'New Women' In Film

IF HOLLYWOOD is going to have any influence on the women's movement, it would seem we are in a heap of trouble. There seems to be a new variety of male chauvinism afoot, in fact. Only this time around the male directors of films such as Coming Home, An Unmarried Woman and Dear Inspector, for the European version of feminism, are using more subtle tactics than having John Wayne sweeping some broad off her feet. They are choosing instead to try and let women do themselves in, while their male counterparts sit back, calm, cool and liberated.

In a recent New York Times article, Paul Starr, assistant professor of Sociology, suggests that Hollywood is finally noticing the women's movement, and in doing so, has also come up with a new male figure to suit the "new woman." He is "the emotionally competent hero...the man to whom women turn as they try to change their own lives," Starr says, adding that this new male is a far cry from the old John Wayne tough-guy type, who had no sympathy for women, and required complete submission, of the Marilvn Monroe variety, for anything to work out. Whether or not women would be happy with Alan Bates, who is quiet and artistic, or John Voigt, who is paralyzed from the waist down, or Philippe Noiret, who is almost senile, is another question.

The real problem here is, do women want to model themselves after Jill Clayburgh in Unmarried Woman, Jane Fonda in Coming Home, or Annie Girardot in Dear Inspector?

The unappealing characteristics of the women in these movies tend to make one lose faith in what we all hoped the women's movement would eventually bring about. These women are not heroines of the Lauren Bacall, Katherine Hepburn caliber. Rather, they are weak and confused. There is little doubt that Fonda is going to go back to her husband, Bruce Dern, once he pulls himself together and stops reliving his Vietnam days, pulling out bayonets in the living room and threatening to kill everyone. Yes, her little affair with Voigt, the radical Vietnam paraplegic, was a mind-opening and beautiful experience for her, but is she really going to live a with someone who's paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of her life? And Clayburgh, although she does go through a deep, soul-searching experience with a fashionable, female, Manhattan shrink after her husband leaves her, really doesn't find happiness until she finds Alan Bates. And Annie Girardot, who fits neither of these categories, instead idiotically bounces back, and forth between career, children, and lover, in that order, making not much sense at all.

IN ONE SENSE, these movies may be reflecting reality. Certainly women (and men) are groping for the perfect medium in their marriages. The most obvious sign of conflict can be seen in the startlingly low figures for the number of babies which have been born to women of the late '60s generation. There have been only seven births in the Radcliffe Class of '68, and this trend seems to be continuing. Since women and men are not yet sure how to balance careers and children, they have done the obvious, which is, for the meantime, to stop having children. There have been enough articles written on the question of children, and modern day women to fill any feminist's scrapbook. But even if very few seem to have found the solution, at least people are trying, and with any luck, more will find the answers to a perplexing situation.

Hollywood, however, and whatever the French equivalent of the silver screen is called, prefer to adopt a new male for women to turn to, rather than a new woman who has something of their own to offer. Fonda and Clayburgh are really in search of new men, not new lives. And Girardot is so charmingly obsessed with her career that it is difficult to see her as anything but a female detective. They are all uninspiring people, leaving you sitting in your seat, as the lights come back on, feeling depressed and ashamed. You long for Laren Bacall's cool, (oh, so cool) figure, lighting a cigarette for Bogart under the bar with one swish movement, finally winning his affection in To Have and Have Not through pure, unadulterated strength (remember that word?). Or Katherine Hepburn in Adam's Rib carrying out a masterful delivery on the plight of abused wives to a jury which her defendant, against Spencer Tracy's efforts to convict her for shooting her husband.

Of course, most men don't favor the idea of getting shot by their wives when they are unfaithful to them. But then again, most of them would probably deserve it, and this is more true of the way women feel than the simpering types Hollywood prefers to depict today.