Agnés Varda's Women

Women’s roles in movies have changed dramatically throughout the years. As a result of the changing societal norms, women have experienced more transition in their roles than any other class. During the period of classical Hollywood cinema, both society and the film industry preached that women should be dependent on men and remain in home in order to guarantee stability in the community and the family. Women did not have predominated roles in movies such as being the heroin. The 1940’s film Gilda wasn’t an exception. In Gilda, the female character mainly had two different stereotypes. The female character was first stereotyped as a sex object and the second stereotyped as a scorned woman who has to be punished.

The Hollywood movie Pretty Woman (1990) is about a prostitute in Hollywood, marrying an extremely rich businessman, in spite of her mutual distrust and prejudice. The movie contains the basic narrative of the Cinderella tale: through the love and help of a man of a higher social position, a girl of a lower social status moves up to join the man at his level.

The tension found inside and between Rose Almond and other characters in V for Vendetta develops her character development and is significant not only to the long-debated differences between a graphic novel and a comic but also to the portrayal of women in this graphic novel. This is significant because V for Vendetta portrays women as submissive, incapable of providing for themselves without a man, and driven by their own emotions which shows that the content in graphic novels (i.e. tension and character development) that makes them different from comic books is not given the same attention or thought for women as it is for

The classic femme fatale in forced to resort to murder to free herself from an unbearable relationship with a man who would try to possess and control her, as if she were a piece of property or a pet. According to Sylvia Harvey, author of Women's place: The absent family, the women of film noir are "presented as prizes, desirable objects" for the leading men of these films. The femme fatale's unique power is her brazen willingness and ability to express herself in sexual terms. By this the femme fatale threatens the status quo, and the hero, because she controls her own sexuality outside of marriage. She uses sex for pleasure and as a weapon or a tool to control men, not merely in the culturally acceptable capacity of procreation within marriage. Her sexual emancipation commands the gaze of the hero, the audience, and the camera in a way that cannot be erased by her final punishment. Attempts to neutralise the power and blatant sexuality of the femme fatale by destroying her at the end are usually unsuccessful, because her power extends beyond death. Noir films immediately convey the intense sexual presence of the femme fatale by introducing her as a fully established object of the hero's obsession. Since the camera often represents the hero's subjective memory, revealed

This implies that she has achieved her dream of being in the spotlight. Mia is now a star icon, someone that people admire. Now that she is an aspiring actress, she got everything she wanted. A happy home, a loving husband, and a beautiful daughter. When her and her husband go out in the town, they stop at a club which Ironically is Sebastian’s. The sequence begins with Sebastian playing the piano, with his whole being and the crowd is mesmerized, even Mia. He brought the life back into jazz once again. After he play’s he see’s Mia walking out the door and they give each-other one last smile before they go back to their lives. Even though they have fulfilled all other needs they had to sacrifice their love to realize their full potential.

With the presence of wigs and fluffy robes, it is obvious that Cleo is tirelessly living and performing on someone else’s notion of the ideal woman, compromising her self worth as her whole being. But I found it interesting that after Cleo visits Dorothy, she breaks her compact mirror directly outside her studio. The broken mirror symbolizes a hopeful image to humanity, something that could possibly signify the shattering of Cleo’s compromised identity. In the film’s final scenes, Cleo finds herself alone in a park confronted by a stranger, and one who is being shipped off to fight a morally dubious war, is obviously facing his own mortality battles as well. The two form a quick sense of trust and understanding as the film wraps up.

It not only threatens, but also breaks through. Betrayed by love once in her life, she nevertheless seeks it in the effort to fill the lonely void; thus, her promiscuity. But to adhere to her tradition and her sense of herself as a lady, she cannot face this sensual part of herself. She associates it with the animalism of Stanley's lovemaking and terms it “brutal desire”. She feels guilt and a sense of sin when she does surrender to it, and yet she does, out of intense loneliness. By viewing sensuality as brutal desire she is able to disassociate it from what she feels is her true self, but only at the price of an intense inner conflict. Since she cannot integrate these conflicting elements of desire and gentility, she tries to reject the one, desire, and live solely by the other. Desperately seeking a haven she looks increasingly to fantasy. Taking refuge in tinsel, fine clothes, and rhinestones, and the illusion that a beau is available whenever she wants him, she seeks tenderness and beauty in a world of her own making.

