As the Oscars prepare to make history by considering Greta Gerwig in the best director category, making that five times in total in the 88 years since the Oscars began that a woman has been considered for that award, there’s a quiet aptness to Hollywood paying tribute to Dorothy Arzner, who died in 1979.
This week Paramount named a building after Arzner in a ceremony attended by her former student Francis Ford Coppola. The Godfather director remembered his teacher telling him not to worry about his career with the fabulous advice: “You’ll make it. I’ve been around. I know.”
I’m ashamed to say I had not heard of Arzner until this week, which is particularly disgraceful, I’m sure now, to fans of 20s- and 30s-era Hollywood. But reading Coppola’s tribute sent me away to learn more, and her life story is surely made for the screen. (In fact, there has been a Todd Haynes biopic rumoured since 2003.) Arzner worked her way up from typist to writer to director, making about 18 films, invented the boom mic, and directed Clara Bow’s first speaking movie, The Wild Party. Given that she was such a pioneer, it’s shocking, if not at all surprising, that the glass ceiling should seal up after her with such certainty and for so long.
I thought of Arzner and the women she directed – Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell – when I read the BBC’s report into whether contemporary films with female lead characters are more profitable than those starring men. They are, according to its findings: on average, every dollar invested in a female-led film earns back $2.12 (£1.53), while every dollar in male-led films earns back $1.59 (£1.15). It should be the dying breath of the old adage that female characters can’t open a movie, and it’s amazing that still seems to be a consideration, almost 80 years after Arzner put down her clapperboard.
Despite this financial incentive towards giving women’s stories equal billing, the BBC did further analysis that put all of the best picture Oscar winners and this year’s contenders to the Bechdel test (to pass, it should have two named female characters, talking to each other, about something other than a man).
While that test certainly has its flaws – it seems reasonable that Dunkirk isn’t stuffed with female characters, for example – it still makes for bleak and frustrating reading, as 51% of winners since 1929 fail the criteria. Still, this year’s Oscars seem more open than they have been in years; perhaps with Lady Bird, Gerwig may begin a long-overdue upset by doubling the number of female best director winners (Kathryn Bigelow won in 2010 with The Hurt Locker) to a staggering two.
• Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnist
