Pardo IranianCinema19681978 2004

Iranian Cinema, 1968-1978: Female Characters and Social Dilemmas on the Eve of the
Revolution
Author(s): Eldad J. Pardo
Source: Middle Eastern Studies , May, 2004, Vol. 40, No. 3 (May, 2004), pp. 29-54
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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Iranian Cinema, 1968-1978:
Female Characters and Social Dilemmas
on the Eve of the Revolution
ELDAD J. PARDO
This article assumes that cinema is one of society's media for self-reflection,
reaffirmation of values and charting alternative courses of action.
Specifically, I focus on female characters in Iranian feature films produced
from 1968-78 postulating that they depict the self-image of the people as a
nation, as well as the possible directions in which they felt - at a certain level
of awareness - that the nation should be heading. The decade leading to the
Iranian Revolution of 1978/79 can be considered a distinct period in the
history of Iranian feature film production, standing between the typically
commercial-oriented films of the years 1947-1968/9 and the post-
revolutionary period, which, in many ways, has different characteristics.1
In attempting to make the connection between the fantasy world of cinema
and the world of reality, it should first be noted that the film directors and the
authors of the literary works, which often inspired them, belonged to the
modernized urban intellectuals. Some of the films presented below have
artistic and political slant, while others are more commercially inclined.
Taken as a whole, the films reflect the changes of perception among their
creators as well as the general audience that often included the traditional and
poor urban classes. These changes of perception were gradually translated
into collective action.
Already in 1971, a violent guerilla campaign had been launched in Iran,
which continued at varying levels of intensity throughout the 1970s and side-
by-side with the 1977-79 protests and revolution.2 The 1970s were a time of
rapid urbanization, mounting social disparities and an economic roller-
coaster, driven first by the world oil crisis of 1973 and later by the economic
downturn of 1976. The situation was exacerbated by the apparent lack of a
meaningful way to make sense of this turmoil and allay the anxieties of
suspicious and ambitious classes and individuals in a society in which an
open and orderly public debate was prohibited.
Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.40, No.3, May 2004, pp.29-54

ISSN 0026-3206 print/1743-7881 online
DOI: 10.1080/0026320042000213447 ICg 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd.

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30 MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES
The connection between this reality and the cinematic redefinition of the
feminine is not easily intelligible, but nonetheless real. Admittedly, one
cannot point to a single sweeping translation from signifier to the signified fo
any artistic character, which will always remain a suggestive metaphor
resisting finite representation. Nevertheless, womanhood and femininity do
appear to bring out notions of identity and modes of action, a 'compass' for
society as a whole. For example, in the 1977 film, Dead End (Bonbast),
directed by Parviz Sayyad, a police undercover agent courts a lonely young
woman, only to use her as bait to arrest her brother, a fugitive guerilla fighter.
In this case, the woman character cannot be easily defined. She is what we
see: a suffering woman. She could also be interpreted as a typical educated
woman, her prison-like life, alone with her mother, with no male protection,
telling the story of many educated young Iranian women trapped by customs
and tradition, unable to attain love and intimacy. She could well be a
metaphor for the Iranian people, in their naivete, confusion and helplessness.
She could also be the 'spirit of the nation' or the motherland, exploited and
humiliated by an evil regime, now awaiting brave young men to take revenge
in her name. In any event, there can be little doubt that the film suggests that
an act of aggression has been perpetrated by a powerful man, portrayed as a
member of the regime, against a weak helpless woman, naturally one of those
who should have been protected by the regime as individuals or as a nation.3
Indeed, the association of female characters with 'the nation' or 'national/
popular action' is by no means unique to this time and place: examples of
women as national symbols abound from the Bible and Rome to post-
revolutionary France, modem Egypt and contemporary American art, from
Delacroix's 1830 Liberty Leading the People to sexy women on Second
World War American bombers and even in military cemeteries.4 In Iran,
women characters served as symbols for the homeland in nationalistic
literature throughout the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11 as well as in
the Iranian press in the 1 940s.5 Similarly, the presence of many exploited and
weak female characters in movies and in modem Iranian fiction is probably
not unrelated to the self-perception of many Iranians that they are a weak
nation controlled by scheming all-powerful foreigners.6
It is difficult to pinpoint why female characters represent - intentionally or
unintentionally - the image of the Iranian people and/or the direction of the
nation. It may be that, given the social status of Iranian women as subaltems,
the notion of a weak nation could convincingly be projected onto women
characters. In fact, the weakness and helplessness of society vis-'a-vis the
regime was also projected on other subaltem characters, such as children or
pets.
Another reason for this role of women characters may be that historical
developments and political trends in Iran since the nineteenth century are

