First Ladies: Early Women Filmmakers

First Ladies: Early Women Filmmakers Bundle

Kino International, $49.95 (3-DVD set), $19.95 (individually)

Nearly 100 years ago in the 1910s, when the artistry and commerce of the newly invented entity known as motion pictures was still in its infancy, it was common to find women at work behind the cameras as directors and screenwriters – perhaps not in great abundance but at least in numbers that didn't require, like today, supermagnification in order to see.

Kino's bundle, First Ladies: Early Women Filmmakers, provides five examples of the work of some of these female pioneers. Available as a three-disc bundle, the package is also obtainable as single DVDs. All have been digitally remastered (although a certain amount of decomposition is evident throughout) and are accompanied by original piano scores. Lois Weber's Hypocrites is one of 18 films the Internet Movie Database credits the director with having made in 1915. The 50-minute film (feature-length in those days) is the most technically experimental film in this collection, although its pious underpinnings were another hallmark of Weber's work. Her work is best remembered for her topical subject matter, as in Where Are My Children? and The Blot, movies that addressed birth control and class inequality, respectively. In Hypocrites, Truth is represented as a fully naked woman. Also on this disc is "Eleanor's Catch," directed by and starring Cleo Madison. The 15-minute short is probably the most delightful film of the bunch, with a twist ending that might also be viewed as pushing a feminist agenda.

The Ocean Waif, directed by Alice Guy-Blaché, is another feature title from 1915. Although the film's overly romantic bent doesn't provide the best example of this pioneer's work, anything by Guy-Blaché is worthy of restoration. The film tells the story of an abused young woman who escapes her brutish father and finds love in the arms of a successful novelist. Paired on this disc is another feature, 49-17 by Ruth Ann Baldwin, a screenwriter making her directing debut. A bona fide Western, 49-17 suggests that many of the genre's hallmarks were already well-established by 1917, the time of its making. On a disc by itself is The Red Kimona, an 80-minute-long drama from 1925 based on the true story of a fallen woman who murders her pimp. (The red kimona is the character's version of a scarlet "A.") It was produced and co-directed (uncredited) by Mrs. Wallace Reid (aka Dorothy Davenport), who came to filmmaking with the cautionary film Human Wreckage in the wake of her husband's death from a drug overdose. The Red Kimona's story is by Dorothy Arzner, and the screenplay is by prominent journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns. Kino's website (www.kino.com) also provides program notes that help place these films within the historical record.