Mai Elizabeth Zetterling (1925–94) is among the most exceptional postwar female filmmakers. Born in Sweden, she lived in England and France for most of her life, making her directorial debut in 1964 with the Swedish art film Loving Couples after a fraught transition from working in front of the camera as a successful actress.
Critics have compared her work to that of Ingmar Bergman, Luis Buñuel, and Federico Fellini, but Zetterling had a distinct style—alternately radical and reactionary—that straddled the gendered divide between high art and mass culture. Tackling themes of sexuality, isolation, and creativity, her documentaries, short and feature films, and television works are visually striking. Her oeuvre provoked controversy and scandal through her sensational representations of reproduction and motherhood.
Mariah Larsson provides a lively and authoritative take on Zetterling's legacy and complicated position within film and women's history. A Cinema of Obsession provides necessary perspective on how the breadth of an artist's collected works keeps gatekeepers from recognizing their achievements, and questions why we still distinguish between national and global visual cultures and the big and small screens in the #MeToo era.
Author(s): Mariah Larsson
Series: Wisconsin Film Studies
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 208
City: Madison
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Star as Documentarist and Filmmaker: 1959–1963
2. Return to Sweden as a Feature Filmmaker: 1964–1966
3. The Tide Turns: 1967–1969
4. Isolation and Obsession: 1970–1973
5. Transnational Feminist Filmmaking: 1974–1980
6. Returning to Fiction in Film and Television: 1981–1989
Epilogue: Nevertheless, She Persisted
Notes
Films by Mai Zetterling
Bibliography
Index
