Girls on Film: 5 essential World War II movies directed by women

last updated 5 October 2018

With her sophomore feature Unbroken, Angelina Jolie is the only female director releasing a film on December 25. And she is battling a number of notable male directors — including Rob Marshall, Tim Burton, and Clint Eastwood — for Christmas box office supremacy.

Unbroken, based on the book by Laura Hillenbrand (who also wrote Seabiscuit), tells the story of real-life Olympian Louis Zamperini. As a soldier during World War II, he repeatedly faces death: a near-fatal plane crash, more than a month at sea on a raft, and incarceration as a prisoner of war.

There's a good reminder for us here: A director's gender has no bearing on subject matter. The conventional wisdom is that Kathryn Bigelow, director of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, is the rare women whose films tackle masculinity, power, and the grit of war. But she is actually one in a long line of female filmmakers exploring these subjects. The traumas and scars of World War II, in particular, have been explored by many of the world's leading female filmmakers in a number of classic films. Here are a few of the greatest:

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"Cavani is concerned with the thematization of compulsive, repetitive desire and pleasure that exceed the logic of history," author Gaetana Marrone writes in an essay accompanying the Blu-ray. Much of the actions in the film challenge common logic, which can be alienating, but it also provides a fascinating exploration of just how complicated, nuanced, and baffling the war became as civility and honor disappeared. The pair fall into a dark repetition of their earlier interactions, and as they retreat from the world and into their troubling power dynamic, they role-play their pain and become victims of their shame.

The Night Porter was made in another era (the early '60s), before the war had been explored from every angle, and when much about it remained unspoken. Her polarizing approach to the conflict was born from years of research and the documentaries she filmed, and Criterion release includes interviews with Cavani and one of her documentaries (Women of the Resistance), which crack into the rationale behind focusing on a rekindled affair between a victim and her oppressor.

Triumph of the Will's legacy is as much a part of the viewing experience as the film itself. Roger Ebert called it one of "the best documentaries ever made" in 1994, and recanted in 2008, stating that he was "stunned" that he'd praised it. It's easy to understand the conflict; you can see the future of cinema in her filmmaking, with her use of cutting-edge camera angles and aerial photography, while reflecting on the deeply problematic aspects of its structure, its purpose, and its images.

And yet, Charlotte Gray might be the most unromantic romance ever made. The heroine does fall in love, and when she signs up for the resistance, she goes to France to (secretly) hunt down her missing-in-action boyfriend. But her life quickly becomes much more than impulsive romantic pursuit, as she's faced with the dangers of her position and the struggle to live and trust in an occupied territory. If not for the final few minutes, the film would be entirely about a woman who moves on from her capricious young love and becomes a solo survivor with power.

Holland took the idea of mundane heroism a step further when she captured the real-life story of Leopold Socha, a Polish man and thief who helped Jewish refugees hide from Nazi soldiers in Lvov's sewers for over a year. Robert Wieckiewicz's Socha isn't a paragon of virtue. He robs neighbors, spits out slurs against Jews, and only starts helping the desperate refugees out of greed. Eventually, however, he begins to look at them as people, and evolves into a kind caregiver.

The comedy isn't without its counterpoint. Pasqualino's ridiculous journey is juxtaposed with the darkness of the war. He sees countless innocents shot dead — and when he makes a play for his own safety in a camp by seducing a stern German captor, she makes him complicit in her own choices of life or death. Wertmüller doesn't toe any socially defined lines. Instead, she relishes in the complicated nature of life and the absurdity that lurks in darkness — right from the film's iconic first moments.

Monika Bartyzel is a freelance writer and creator of Girls on Film, a weekly look at femme-centric film news and concerns, now appearing at TheWeek.com. Her work has been published on sites including The Atlantic, Movies.com, Moviefone, Collider, and the now-defunct Cinematical, where she was a lead writer and assignment editor.

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