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IRANIAN CINEMA 1968-78 31
inseparable from the question of how to define women's role in society.7 At

least twice, in 1936 and in 1979, Iranian women were subjected to the
humiliation of being forced by law to change their apparel as an indication that
society indeed follows visions of the leader of the time. Moreover, Afsaneh
Najmabadi and others argue that women figures representing the homeland as
beloved and mother are symbols intended to drive men to unite and take
action.8 This last argument brings to mind elements of Jungian psychology,
suggesting that some women figures in art and within the subconscious, which
Jung called the anima (soul, the breath of life), are representations of the part
of the psyche that drives men to act.9 After the Islamic Revolution other
female symbols such as doves fulfilled that function.
Another possible explanation is that female characters attract emotional
and erotic energy, similar to the emotional energy directed toward political
and religious action. The Revolution's obsession with women's issues may
well have been connected to the erotic-like style of its propaganda.'0 This
shift of emotional energies from love between man and woman to devotion to
the Revolution began, as will be shown below, during the 1970s. After the
Revolution, the new regime invested considerable effort in keeping these
energies from drifting back to other channels.
Scholars tend to believe that many Iranians were not particularly enamoured
of their ruler, the late Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. At the end of the
1960s, however, the Shah's policies seemed to be effective, and the period
1968-71 is viewed as one of the best of his long reign. The economy was
thriving, and several aspects of his 'White Revolution', including agrarian
reform, appeared at the time to be reasonably successful."1 A balanced pro
western foreign policy provided a measure of security and stability in a
country that in the past had often suffered periods of chaotic disintegration.
The discontent of the beginning of the early 1960s, resulting from the
economic difficulties of the late 1950s, was, by the end of the decade, a
distant memory. Although the continuing stifling of democracy remained a
source of concern for many among Iran's elite groups, modernization was
typically well received. Repression was limited, as the situation was calm,12
but the enthusiasm displayed by many in adopting the outward traits of
western culture caused uneasiness among others. The term gharbzadegi
(westoxication, weststruckness), originally coined by the philosopher Ahmad
Fardid (1912-94), became common parlance through Jalal Al-e Ahmad's
widely-circulated 1962 polemic book of that title.'3 Gharbzadegi was the
buzzword for unhappiness with the regime and harsh criticism of what
appeared to be an unchecked and unwarranted intellectual and cultural drift
toward the capitalistic 'west'.14 Similarly, as seen in the eyes of the artists

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who created women cinematic characters, even in those seemingly happy

days, helplessness, weakness and despair were not far below the surface in
Iran.
Already in the late 1960s it was apparently clear that the march toward
modernization could not proceed straightforwardly. Society looked back. It
was already then that the Janus-face duality of the revolution, both
'reactionary' and 'progressive', was shaped.
Davud Mullapur's 1968 film, Mrs Ahu's Husband (Showhar-e Ahu
Khanom), tells the story of a respectable, religious bakery owner, Mashdi,
falling in love with a young woman, Homa, who happens to come into the
bakery.15 Gradually, Mashdi manages to sneak Homa into the household, first
under the pretext of helping a woman in distress, and eventually as a second
wife. The movie includes beautiful allusions to Persian and western
sensuality, old and new, such as the scene of the initial encounter at the
bakery, in which the traditionally-clothed Homa radiates astounding beauty
solely by means of her piercing eyes behind the veil. As the story progresses,
however, Homa rebels and provocatively begins to wear revealing western
clothing, a practice that becomes a source of contention.
The two female figures appear to pose the question of whether Iranian
society can simultaneously accommodate both the old and the new.16 The
conclusion, after a long and painful journey, seems to be negative. There is
no room for two wives under one roof. One must go - in this case the young
woman - leaving behind the ruins of a previously prosperous and happy
family, whose hope for the future lies in the past. Paradoxically, the issue of
having to choose only one wife is in itself, like many of the objects in the
house, imported from the west. By accepting the quintessentially western
norm of monogamy, Mrs Ahu's Husband in fact takes the side of the new,
represented by young Homa, against its ostensible message of cherishing the
old.17 The film also criticizes the helplessness of Iranian women still trapped
in the conservative way of life. Yet, it presents the western influence as
incorrigibly corrupt. Against the background of the rising anti-westernization
intellectual climate of the time, the film appears to be a warning and a call for
society to mend its ways. There is still a way back to the good old values,
seems to be the message. But was there?
Dariush Mehrju'i deals with the same problem in his internationally
acclaimed 1969 film, The Cow (Gav).'8 The hero of this film, too, is married
but falls in love: the object of his affection, however, is not another woman,
but his cow.19 Mashd-i Hasan owns the only cow in his village and develops
an obsessive emotional tie with her. He treats his cow lovingly: together they
wash and laugh, drink, kiss, and sleep.20

