58 | Sight&Sound | May 2020
MARK COUSINS WOMEN MAKE FILMNIGHT GAMES
Mai Zetterling, Sweden, 1966
What a career Mai Zetterling
had! She began acting aged 17,
worked for Ingmar Bergman,
became a movie star in the UK,
and directed her first feature –
Loving Couples – in 1964. Kenneth
Tynan famously called it one of
the most ambitious debuts since
Citizen Kane (1941). Glamorous,
innovative and unpredictable,
she acted for Nicolas Roeg (in
The Witches, 1989) and even did
a stint narrating the kids TV
show Jackanory. Here a man
is remembering his boyhood,
when he used his mother’s
make-up and watched her give
birth. Sexual and daring, Night
Games (Nattlek) was denounced
as pornographic. The Venice
film festival jury was shown it in
private. It is beautiful and bold.
A QUESTION OF SILENCE
Marleen Gorris, Netherlands, 1982
An ordinary clothes store,
everyday lighting. An image
that could be in a documentary,
except that the woman is
attacking a man, a man she
doesn’t know. She’s helped by
two other women, and the man
dies. The tension is palpable.
Dutch director Marleen Gorris
uses the sort of music you might
expect in a John Carpenter film,
and there’s a touch of Halloween
(1978) in the anonymity, the
randomness of the assault. Why
do the women kill? Because
of pent-up rage, because ofyears of condescension and
sexism. A Question of Silence
(De stilte rond Christine M.)
is a feminist explosion –
disturbing, deadpan and hard
to forget. Its unapologetic
rigour won it a number of
awards, and it has become a
classic of feminist cinema.