Women on Masculinity

An article on the BFI website (well, I say article: it’s more of a list, really) is our inspiration for this episode (well, I say “inspiration”, but “is our episode”, really). The article listed six films that deal with masculinity in some form (occasionally along with chauvinism and patriarchy), but that were made by female directors. And as we’d only seen one of the six (or thought we had), we thought it might be interesting. We’ll begin in the era of classic film noir, with a film directed by a woman so relatively alone in her field that meetings of the Director’s Guild of America would be brought to order by saying, “welcome gentlemen and Miss Lupino”; move onto a director doing something for the first time in six decades; consider just having to kill a lot of people as a Canadian takes on American materialism; and spend a good chunk of our time in France, where female directors have been more successful at making their mark over the years. And hopefully along the way we’ll find something interesting to say about it all, and with any luck inspire you to check out at least some of the titles.