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One night, when Mashd-i Hasan is on a trip, strangers raid the village and
the cow is found dead in the shed the following morning. The elders of the
village, under the leadership of a man named Islam, decide to conceal the
tragedy from the sensitive Mashd-i Hasan. When he returns, he is told that the
cow has run away. Mashd-i Hasan is not convinced. To make his point, he
takes her place in the cowshed and gradually adopts the cow's behaviour. The
villagers try their utmost to talk sense into him and to cure him with
traditional herbs, magic and prayer. When all else fails, they decide to take
their friend-turned-cow into town for a medical examination. Led by Islam,
three of them tie his hands together with a rope and drag him to town. Worn
out by the resistance and the long walk in constant heavy rain, Islam, in a
touching scene, loses his temper and starts beating and flogging Mashd-i
Hasan, as if he were indeed an obstinate farm animal. Mashd-i Hasan then
seizes the first opportunity to throw himself off the hilltop and dies.
The good represented by the cow is the absolute good of a lost paradise of
a mythological past. 21 After his cow's death, Mashd-i Hasan first builds a
wall of denial by becoming the cow, and then commits suicide, which allows
him to follow his beloved. The Cow suggests that already a decade before the
Revolution, members of Iran's westernized elite - such as this film's director,
a UCLA alumnus, sensed a profound cultural disorientation. Mehrju'i warns
that surrendering to an insatiable desire for an illusory primordial utopia
could lead to collective suicide, or Thanatos on a National Scale, as one
scholar puts it.22 And so, while Mrs Ahu 's Husband offers two clearly char
yet totally incompatible female-imaged directions from which one may
choose, The Cow rules out choice as its 'female compass' points to downright
confusion, delusion and death.
As this crisis of meaning was unfolding on the big screen, it was during
this very period, 1969-71, that the two major ideologues of the Revolution,
Ayatollah Khomeini and social thinker Ali Shari'ati, charted their Islamist
discourse. As if sensing the loss of meaning, the regime itself in the same
period embarked on an attempt to reinvent its own ideology by creating the
concept of 'The Great Civilization', which presented Iran as an eternal and
glorious monarchy.23 While these conflicting ideologies made sense to some,
the overall result was a growing confusion also fuelled by a myriad of social
problems.
The death of feminine wholeness and wholesomeness, as represented by
the cow, cleared the way for a new type of female character. These women
were often weak and undecided, and in the following movies, violence and
erotic needs became much more directly expressed.
Mas'ud Kimyai's Qaisar, released in 1969, was a box-office smash-hit and
- alongside The Cow - is considered a turning point in the history of the
motion-picture industry. The film stirred some debate among Iranian

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reviewers: it was praised for its cinematic quality and commercial success,
but criticized for celebrating violence, lacking social content, and imitating
Hollywood movies, transposed onto a traditional Tehran setting.24
Qaisar describes the revenge exacted by a young man, Qaisar (Caesar).25
The story is straightforward: Qaisar's sister commits suicide after being raped,
to protect her and the family's honour. The rapist, Mansur, and his two
brothers then kill the victim's older brother, who sought revenge. Qaisar, the
young, unmarried brother of the two victims, arrives in Tehran from his
workplace in Abadan. He soon turns into a focused and merciless avenger and
stylistically kills the three brothers one after the other, before dying himself.
While Qaisar is in the process of making up his mind to embark on the path of
revenge, he is surrounded by four women figures: the first is his slain sister;
the second is his caring mother, who tries to convince him to desist and stay
alive; the third is his fiancee, who, hoping to marry and raise children, tries in
vain to keep him out of harm's way; and the fourth is a beautiful cabaret
dancer, who wants him as a man. These four women present four distinct
directions. Qaisar must pick one of the four and chooses sex and heroic death.
Ali Hatami's The Dove (Towqi, 1970) is the story of Mortaza, a young man
living in the city of Kashan, who falls in love with and clandestinely marries
his rich uncle's bride-to-be, Afarin. Mortaza's blind and angry old mother
inadvertently discloses the story to the uncle, who then tries to have Mortaza
killed, but the two eventually make peace. Mortaza is an enthusiastic breeder
of homing pigeons. One of his rivals tries to steal his prize pigeon and is
caught red-handed by Afarin and kills her. Mortaza takes revenge, but is
killed himself thereafter.26 The character of the wife represents a failed effort
to combine the erotic and the licit, love and societal acceptance. She
combines the roles of mother and girlfriend or the characters of the young
provocative Homa and the solid Ahu in Mrs Ahu 's Husband, offering a fusion
of old and new. Thus, The Dove presents a positive young female character
with whom the male hero could go a long way on the road to maturity and
independence. But not quite: unfinished business, violence and suicidal
heroism gain the upper hand and Afarin, a victim herself, fails to show th
path to salvation.
The encounter between the erotic and the licit is even more evident in
Mehrju'i's funny and touching Mr Halu (Aqa-ye Halu, 1970). In this movie,
the director of The Cow confronts his male hero, the very naive Halu, with a
real-life female figure, the prostitute Mehri.27 Halu, an idealistic clerk from
the provinces, comes to Tehran in search of a suitable bride, as excited about
the modern-age progress of Iran as he is about the beauty of Persian poetry
and calligraphy. Naturally, Halu experiences more than his share of being
duped and is otherwise exploited. Indeed, he falls in love with Mehri, only to
realize much later in the film that she is a prostitute by profession. Even after

