Great women directors?

OMG, did not expect Nikita to be a man... My mistake.


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Kelly Reichardt is a great American director, based on the three of her films I've seen: Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, and Meek's Cutoff, terrific films all.

As with many of male directors, their careers and critical/popular fortunes wax and wane. And, as great as her reputation is for Seven Beauties and Swept Away... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August, Wertmuller overall body of work isn't held in particular esteem. It's all a matter of personal opinion, in the end, but with the critics (and audiences, I believe), she's had far more misses than masterpieces, with the earlier ones seeming to fare better than the more recent ones.

Somewhat similarly, Cavanini certainly got lots of attention for The Night Porter, some calling it a dark masterpiece, some calling it pornographic trash posing as art; but most of her other films haven't gotten anywhere near that amount of positive response or even attention, I believe.

Even one of the directors I most want to get to know, Margarethe von Trotta, has been seen to have faltered after her heyday of the seventies to the early/mid eighties. Hannah Arendt seems to have resuscitated her critical rep a bit, but even that film got a number of bad or lukewarm reviews. (I've only seen one of her films, The Promise, and really, really loved it; I want to see much more, starting with Rosa Luxemuerg.)

Response to Chantal Akerman seems to vary wildly throughout her body of work, but two of her films I've seen (similar in some ways, very different in others) are masterpieces: Hotel Monterey and especially Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.

Jane Campion and Gillian Anderson are two fine filmmakers who, at least at the present, seem to have had their periods of great acclaim come and go.

Karen Moncrieff made two terrific, generally well-reviewed films, Blue Car and The Dead Girl; I don't know much about her third film, 2013's The Trials of Cate McCall, but it doesn't seem to have gotten any attention whatsoever, at least yet.

The Sprecher sisters (writer/director Jill and writer Karen) made two terrific, generally well-reviewed films, Clockwatchers and Thirteen Conversations about One Thing and went away from the big screen for a decade. That they came back with a film that festival-premiered as The Convincer and then was released as Thin Ice after a new editor and scorer replaced the work of the original editor and scorer doesn't bode well, tho again I don't know much about the film.

I've seen only one film by Larisa Shepitko, Wings (Krylya), but it's a masterpiece; in addition, her final film, The Ascent, at least, has a fine critical reputation, I believe. Wings affected me so greatly that her death, which happened decades before I ever knew she existed, has upset me since I first learned of it (and her), and it still does today.

Maintaining a really strong critical and fan reputation over a whole career can be difficult for a director of any gender. Even great directors like John Ford, who made about five million really-good-to-great films (and at least one steady contender for the best film ever made, The Searchers), had duds. His last completed film, Seven Women, is generally seen as a sad swansong, for example.

If there were as many female filmmakers as there are male, you'd no doubt see more "Great" female directors, with "Great" referring to their overall work and not just one of two or a few more films. But, even tho I think and hope that things are constantly changing for the better, I'll bet it's still easier for most guys to get a film made, much less a whole bunch of 'em. So more guys get to make large bodies of work that we can then judge over the years. One of the few current working female directors who seems to have built a reputation as one of our finest directors over a long period of time (again, personal opinions will vary, but her reputation is largely that of a great filmmaker) is France's Claire Denis.

Matthew