María Novaro: Feminist Filmmaking as Public Voice

Abstract

An often heard statement with regard to María Novaro’s films is that nothing really interesting takes place in them—they appear to be a collage of images and circumstances, but there is no sustained plot development and whatever action there is really goes nowhere.¹ In the context of such assertions, Novaro would seem to be countering to a second degree the image of film as a representation of the lived (mis)adventure of life. In the first instance, she is countering the whole notion of the action film, with its vivid characters, its vigorous scenes of physical exertion, its vociferous articulation of colloquial language, and its transparent morality: in short, the quintessential formulaic dispositions of masculinist filmmaking. This is the male-centered action model that Hollywood bequeathed to international filmmaking. If Novaro rejects it in a first instance for presumed reasons of irrelevance, disingenuousness, and falsity, she rejects it in a second instance as it became translated into Mexican filmmaking, to serve as the foundational narrative paradigm for an industry that made it impossible for any contrary voice, much less a feminist one, to emerge until well into the second half of the twentieth century.