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he discovers the truth, however, he promises to marry her if she makes the
effort to change her ways and moves back with him to his home town. Mehri,
however, elects to remain with her abusive pimp.
Arguably, the character of Mr Halu represents, albeit in caricature, the
hope of Iranian elites for fast-paced western-style modernization, while still
fostering a unique Persian culture. Notwithstanding his ultra-naive character,
Halu's courage, integrity and mastery of poetry make him a symbol of some
of Iran's better core values and sensibilities. Mehri, on the other hand,
remains stuck in a world of corruption, epitomizing the weakness of
contemporary Iranian society. It is a confused society that cannot tackle its
problems, not because of wicked 'others', but because of a general lack of
will and sense of purpose. Moreover, the film has its share of erotic and
violent scenes accentuating the connection between crude power and lack of
intimacy.
Samuel Khachikian's 1970 A Winter Solstice Story (Qesse-ye Shab-e
Yalda) tells the story of a wealthy young writer, Ramin, who falls in love with
a helpless girl, Yalda, whose drunken father has killed her mother. Rejected
by society, she is forced to work as a cabaret hostess, singer and dancer. The
story revolves around the efforts of Ramin to save Yalda and marry her,
against the wishes and designs of his mother and the cabaret owner. This
commercial movie is typically studded with music and scenic clips and
follows the 'man-saves-woman' paradigm. Still, one can see a development
in the female character: Yalda is a talented singer. She has a tragic family
history that justifies why this pure girl finds herself in the cesspool of a
cabaret, where men are lured into consuming alcohol and fraternizing with
indecent women. Unlike Mehri in Mr Halu, Yalda opts for making the effort
and accepting the helping hand extended to her. Following tradition in the
commercial cinema, the female character is portrayed as very weak and
completely helpless without the protection of a man. Apart from the
implications of this portrayal in terms of how gender relations were viewed, it
also suggests that Iranians still saw themselves as politically and socially
helpless. Confronted by a combination of the mean cabaret owner (dictator-
ship) and the scheming mother (rigid traditionalism), Yalda, with whom the
audience clearly identifies, has only her beauty and innocence to offer.
Mas'ud Kimyai's 1971 Dash Akol - a stylistic and crisp black-and-white
movie based on a story by Sadeq Hedayat - takes place in Shiraz of
yesteryear. The movie presents the tale of Dash Akol, a wandering warrior,
who is asked by one of the city's notables, on his deathbed, to protect his wife
and daughter. At the funeral, however, he falls desperately in love with the
deceased's early-teenage daughter, Marjan, as she does with him, without
knowing each other's feelings. In a remarkably poetic sequence, the love
between the two is apparent as the girl prepares a prayer carpet for Dash

