women’s issues
We have plenty of excellent and notable films about women in wartime, but their narratives are all too familiar. Often the female protagonist is waiting for the return of her husband or lover, or she is grieving at sending her sons off to war (The Marriage of Maria Braun, Private Peaceful). Sometimes, the war itself exploits and manipulates the nature of our protagonists leading them to betray their country (Rome Open City, to name but one).
A common stereotype in film is that women don’t work and have no career. What can we learn from the films in which women’s careers are at the forefront?
I was on holiday with two of my closest friends last week. Amidst the flow of beer, the puffing of cigarettes and the non-stop giggling, the conversation turned to our grandmothers. We talked about how our grandmothers had grown up in such a different time to ourselves, how we are (as women) afforded things that our grandmothers would never have been.