Agnes Varda is not only one of the few female directors of new wave cinema; she is also credited as having helped create the genre. Her short film La Point–Courte is considered by some as the first new wave film. Her first full length movie, Cleo 5 to 7 falls within this genre as well. It is the story of a young woman dying of cancer and how she sees the world in the context of time. We follow the singer Cleo as she changes into the woman Flora and as she does so she begins to look at time in a different manner. It is the way time is represented through the camera shots which really make this film part of its new wave genre.

Since the 1940’s, movies have predominately portrayed women as sex symbols. Beginning in the 1940’s and continuing though the 1980’s, women did not have major roles in movies. When they did have a leading role the women was either pretreated as unintelligent and beautiful, or as conniving and beautiful: But she was always beautiful. Before the 1990’s, men alone, wrote and directed all the movies, and the movies were written for men. In comparison, movies of the 90’s are not only written and directed by women, but leading roles are also held by older and unattractive women. In this paper I will show the variations and growth of women’s roles in movies from the 1940’s though the 1990’s.

Cléo from 5 to 7, directed by Agnes Varda, is a film about one woman’s struggle to come to terms with the possibility of her potential illness. Not only is Cléo struggling with her physical health, but she is also dealing with her beauty and the consequences of being an attractive woman in the modern world of the 1960s. When examined through the lens of Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” theory, another aspect of the film comes to light. The film seems to objectify Cléo and thus trivialize her struggles with others’ perceptions of her throughout the film by adhering to the construct of the male gaze. Although Cléo from 5 to 7 appears to play into the construct of the male gaze through the repeated objectification of Cléo, it actually subverts this idea and instead confronts the viewer, and the notion of women as passive objects to be viewed.

The male gaze puts his fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled, in a unique sort of way. In this traditional exhibitionist, role women are continuously being looked at and their appearance is delivered to the male gaze in such a way as a strong visual and erotic impact and provides male desire. The presence of a woman in a normal narrative film is the key of the movie. However, the key of the narrative film works against the development of the story-line and stops the action due to the erotic gaze. Butt Boetticher said: “What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance”.

The second day, Clamence explains to his visitor/listener his profession as a well known lawyer in Paris, happy in the defence of noble causes, widows and orphans and the satisfaction on being on the right side of the bar and scorning judges in general .So Clamence summaries his 'successful ' life in Paris until an incident in which the hear a sudden 'a laugh ' behind him as he walked up the quays of the Left Bank .and on arriving home his reflection on the mirror was smiling at him as though it was 'double ' in an attempt to show, or hide his own guilt or moral inaction.

Filmmakers use traditional gender stereotypes to produce characters audiences can easily identify with by portraying conventional images of a person with identifiable characteristics. In previous years, the dominant representation of a women in film has been the passive, subjugated protagonist. However, through the development of female empowerment and added feminist representations of film, the female heroine transformed to become strong and independent women in her own right, as an individual character.

In society, women are often perceived as the weaker sex, both physically and mentally. In modern times women have leveled the playing field between men and women, and feminism is a highly discussed topic, but for years, women faced discrimination and prejudice both in life and in the workplace, due to their sex. This way of thinking flooded into the world of film. In their works, the authors of each of the various sources address the limitations and liberations of women both on and off the screen in nineteenth century Film and Cinema. Not every source is completely filled with information related to the research topic, but they do cover and analyze many of the same points from different perspectives. Prominent points addressed in each

A feminist is a person whose beliefs and behavior are based on feminism (belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes). Jane Eyre is clearly a critique of assumptions about both gender and social class. It contains a strong feminist stance; it speaks to deep, timeless human urges and fears, using the principles of literature to chart the mind?s recesses. Thus, Jane Eyre is an epitome of femininity - a young independent individual steadfast in her morals and has strong Christian virtues, dominant, assertive and principled. That itself is no small feat.