A brief his­to­ry of women in World War Two movies

World War Two movies are inher­ent­ly mas­cu­line, often hav­ing lit­tle time for female char­ac­ters. The major­i­ty of women who do appear are usu­al­ly resigned to the wives, moth­ers, lovers or nurs­es. This isn’t to dimin­ish the incred­i­ble val­ue of the women on the home front and their vital con­tri­bu­tion to the war effort, but accord­ing to the movies, when it comes to the nit­ty-grit­ty stuff, women sim­ply weren’t in the pic­ture. Dig a lit­tle deep­er, how­ev­er, and you’ll find plen­ty of exam­ples of women putting them­selves in harm’s way in ser­vice of their country.

The home front effort can­not be entire­ly ignored on this list, with the major­i­ty of women rarely able to expand beyond their town bound­aries. Alber­to Cavalcanti’s 1942 film of a small, Eng­lish vil­lage infil­trat­ed by the Ger­man army pro­vides the per­fect exam­ple of a com­mu­ni­ty, espe­cial­ly the women, join­ing togeth­er to fight the ene­my despite their humbly pas­toral cir­cum­stances. The finale depicts the women as the true defend­ers of the peo­ple, as a group of Women’s Land Army girls escape from the Ger­man sol­diers, arm them­selves and engage in battle.

Filmed with­in months of the Ger­man sol­diers desert­ing the Ital­ian cap­i­tal, Rober­to Rosselli­ni por­trays the Nazi occu­pa­tion of Rome in 1944 and the ensu­ing resis­tance from its peo­ple. Though the lead char­ac­ter is male, the film rev­o­lu­tionis­es the ​‘vil­lage woman’ to hero­ic pro­por­tions with its most mem­o­rable char­ac­ter, Pina, played by Anna Mag­nani. Based on Tere­sa Gul­lace, a Roman woman whose vio­lent death prompt­ed so much out­rage that she became a mar­tyr for the Resis­tance. Rosselli­ni illu­mi­nates the plight of the vic­timised and under-appre­ci­at­ed role of women dur­ing the War, as well as their acts of brav­ery and resistance.

Unlike oth­er depic­tions of real World War Two sol­diers, Her­bert Wilcox’s 1950 film of Odette San­som Hal­lowes, Allied Intel­li­gence Offi­cer, ben­e­fit­ed from the super­vi­sion of the woman her­self. With actress Anna Nea­gle spend­ing a year with the film’s name­sake, vis­it­ing the pris­ons and camps where she was bru­tal­ly inter­ro­gat­ed and impris­oned dur­ing her ser­vice. Odette rep­re­sents the most cel­e­brat­ed mem­bers of the SOE. One of the few to sur­vive Nazi impris­on­ment and right­ful­ly her­ald­ed as a hero­ine, being the first woman to be award­ed the George Cross, Vio­lette Szabo being the second.

A momen­tous account of female sol­dier­ing, Carve Her Name with Pride was years ahead of its time in the way it depict­ed gen­der roles dur­ing the War. Lewis Gilbert directs Vir­ginia McKen­na as Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Exec­u­tive agent, Vio­lette Szabo, based on the real resis­tance fight­er who paradropped into occu­pied France and destroyed Nazi infra­struc­ture until she was cap­tured and sent to a con­cen­tra­tion camp. McKen­na exe­cutes the phys­i­cal­i­ty of the role with gump­tion, hav­ing spent weeks learn­ing unarmed com­bat, fir­ing machine guns and jump­ing from a para­chute train­ing plat­form her­self. How­ev­er, none of the character’s fem­i­nin­i­ty or delight­ful charm is sacrificed.

Lar­isa Shep­itko stud­ied with the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Para­jnov and her hus­band Elem Klimov before trag­i­cal­ly dying in a car acci­dent before her work could be wide­ly received. Wings marks her first fea­ture after grad­u­a­tion, star­ring char­ac­ter actress Maya Bul­gako­va as a head­mistress, remem­ber­ing the thrill of being a World War Two fight­er pilot and strug­gling to adjust with peace­time. Unlike Odette, the focus here is on the for­got­ten war hero and can be said to rep­re­sent the horde of women who fought for their coun­try but fad­ed, or remain inex­is­tent, in pub­lic memory.

Dur­ing wartime women are often over­looked, mak­ing them effec­tive as spe­cial oper­a­tives and spies as they didn’t arouse sus­pi­cion. Direc­tor Jean-Paul Salome shows pre­cise­ly this in his 2008 film Female Agents aka Les Femmes de L’ombré, lit­er­al­ly women of the shad­ows. Inspired by a Times arti­cle on Lise Vil­lameur, a French Resis­tance agent who worked for the SOE (the Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Exec­u­tive cre­at­ed by Win­ston Churchill), the film unabashed­ly por­trays the risk and vio­lent con­se­quences sur­round­ing these women if they were ever discovered.

Quentin Tarantino’s war flick places female char­ac­ters at the fore­front of the blood spat­tered, bul­let rid­dled, burn­ing revenge against the Third Reich. Though it is the group of ​‘Bas­ter­ds’ who hold the guns and spat­ter the blood, it’s Brid­get von Ham­mers­mark (Diane Kruger) who not only pro­vides them with the key infor­ma­tion to exe­cute the final plot but for­mu­lates the entire plan to end the War and end Hitler. The char­ac­ter was heav­i­ly inspired by real-life Ger­man actress and Allied sup­port­er, Mar­lene Diet­rich, who famous­ly reject­ed any asso­ci­a­tion with the Nazi Party.

Steven Spiel­berg and Tom Han­ks are renowned for their con­tri­bu­tion to the World War Two genre in the form of 1998’s Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan and the sub­se­quent HBO series Band of Broth­ers and The Pacif­ic. While they all boast a major­i­ty male cast, The Pacif­ic dif­fers in its por­tray­al of Lena Rig­gi Basilone. While the sto­ry­line focus­es on Medal of Hon­our receiv­er John Basilone, Lena was also a Marine sergeant who only had one less stripe than John. Though she only appears in the final two episodes, Annie Parisse con­veys Basilone’s deter­mined inde­pen­dence with grace and humility.

An excep­tion to con­tem­po­rary inclu­sion of women in the World War Two genre movie, is Marvel’s own depic­tion of the war. Steve Roger’s love-inter­est Peg­gy Carter not only aids the title char­ac­ter in com­bat against the Nazis, but is one of the key minds that trans­forms Rogers into Cap­tain Amer­i­ca. Hay­ley Attwell shines as a fig­ure­head of intel­li­gence, com­bat know-how and con­fi­dence. Meld­ing ear­ly waves of fem­i­nism with con­tem­po­rary atti­tudes with the con­tin­u­a­tion of her character’s arc in the TV spin-off, Agent Carter. Though can­celled after the sec­ond sea­son, it remains an impor­tant head­way in depic­tions of females in mil­i­tary author­i­ty. We know her value.

Strength doesn’t just come from being armed. Giv­ing a woman a gun doesn’t make her a more empow­er­ing fig­ure. Rather, women’s effi­ca­cy in the resis­tance is proved through their ini­tia­tive, intel­lect and brav­ery. Nowhere is this more applic­a­ble than in Keira Knightley’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Joan Clarke in The Imi­ta­tion Game. A genius in her field, Clarke was still paid less than her male coun­ter­parts at Bletch­ley Park despite being deputy head of the oper­a­tion and a key fig­ure in the Enig­ma project which decrypt­ed Nazi Germany’s secret com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Clarke is the epit­o­me of restrained poten­tial – a woman work­ing in a man’s world.