100 great movies by female direc­tors – part 2

It is curi­ous that our per­cep­tion of the most cre­ative and rev­o­lu­tion­ary of musi­cal forms is defined by its visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion. In the pop­u­lar con­scious­ness, jazz is an image before it’s a sound; the aes­thet­ic appeal of cool. Cin­e­ma is a myth­mak­er, and it sep­a­rat­ed the look of jazz from the real­i­ty. In this sense, The Con­nec­tion – like Bruce Weber’s Let’s Get Lost – is a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion that bridges the gulf between the ele­gance and the squalor. It is a pio­neer­ing mock­u­men­tary that observes a group of musi­cians as they wait for their deal­er. The cin­e­mat­ic fac­sim­i­le of jazz – smoke-filled bars, suits and greased-back hair – is nowhere to be seen, replaced by the gut­tur­al exis­tence of the job­bing musi­cian whose life is at the mer­cy of hero­in and music. Clarke’s cam­era con­fronts us with the prox­im­i­ty of this world in which tran­scen­dence is only found in music and death; and both are pur­sued with intense focus. Craig Williams

As great and impor­tant a film it is, we’ve opt­ed to bench Vera Chytilová’s kalei­do­scop­ic, anar­chic 1966 clas­sic, Daisies, in order to fes­toon tick­er-tapes and gar­lands over her stun­ning, slight­ly less­er-known 1963 debut fea­ture, Some­thing Dif­fer­ent. The film tells weaves con­cur­rent tales of mid­dle-aged women con­tent­ing with their wild vary­ing social posi­tions: on one side we have a house­wife find­ing it tough to bring up her only son, and decides to jug­gle a male suit­or; on the oth­er we have a famous bal­let dancer who is prac­tic­ing tire­less­ly for a big com­pe­ti­tion. As with Daisies, the bril­liance of this film stems from the fact that Chytilová doesn’t strain for mean­ing, nev­er rely­ing on clum­sy dra­mat­ic twists or mak­ing any attempts to force a nar­ra­tive over­lap for fear of dimin­ish­ing the poet­ic nat­u­ral­ism. In fact, by the end, it’s not even cer­tain why the direc­tor chose to place these two women togeth­er in the same film – per­haps it’s a state­ment on human indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and a stealthy attack on cinema’s predilec­tion for crass and gen­der gen­er­al­i­sa­tion? David Jenk­ins

For­ough Farrokhzad’s 20-minute black-and-white doc­u­men­tary set in an Iran­ian lep­er colony might as well bleed tears for the suf­fer­ers of this stig­ma­tised dis­ease. Her cam­era lingers on indi­vid­ual res­i­dents, indulging a fas­ci­na­tion with defor­mi­ty but then look­ing deep­er, past infect­ed skin, to the eyes of human souls forced to wear their dif­fer­ence like a pun­ish­ment. The House is Black was Farrokhzad’s only film before she died pre­ma­ture­ly in a car crash aged 32. She was and is best known for her poet­ry. This poet­ry is read out over the images, which imbues her sub­jects with a rich human­i­ty. For the most part, the film is an emo­tion­al lament, but scenes of young lep­er chil­dren play­ing pos­es a ques­tion about how we project suf­fer­ing based on appear­ance. Yet the final shot is one of res­o­nant despair. We watch the lep­ers push­ing closed wood­en gates. Once they are safe­ly shut in, we can see what the gates announce to all passers-by. White cap­i­tals read: LEP­ER COLONY. Sophie Monks Kaufman

Erot­ic repres­sion stands in for the para­noiac woes of life in Sovi­et-era Rus­sia in 1968’s Brief Encoun­ters, a hushed love-tri­an­gle psy­chodra­ma pre­sent­ed with great poise and lyri­cism. Writer/​director Kira Mura­to­va, whose most recent fea­ture, Eter­nal Home­com­ing, was made in 2012, also stars as an offi­cious but furtive­ly flighty gov­ern­ment hous­ing offi­cer who trades on her mild­ly dis­tin­guished sta­tus to engage in a love affair with a drifter when he occa­sion­al­ly pass­es through town. Yet this arrange­ment is desta­bilised when her new­ly appoint­ed, younger, perki­er, pret­ti­er maid turns out to also be in love with the same guy. The film nev­er degen­er­ates to shout­ing or bick­er­ing, it just builds up the lay­ers of sup­pres­sion as each char­ac­ter refus­es to open up lest their sta­tus be some­how cor­rupt­ed. Mura­to­va favours for­mal and emo­tion­al sub­tle­ty at every turn, which explains per­haps why this movie hasn’t been more wild­ly her­ald­ed as the melan­choly human­ist clas­sic that it is. DJ

Wan­da is the great under­seen mas­ter­piece of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma. The sole direc­to­r­i­al out­ing of actress Bar­bara Loden, it endures as a pierc­ing study of female suf­fer­ing in a patri­ar­chal world. Loden her­self plays the title char­ac­ter; a woman who leaves her chil­dren in the cus­tody of their father and latch­es on to a pet­ty crim­i­nal for a life on the run. She is a per­son adrift, sus­cep­ti­ble to abuse at every turn. Made in the same year as John Cas­savetes’ Hus­bands, both films serve as stark, con­trast­ing visions of gen­der roles at the dawn of the ​’70s. The boor­ish aggres­sors of Hus­bands bend the world to their col­lec­tive will, where­as Wan­da is crushed by hers. She is an angel in white sur­round­ed by the bru­tal­i­ty of the Rust Belt. But while Wan­da her­self lacks a voice, the film is dom­i­nat­ed by the force of Loden’s. CW

