"WOMEN'S LIB" MOVIES OF THE '70'S

Coming Home (1978), directed by Hal Ashby.

When her husband in away in Vietnam, a dutiful Marine wife becomes (mildly) radicalized and liberated and falls in love with a paraplegic veteran.

Here the anti-war generation of the 1960s step up and tell a story from their perspective. It was Jane Fonda's project from the beginning, inspired by the story of Ron Kovic, whose book Born on the Fourth of July was later filmed by Oliver Stone.

Message films must be made oh-so-carefully. There is no easier way to make a bad film. This one goes right up to the line but I think works in the end, if you can forgive the lecturing tone of some scenes.

What it does well:

• It is emotionally gripping, with everyone in pain. We can't help yearning for comfort for all involved.



• It is a worthy peek into the poorly provided VA hospitals (some stories never get old) with real veterans in the cast.



• It shows us an inflexion point in the culture, when the old guard is losing respect and authority, and the previous counterculture becomes dominant.



• Lastly, how I saw it in the theater: the suffering of the vets, the tragedy of their lives, makes one appreciate youth and wholeness and passion while you have it. Use the time well. This lesson sank deep into the souls of women I knew in the audience, looking to change their lives.

Today, about half the dialogue sounds like clunky anti-establishment hectoring, particularly the "meaningful" bits. The little impromptu personal interactions and funny give-and-take are better.

The characters and situations are set up with a clear demarcation:

The Old Guard: Marines and anyone fighting the war, Bruce Dern (previously a psycho-killer, now a soldier, isn't that a bit blunt?), snotty officer's wives, bad sex, unappealing squares who try to pick up women in bars, FBI agents who spy on desperate lovers.

The Newly Liberated: move to the beach, buy a sports car, new hairstyle, volunteer at the vet hospital, fall in love and have your first orgasm.

Perhaps that sounds too critical, but I can't help seeing the ideological design. I do like the film and its honest emotional appeal. As I said for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), the last chapter of any war story is "coming home". This is one of the good ones for Vietnam.

Great performances all around. The leads are very fine. Bruce Dern is not a likable character in our story -- the husband as "other man" -- but his pain and confusion are moving.

Jon Voight is outstanding as a disabled vet in Hell who cleans up and gets back on track through -- as always -- the love of a good woman. In the end he becomes a mentor to others and shows a generosity of spirit that is above and beyond.

Casting Fonda as the military wife was pretty bold: she was perhaps the most hated woman in America because of her Vietnam activities. She does a bit of nudity but also has a body double.

In the popular game of "When did movies start doing...?" I now wonder when did women start getting oral sex in film? I'll have to pay more attention, but I think this was an early prominent example. That first orgasm, always a good one.

(A cruel person could do a mashup of that scene with the orgasmatron bit in Barbarella (1968)).

Rich 1960s soundtrack. I always think of a certain scene when I hear "Sympathy for the Devil". If you've seen it you know why. Quietly, in the background, during the big love scene: Neil Young's "Expecting to Fly".

Available on Blu-ray with an edited commentary track featuring Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler. It was recorded in 2001 just after 9/11.

I think you assessment of Unmarried woman and Alice Doesn’t live here anymore is rather harsh. The women’s movement really took off in the late 1960’s . These films were made in the mid to late 1970’s. It’s clear they were just finding the characters and voices for women stepping out of marriage. It would be 40 more years before the need for women directors and writers became widely accepted and economically feasible.

I don’t know if you were an adult in TGE 50’s and 60’s . These first little steps away from kinder kitchen kuche were terrifying, filled with self doubt and plenty of push back from exes, families and society. They didn’t want us on the loose. In school, in the workplace except in nailed down defined roles as handmaiden, women were harassed , ignored ,pushed back, humiliated and worse. We had no idea what a woman in authority should sound like, what it meant to be liberated.

I honor these and other films for showing those baby steps. I’ll add another one, Reds. Dianne Keaton’s performance was not pleasant. It was shrill, demanding , unreasonable , inconsistant and a perfect representation of women struggling to be themselves. We did not know what we wanted, did not know what we wanted men to be, did not know how to articulate it if we did know.

On this subject I would like to ad Norma Rae 1979

LOOKING FOR MR GOODBAR and THE STEPFORD WIVES are two at the darker end of the range.

SUCH GOOD FRIENDS has its heroine discovering her comatose husband has been unfaithful... a lot ........and is very funny. Dyan Cannon's keeper.

On TV we got LOOSE CHANGE and THE WOMEN'S ROOM (1980 actually)

Anyone recommend STAND UP AND BE COUNTED? Curious.

    When I see the term "Women's Lib," the first thing that comes to mind are those old TV commercials for Virginia Slims cigarettes, which celebrated the advancement of women with the announcement, "You've come a long way, baby....You've got your own cigarette now, baby!!"  I remember some TV clip show from the late '70s or early '80s which featured a montage of scenes from TV commercials of the past, beginning with a parade of repressed housewives going nuts over cleaning and scrubbing and "ring-around-the-collar" and ending with that Virginia Slims jingle, which caused the TV audience to break out into (supposedly) spontaneous applause, as if to suggest that cigarette addiction, lung disease, etc. was just the kind of victory women wanted.
The commercials were a perfect example of the pandering engaged in by advertising, TV and movies of the time.

     The "women's lib" theatrical movies of the 1970s were okay for their times, but the standard of excellence for the subject was the TV series The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It showed, for the first time, a woman who was single by choice and not desperate to latch onto a man to meet cultural standards; the show followed her as she evolved from a scared single "girl" on her own for the first time into a confident career woman who was largely satisfied with her life as it was. Unlike a lot of shows that followed (even decades later), she was allowed to be attractive and have healthy relationships with men, without
becoming sex-obsessed, bitter, "mannish," or anxious about her biological clock and fretting about whether she missed out on something because she didn't follow the traditional wife-mother path. The show had a lot more  input from female writers than most other shows, which was undoubtedly a major factor in its being a show that so many female viewers could relate to--and despite its dated fashions and decor, it's still a timely show.

 

  

 

The Exorcist – single mother breaks with patriarchal doctors and finds help for her ailing daughter.

Five Easy Pieces – expecting mother realizes her boyfriend is completely unreliable.

Bonnie and Clyde – Dallas waitress chooses a new career in banking. (Sorry, that's a 60s movie)