From the Cheap Seats

One of the more depressing bits of news to filter out of Hollywood in 2007 was that our friends the studios have decided not to make any more dramas with female leads. This has been on the cards for a while, after a string of underperforming films starring the likes of Nicole Kidman, but after seeing the box-office returns for a Jodie Foster film called The Brave One, the moguls decided to call time on female leads.

Now, I don’t know a great deal about The Brave One. I know it’s directed by Neil Jordan, stars the redoubtable Ms. Foster and has been described as ‘a female Death Wish’ (wasn’t that Ms.45?) But I haven’t seen it and I’d rather talk about the decision it has occasioned rather than its merits as a film.

Unsurprisingly, women’s groups are outraged: “Roll up! Roll up!,” they cry. “Come see the institutional sexism of tinsel town!” They’re spot on of course (on your side, sisters), but it’s got nothing to do with patriarchal phallocracy and everything to do with the bottom line. Hollywood would quite happily embrace radical cutting-edge feminism if it turned a buck. The reason no-one will pony up the bread for Andrea Dworkin: The Musical is because it wouldn’t shift enough popcorn.

But I find this new announcement is especially depressing because, if you’re asking me, women make much more involving protagonists than the chaps. Female leads tend to be more interesting characters, with a greater emotional life and more compelling motivations.

Jean-Luc Godard famously said that ‘all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun’ but there are some cracking movies where the ladies don’t have sidearms in their handbags: I’m thinking of films by Max Ophuls (Letter From An Unknown Woman), by von Sternberg (The Scarlet Empress), by Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby), by Douglas Sirk (Imitation of Life).

I’m even thinking Hitchcock. He made some great films with female leads, notably The Lady Vanishes and Rebecca, which updated the basic woman-in-peril formula of Victorian melodrama and Notorious, in which Ingrid Bergman plays a character with more depth and shading than most of Hitch’s heroes.

In the hands of a sympathetic director, a rounded female lead can guide a film into fascinating territory.

Let’s not pretend that Hollywood has anything other than a lamentable record with female characters. The above are the exceptions, directed by people who actually seem to like women. I’m well aware that rounded female characters are a rarity in mainstream movies, that most are either saints or whores (often literally) Oh, and it hadn’t escaped my attention that the above examples were all directed by men.

But God, when they got it right – weren’t the results electric? From the super-confident Dietrich, walking over men to get what she wants (and maybe – maybe – letting you come along for the ride) to the haunted heroines of Max Ophuls, who make the mistakes we all make and show the same vulnerabilities.

These are characters with rich inner lives, with emotional complexity and who seem all too human. Whatever external artifice might be going on, these films are emotionally true in ways they wouldn’t be if their main character had been a man. They are compelling and utterly involving as only the best movies are.

I repeat: women are badly served by Hollywood and I’m not trying to pretend that a female lead guarantees a film will be emotionally sophisticated: I’ve seen Titanic. And I’m really not too gone on your actual chick flicks. But I am saying that the law of averages means that the more films get made, the more masterpieces we’ll get.

I hope that there’s a new generation of female writers and directors who’ll challenge this ludicrous studio decision not to make dramas with female leads. And I’m looking forward to the results.

As for The Brave One, why pick on Jodie Foster? I’d blame the marketing department myself. If ‘the female Death Wish’ is the best they can do, perhaps they deserve a little vigilante style justice themselves.