On paper Cecile Tang Shu Shuen’s The Arch is an old-fash­ioned melo­dra­ma about a wid­ow and her daugh­ter both falling in love with a vis­it­ing sol­dier, but her styl­is­ti­cal­ly bold approach dis­tin­guish­es it as one of the most excit­ing and influ­en­tial debuts in Chi­nese cin­e­ma. Set­ting out to con­vey ​“the inte­ri­or feel­ing of a woman,” Tang favours expres­sive visu­als over dia­logue, util­is­ing mon­tages, jump cuts and dis­solves – as well as Sub­ra­ta Mitra’s vivid cin­e­matog­ra­phy – to craft a sub­jec­tive por­trait of Madame Tung’s emo­tion­al tor­ment. Tang was an icon­o­clas­tic fig­ure viewed with sus­pi­cion by the author­i­ties, and a ban fol­low­ing her equal­ly rad­i­cal sec­ond film Chi­na Behind effec­tive­ly end­ed her career. Phil Con­can­non

There’s a sequence in Stephanie Rothman’s bump­tious prison island exploita­tion­er, Ter­mi­nal Island, in which a woman gets her own back on a sex­u­al­ly abu­sive co-habitee by smoth­er­ing hon­ey on his ass pri­or to stir­ring up a near­by wasps nest. Now, I don’t know if wasps are attract­ed to hon­ey, but it’s a sign of Rothman’s I’ll-be-damned mox­ie, dry humour and no-fi indus­try when it comes to dialling up poten­tial­ly stale vio­lent encoun­ters with­in a strict genre frame­work. This is John Car­pen­ter in den­im hot­pants, with the set-up a mod­el of curt, direct visu­al sto­ry­telling. The plot is intro­duced via a TV news team pro­duc­ing a bul­letin on a new island penal colony reserved for those who com­mit mur­der. Attempts to trans­form it into a male-dom­i­nat­ed col­lec­tive farm where the women lit­er­al­ly stand in for live­stock don’t last long as a fac­tion­al­ist upris­ing takes place, and gueril­la tac­tics are employed to see off the mur­der­ous foes. Ena Hart­man steals the film as Car­men Sims, and the film was lat­er re-pack­aged as a Tom Sel­l­eck vehi­cle, as he co-stars as a kind­ly, drug-addict­ed doc­tor. DJ

Imag­ine a movie which didn’t just con­tain tits, but was actu­al­ly about tits? Doris Wish­man was a vaunt­ed trash auteur whose nudie genre flicks sit some­where between the dump­ster chic of Her­shel Gor­don Lewis and the wan­ton cap­i­tal­is­ing on volup­tuous female forms that made Russ Mey­er famous. This is her saucy take on a James Bond movie. Only this time, instead of a svelte misog­y­nist in a tux, we have the unique­ly tal­ent­ed exot­ic dancer Chesty Mor­gan and her gigan­tic bosoms, inside which have been implant­ed a spy cam­era – focus with the left, take pic­tures with the right. And despite the fact that, anatom­i­cal­ly speak­ing, she’s not the most nim­ble of spies, it’s always amus­ing to see just how she raun­chi­ly over­comes each snarling male antag­o­nist she comes up against. Chesty returned for a sequel lat­er in ​’74 called, of course, Dead­ly Weapons. DJ

There are those who gauge the great­ness of a movie by sim­ply attempt­ing to deduce how influ­en­tial it has been on the films that arrived in its wake. This form of crit­i­cism is an inex­act sci­ence, to be sure, but when pre­sent­ed with a film like Mar­guerite Duras’s rhap­sod­ic, mod­ernist slow-dance to the music of time, India Song, it’s hard not to see it as some kind of ​“slow cin­e­ma” lode­stone. Essen­tial­ly a series of sta­t­ic tableaux tak­en inside a gigan­tic coun­try man­sion (filmed in Paris, though stand­ing in for India), the film stars the great Del­phine Seyrig as the lethar­gic wife of an Indi­an con­sul dur­ing the 1930s who choos­es to sur­round her­self with male strag­glers. For­mal­ly obscurest in the most qui­et­ly daz­zling way imag­in­able, the film is part ghost sto­ry, part polit­i­cal screed and part anti-musi­cal, as near­ly every scene is sound­tracked to live cock­tail jazz. It’s mag­nif­i­cent, and haunt­ing, and sin­gu­lar – when I saw it, I had no idea what to make of it, but its every daz­zling frame has been etched onto my mem­o­ry ever since. And this idea of mem­o­ry man­i­fest­ing itself as a series of pri­mal, para­dox­i­cal images is exact­ly what the film is about. DJ

Grant­ed, Chan­tal Akerman’s 1975 film about a sin­gle par­ent house­wife sup­ple­ment­ing her income by lay­ing with anony­mous johns while her dullard son is at school, is some­thing of a hard sell: it’s near­ly four hours long; the large major­i­ty of the film takes place in a pokey, spar­tan apart­ment; there’s bare­ly three pages of dia­logue spo­ken over the entire run­time; and the grand dra­mat­ic piv­ot point is the moment in which Jeanne incor­rect­ly but­tons up her pinafore. But seri­ous­ly, that such a seem­ing­ly banal action could encap­su­late all the roman­tic tragedy of a 1940s melo­dra­ma, all the high dra­ma of the first shark attack in Jaws, stands as tes­ta­ment to this metro­nom­ic mas­ter­work of dis­ci­pline and under­state­ment, an incensed fem­i­nist essay on bore­dom and the piti­ful lot of the work­ing class woman. Some peo­ple might say it’s a movie in which noth­ing hap­pens, and those peo­ple are what we call blind. An all-timer, this one. DJ

Read more 100 great movies by female direc­tors: 1 – 10 | 21 – 30 | 31 – 40 | 41 – 50 | 51 – 60 | 61 – 70 | 71 – 80 | 81 – 90 | 91 – 100