THE MOVIE ACTRESS'S PROBLEM |
During her peak years in the 1940s, Bette Davis fought regularly with Warner Brothers over scripts. In later life, very much a Grand Lady Of Cinema, Davis used to appear on television chat shows and emphasise how difficult it was for an actress to find decent parts in movies. When Shirley MacLaine's career was in full bloom in the early 1960s, she too used to fulminate about the work offered to her. MacLaine grumbled that the parts for women were either decorative and without substance, or were nuns, prostitutes or drunks. She also said that while it was normal for a movie to have two or three male leads, no film ever had leading roles for more than one actress. In the 1970s Meryl Streep was the leading actress in films, giving brilliant performances in commercially successful movies. Yet when asked why she did not work more often, Streep would reply that she could not find decent screenplays. She pointed out that middle-aged men were allowed to star in films but middle-aged actresses were banished from view.
Very little has changed.
In the days of silent movies, it was quickly learned that movies excel with stories where the narrative exposition is visible, and where a character's responses are revealed by facial expressions or body language. By the end of the silent era, movie makers had learned how to tell a story visually.
The first talking pictures were full of dialogue, and much of what had been learned during the silent period was abandoned. When the novelty had worn off, the movie moguls astutely recognised that they needed a continuous supply of good screenplays. The big studios established story departments, headed not by writers but by practical people who had studied creative writing at college. These heads of departments operated in a similar fashion to editors at publishers of paperback novels. It was their job to control the artistic indulgences of writers, to make sure the writers concentrated at all times on creating a good story, and pitilessly to cut out any artistic flab.
For the most part the story departments did a good job during the 1930s and 1940s. Even B feature movies of those days held the audience's attention. Most important, the story departments grasped one of the fundamental principles of narrative and established this principle as the backbone of movie story telling:- Stories are more satisfying if the leading protagonist is proactive rather than passive. (Many films, for example "North By Northwest", begin with the hero reacting to events not of his making, but later the hero instigates narrative development.)
In several genres, deployment of this narrative principle does not work to women's disadvantage. In musicals, social comedies or intimate dramas, all of which were very popular in the 1930s and 1940s, a woman can be the main protagonist, propelling events forward. However, as men generally have more physical strength and stamina than women, many stories suitable for visible exposition are only plausible with a hero rather than a heroine. It would be difficult for a film like "The Fugitive" (1993) to remain credible if a woman were the main protagonist.
Because women are implausible heroines of action movies, and
because audiences have always enjoyed looking at attractive
women on the screen, a convention in movies called the 'love
interest' quickly evolved. The 'love interest' is a female
character - always young and attractive - who does
nothing in the movie except love the hero. The 'love interest'
contributes nothing to the plot. Nowhere does the narrative turn
on anything she might say or do. She is on the screen simply as
empty decoration, and if she were cut out of the movie
completely, the story would remain exactly the same. An example
of this total non-contribution is Jacqueline Bisset's role in
"Bullitt". However it is a tiny yet massive step to adjust the
screenplay, so that the hero's motivation is the relationship with
the 'love interest'. What Steve McQueen does in "Bullitt" has nothing to do with the Jacqueline
Bisset character. What Bogart does in "Casablanca" has everything to do with Ingrid Bergman's Ilse.
Before television, when going to the cinema was the national entertainment, audiences were fairly undemanding and did not complain about token female roles. Those members of the audience who did insist on proper parts for women went to dialogue-heavy, non-action movies starring Greta Garbo, Jean Arthur, Carole Lombard, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyk.
However when the movies were forced to respond to the challenge of television, the movie industry
decided - probably correctly - that it needed stories that could only be told properly on a large
screen. From the mid-1950s onwards, the number of films providing proper opportunities for
actresses was reduced enormously. To some extent this was offset by a handful of films
("Betrayed", "Fire Down Below", "Twilight For The Gods") which gave the female lead a colourful
past which affected her relationship with other characters, and by a few action films ("The Pride And
The Passion", "Man Of The West") which tied the man/woman relationship to the main narrative. In
general, however, in the 1950s more and more movies had a token 'love interest' played by young
actresses whose careers went nowhere and who today are forgotten and unknown.
