However much passion films may inspire, delving into the depths of film history can be daunting. For every cinephile obsessed with a particular actor, director or subgenre, there is someone else who struggles to know where to begin. Sometimes the right recommendation is all it takes to set you on the path from beginner to connoisseur…

Why this may not seem so simple

In the silent era, films were mostly made for women, and frequently by women. Yet when it comes to early women filmmakers, there is a misconception known as the “myth of scarcity.” In many places, from current film magazines to respected film history books, early women filmmakers are routinely presented as rare exceptions – even when that was far from the case. The director of what may well have been the world’s first scripted, narrative fiction film was a woman, and from the mid-1910s onward there was a boom in women directors at Universal Studios. Women such as Lois Weber, Alice Guy-Blaché, Germaine Dulac, Lotte Reiniger and Mabel Normand were each pioneers in their own field, and they were supported by an industry full of women screenwriters and hugely important women producers making films for a predominantly female audience. But you won’t learn that from the textbooks that reduce “women in cinema” to a subheading.

The upshot is that if the names of early women filmmakers are unfamiliar to you, their films will be too – and it is only natural to think they aren’t worth seeking out. But thinking that way would be a big mistake – because these are great talents, often making films that take a critical look at the gender relations of their time, whether in a playful or a political tone. Directors whose names appear on only a handful of credits shouldn’t be overlooked either. The structure of the film industry mirrored the rest of society, and there were many reasons why talented directors left the business to work elsewhere (or not to work at all) – but before they did, they still managed to show us what they were capable of.

The best place to start – “Suspense” (1913)

Lois Weber, one of the finest filmmakers of the early 20th century, was a heavyweight rival to D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille. Watching this 10-minute action film just once will give you a sense of Weber’s talents. This nail-bitingly intense home-invasion thriller features cross-cutting between parallel action, a three-way split screen and a masterfully shot car chase. At the same time, she made the radical choice of telling a story often told by her male colleagues – a vulnerable woman alone in an isolated house, threatened by an intruder, telephoning her husband to come and rescue her – from the woman’s point of view. In doing so, Weber uses extreme POV shots to put us directly in the place of the woman trapped in her home with her baby, listening to the man with a knife climbing the stairs. Not content with that, Weber plays the role of the mother herself. Unlike the pity other directors conveyed whenever they showed a woman in peril, Weber instills an icy dread, living up to the film’s stark and evocative title.

After this film, we can guarantee you’ll want to explore more of Weber’s work. Like her contemporary Dorothy Davenport Reid, Weber made many films that tackle social issues. In the second half of the 1910s she made powerful films with a purpose, such as “Discontent” (1916). But to grasp the full scope of Weber’s remarkable career, you should head straight for the 1921 film “The Blot”.

Made at Weber’s own studio and shot in chronological order, this drama foregrounds the attention to detail of a director who was also a meticulous stylist, blending naturalism and a passion for social justice in a way that feels refreshing and modern. Without giving any spoilers, it has one of the most moving and sensitive endings in 1920s cinema, and it is a film you may find yourself thinking about for a long time.

What to watch next

Weber was lucky enough to work for a woman boss in her first job in the industry – and that woman was none other than the renowned Alice Guy-Blaché. Having pioneered fiction filmmaking at Gaumont in Paris as early as 1896, Guy-Blaché crossed the Atlantic and began working in the United States. One of her loveliest films, “Falling Leaves” (1912), is a delicate drama built around an unforgettable image: a young girl tying leaves onto bare branches after hearing that her sister will die when winter comes.

As you start to look more closely at Alice Guy-Blaché’s films – “Making an American Citizen” and “Algie, the Miner,” both from 1912, or “The Ocean Waif” from 1916 – you’ll notice how much attention she pays to constructions of gender and to relationships between men and women, which are often troubling or unequal.

By now you should be ready to discover silent films with even more overtly feminist messages… And this is exactly the point at which to turn to Germaine Dulac. Two wonderful Impressionist films, “La Cigarette” (1919) and “La Souriante Madame Beudet” (1923), center on women who are unfulfilled by their marriages. Another name not to be missed is Dorothy Arzner. Like Dulac, Arzner was a queer woman; the difference is that she worked in Hollywood. The scene in “Dance, Girl, Dance” (1940) in which Maureen O’Hara scolds the audience ogling her is a famous example of the rejection of the male gaze.

If Dulac sparks your interest in artistic or experimental cinema, then it’s time to savor Mary Ellen Bute’s “visual music” film “Parabola” (1937), or the spectral double exposures in Marie-Louise Iribe’s fantasy film “Le Roi des Aulnes” (1931).

Where to go from here

You may not be able to resist Mabel Normand’s charm and comic gifts for very long, but you’ll be glad you saved her work for last. It’s not hard to see why Normand became a star at Keystone Studios in the 1910s. As well as being a vivacious and quick-witted comedian, she was utterly fearless in the dangerous scenes usually handed to stunt doubles – so much so that the studio staff nicknamed her “the sugar on the Keystone grapefruit.” Normand was also a director, and her many achievements behind the camera include directing “Mabel’s Strange Predicament” (1914), the first film to feature Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp character.

Normand’s films are rambunctious, laugh-driven treasures. In truth, there is little that sets her work apart from that of her male colleagues at Keystone or at the other Hollywood studios where physical comedy reigned. Watching her work on both sides of the camera, especially in gems such as “Mabel’s Blunder” (1914) – in which you can see Normand in a dazzling drag costume – you may start to wonder why she never enjoyed the kind of celebrated career afforded to Chaplin, Keaton or Lloyd. The answer is complicated, but it rests at least in part on the fact that she died tragically young, at the age of 37. All of which gives us even more reason to watch, enjoy and celebrate the films that Normand and her fellow women filmmakers made in this pioneering early era of cinema.

Pamela Hutchinson

Turkish translation: Gizem Ünsalan

This article is taken from the BFI website.