#1162c: ZETTERLING, Mai: The Girls (1968)

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ZETTERLING, Mai (Sweden)
The Girls [1968]
Spine #1162c
Blu-ray


Mai Zetterling’s cinema reached new heights of exuberant experimentation and fierce political engagement with this pointed and playful touchstone of 1960s feminist cinema. As they tour Sweden in a theatrical production of Lysistrata, performing to often uncomprehending audiences, three women (national cinema icons Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, and Gunnel Lindblom) find their own lives and marriages mirrored in the complex, combative gender relations at the heart of Aristophanes’s play. Onstage drama, offstage reality, and a torrent of surrealist fantasies and daydreams collide in The Girls, a slashing, sardonic reflection on the myriad challenges confronting women on their path to liberation, and on the struggles of the female artist fighting to make her voice heard over the patriarchal din.

100 minutes
Black and White
Monaural
in Swedish
1:66:1
Criterion Release 2022

Director/Writers

Based on the play Lysistrata by Aristophanes.
Screenplay by Zetterling and David Hughes.
Zetterling was 43 when she directed The Girls.

The Film

a

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Thirty-six page booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Mariah Larsson.

Commentary

None.

Interview 1

With author Alicia Malone.

Maybe I Really Am a Sorceress

1989 documentary on Zetterling, featuring interviews with the director; her coscreenwriter Hughes; and actors Harriet Andersson, Thulin, Bibi Andersson, and Lindblom.

Lines from the Heart

A 1996 documentary reuniting The Girls actors Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson, and Lindbolm. 

Interview 2

With Zetterling from 1984.

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

By Spine #

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