At the end of the 1950s, the big film studios embarked on major cost-cutting exercises, and the story departments were disbanded. This removed the centres of expertise which had imposed narrative discipline on writers and which had given young screenwriters a grounding in the main principles of story structure.
In 1962 the first James Bond film, "Dr. No", was released and was an enormous success. The movie industry, always looking for magic formulas, made dozens of imitation James Bond films in the following years. All these movies used the Bond formula of an irresistibly attractive man effortlessly seducing fabulously beautiful women. Soon most films, and not just imitation James Bond movies, featured a leading male protagonist who was catnip to women, and the token 'love interest' became the token bedroom bimbo.
For actresses this was a most unfortunate development. At least
when playing the 'love interest' they might have a few lines of dialogue and an opportunity to show
some emotion. Now even this was taken from them. Worse was to come. By the end of the 1960s,
nudity began to creep into mainstream entertainment movies, and actresses who wanted to work in
films found that their only chance was to appear in semi-pornographic scenes that were nearly
always irrelevant to the story. This continued for many years until political correctness made blatant
exploitation of women commercially risky. Two new unpleasant trends emerged. One presented women as
aggressive, bad-mannered and insensitive, and in films like "Charlie's Angels", violence by women
was regarded as admirable. The other served women up in 'slasher' movies as fodder for homicidal
maniacs.
However despite changing circumstances and fashions, much remains as it has always been. The general public still likes looking at attractive women, the general public still enjoys a good story, and human nature is such that stories about personal relationships will always hold an audience's attention. Why, then, does the movie industry not provide worthwhile parts for women?
The most likely explanation is ignorance, the power struggle in movie corporate politics, and the way careers are made in the industry.
The evidence provided by movies over the past forty years
indicates that most people in the industry do not understand the nuts and bolts of narrative. (To be
fair, this is also true of most novelists.) The problem is compounded by the fact that writing
screenplays is a way of entering the movie business. Many screenplays are written by young people
who have little experience of life, who have no grasp of the logic and logistics of story-telling, and
whose ideas come not from life but from other movies.
The power wielded by film directors intensifies the problem. The skills necessary to be a director are quite different from those required by a story editor. Most directors do not know what constitutes a good screenplay, which is the main reason that so many capable directors make so many bad movies.
Additionally the whims of film stars have to be accommodated. Frequently screenplays are changed
to make the stars seem more brave, forthright, and sexually attractive. The politics of the movie
business deny writers any power, and writers have to comply with the demands of directors or
stars. 
Consequently if a writer submits a good screenplay, perhaps with substantial parts for
women, his work is likely to mangled by ignorant, uncomprehending people who
are unqualified to pass
judgment.
Running parallel with this is the phenomenon of the movies having lost interest in glamour for its own sake. Whereas previous generations of movie makers treasured beautiful women, built careers for them and created movies to highlight their beauty, today's filmmakers seem to have a 'throw-away' attitude to glamorous actresses. In the past twenty years, dozens of attractive actresses have appeared briefly and then disappeared. This may enable film companies to pay less money to actresses playing token female roles, but it does not build loyal audiences who will always turn out to see their favourite stars.
There is, at present, no light at the end of the tunnel, so a lead will have to be taken by those actresses who have become big stars. Clearly it is in their interests to play worthwhile parts instead of token females, and successful actresses should commission writers to create good roles for them. As writers are paid only a fraction of what a star earns, big stars like Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock could pay for a screenplay with their loose change.
Obviously this will require a change in culture, but the current situation has gone on for quite long enough. If today's female movie stars do not intend to grumble thirty years from now about their problems in finding decent roles, they will have to take the initiative themselves.