the world of the
audience." What I have read about Zetterling points at the fact that she
didn't start out with an interest in feminism. She saw subjects in society,
people outside the norm as for example the Eskimo seal hunters. Maybe her work was feminist in
the way that it wasn't. She saw the
issues, including women's issues, and people from a woman's perspective, a
perspective worth showing the audience. The critiques that she received however
seem to have encouraged her to further explore feministic themes.
In 1983 Zetterling directed Scrubbers a British movie about young females at a Borstal, a home
for juvenile delinquencies. Although the movie is a bit dated it grabs the viewer
with realism in the depiction of place, time, and characters. As I watched the movie I remembered a line
from Catherine Saalfield's Art-Activism, "'I can't separate my work into
either art or activism' said Saalfield unequivocally. ' For me, filmmaking is
the most efficient, creative and satisfying form of activism." It feels
like something that would apply to Zetterling. She used art to make a clear
statement. Furthermore what Humm writes about Gorries in Author/ Auteur:
Feminist Literary Theory and Feminist Film, "Women's social reality
provides Gorris with luscious material" seem to definitely apply to
Zetterling as well. And not just with this movie. Zetterling had already made The Girls in 1968. There the 3 main
characters are comparing their lives to that of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata. They realize that not much
has changed for women, in terms of women's liberation which would send a strong
message to Mai's contemporaries in 1968.
Sources:
Mai Zetterling-IMDB
Readings from class:
Zimmerman- Women Make Movies
Saalfield- Art-Activism
Humm- Author/ Auteur:
Feminist Literary Theory and Feminist Film
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