Lone Scherfig was the first woman to direct a film following the establishment of the Dogme 95 manifesto, the celebrated Danish back-to-basics film movement that proclaimed itself a brotherhood in the mid-1990s.
She was also the first woman to deliver The David Lean Lecture at Bafta. So if anyone knows a thing or two about the battles women go through to make it in the male-dominated film industry it is her, the director of The Riot Club and the Oscar-nominated An Education.
Her latest is Their Finest, an adaptation of Lissa Evans's 2009 novel, Their Finest Hour and a Half starring Gemma Arterton, Bill Nighy and Sam Claflin. Set in London during the Second World War, the film tells the story of Catrin Cole, an advertising copywriter tasked by the Ministry of Information to write dialogue for propaganda films aimed at boosting national morale and to encourage America to join the war effort against the Nazis.
In those days, female dialogue in movies was derogatorily described as “nausea” at Ealing Studios in Britain and “slop” in the United States. Female screenwriters would be brought in to write for the women in a film, but denied credit and paid much less than their male colleagues.
“It was obviously sexist,” says Arterton, who plays Cole. “I think Catrin is not even aware of it. The feminist movement had not happened yet, so in the 1940s we just got on with it.”
Claflin plays fellow screenwriter and love interest Tom Buckley.
“There is a line in the film which is said to Catrin: ‘Of course you won’t receive as much as the boys’,” he says.
“That casual sexism of the time proves how far we have now come today – although, we still have a long way to go.”
But a different line in the film resonated with director Scherfig: “Girls don’t want to be the hero, they want to be had by him.” It is a line that explains why the British films of that era were dominated by male protagonists.
"Catrin hardly reacts to it," says Scherfig. "But if you're asking about the professional and emotional relevance of Their Finest for men and women today, I never felt like this was primarily a feminist film. I always felt that it was the film history, the love story, and the Ambrose character that attracted me more."
Played by Love Actually star Nighy, Ambrose is a veteran actor who is facing the dawning reality that age has caught up with him and he is no longer leading-man material.
“They were looking for someone to play a self-absorbed, declining actor and they thought of me,” says the legendary actor with a smile.
It’s the kind of filmmaking in-joke that appears throughout this movie – the lead actor in the fictional production is a total ham.
“That sort of acting has not made it to the modern era,” says Nighy. “I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a ham on set.”
It is that balance between the bygone age and modern era that Scherfig aims for in Their Finest, which is also an ode to the filmmaking process itself, poking fun at the acting style of the 1940s while making sure that the actors in her film are more modern.
The casting of Arterton as a woman experiencing liberation through her work is particularly apt, and not only because her role in 007 movie Quantum of Solace was described as being a more modern incarnation of the archetypal Bond girl.
“I’m happy that this film has ended up so cinematic,” says Scherfig. “A film that is a tribute to films has to be done properly and it has to be well-crafted. It has to show love for the craft itself. You can hopefully feel that this movie is made by someone who really loves films and filmmaking.”
The director, who also teaches writing and directing classes at the National Film School of Denmark does not think the modern way of moviemaking is necessarily better.
“Maybe a lot of romantic films nowadays have less subplots than they did then,” she says. “The romances in and of themselves in some cases carries the film – but I would look for something where romance can be the spine but the real story is underlying to it. In this case, it’s that moment in the history of London and in the history of film.”
• Their Finest is in cinemas from Thursday (April 13)
artslife@thenational.ae