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Akol, covering it with a thick layer of fresh rose petals to cushion her
beloved's forehead when it touches the ground. Alas, this love is not meant to
flourish. Dash Akol gives helpless Marjan in marriage to a young man of
good family and dies in a fight. This beautiful stylistic presentation recalls a
time when values were solid and genuine drama could unfold. While the
movie is a fantasy about an imagined past, the helplessness of Marjan was not
alien to an audience living in an overpowering social and political
environment.
To sum up, the movies in the 1968-71 period present weak female
characters whom the men must save, but the men do not have the power to
so, they are killed or disappear. Unfulfilled emotional/erotic needs and
violence are prevalent. Judging from these women characters, as representing
both society and a beacon for that society, Iran in 1968-71 was developing
awareness of a critical social weakness, but was far from defining or dealing
with it.
At the beginning of the 1970s, protest was mainly limited to the activities
of leftist and Islamist guerilla groups, such as the Feda 'iyan-e Khalq and the
Mojahedin-e Khalq, which began operating openly in 1971.28 Intellectually,
the period was influenced by opposition writers, the most famous among
whom is the Islamist sociologist Ali Shari'ati. Although opposition to the
regime was not widespread at the time, nevertheless, as one can judge from
the movies, in general, and from the female characters, in particular, the
willingness to act and to be assertive was steadily growing. I divide this sub-
period 1972-74 into two groups of movies: in the first, the emphasis is on
female characters discovering their power, while in the second, they also use
this power. In most of the following movies, female characters are stronger,
have more options and tend to be more pro-active than those presented in pre-
1972 films. This growing assertiveness, however, does not yet amount to
action. As if out of habit, these women are still weak, helpless or tied to old
traditions, and mostly do not achieve their goals.
Bahram Beiza'i's 1972 Downpour (Ragbar) portrays a woman who is
strong and good, but not decisive enough to have her hero win the battle for
love and success. The movie's main male protagonist, Aqa-ye Hekmati, is a
teacher who moves to a poverty-stricken neighbourhood of southern Tehran
to take up a new post at the local elementary school. Hekmati falls in love
with Atefeh, the sister of one of his pupils. Atefeh, however, has to choose
between Hekmati, whom she loves, and Rahimi, a ragged good-hearted
butcher who supports her, her sickly mother and her young brother. The film
ends with Hekmati being transferred to another position, discreetly arranged
by the corrupt and vindictive headmaster, whose shallow west-stricken
(gharbzadeh) daughter Hekmati had rejected. He leaves the neighbourhood,
but Atefeh does not join him, leaving the audience in tears.

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The character of Atefeh is clearly very positive. She is beautiful, traditional,

and committed to her mother and brother. Moreover, she is empowered by the
screenwriter to make the dramatic choice that could either elate or break the
hearts of the audience. She remains, however, undecided, and her indecision
translates into sacrificing her own happiness. She cannot accept the offer.
Hekmati's dreams are dashed. It is probably true that in the eyes of Beiza'i,
who created this film, Hekmati represents the conscience of secularly-
educated, middle-class Iranians and Atefeh the soul of the traditional masses.
Beiza'i, then, views the masses as not ready to allow the middle class to lead
them towards a new society, as some intellectuals hoped. Atefeh is too weak
and too attached to her mother and the past. In that respect, she is similar to
Mehri, the prostitute in Mr Halu. In both cases, a somewhat naive and
idealistic male character seeks to save a woman who refuses to be saved. In
Downpour, however, both the male and female characters are far more mature
and understanding than in Mr Halu, and the woman makes an informed
decision. Nevertheless, the result remains the same, and so does the director's
message: for a change to occur, a stronger woman (read people) is needed.
Amir Naderi's 1973 Tangsir is a story of oppression, exploitation, pride,
love, rebellion, and sweet revenge. Watching the film, one wonders how was
it possible that such a movie, showing what cannot but be understood as a
revolution, was released in Iran under the Shah. The film tells the story of a
well digger, Zayer, a member of the Tangsir tribe that lives on the shores of
the Persian Gulf. Zayer takes revenge on four upper-class townspeople who
had earlier robbed him of his life savings in an investment scam. In a fashion
reminiscent of that of the 1969 Qaisar, he stylistically and dramatically kills
the four, one after the other. Zayer's wife, much like Atefeh in Downpour, is
traditional, loving and mature. The slow-paced sequences showing the love in
the family are touching and beautifully filmed. The hero is shown retrieving
his rifle from its hiding place, buried under a palm tree. As his wife watches,
he methodically cleans the rifle and sharpens his axe. 'I am going on a long
trip', he says. She cries. Shots of the couple's small children are interspersed.
She does not try to dissuade him, but says that if he dies, her life will be over.
She will never marry again. They make love.
Zayer's loving wife displays courage and beauty and, in contrast to
Dowpour's Atefeh, gives her husband the green light to pursue his path and
win the battle. Her role is compatible with that of Shari'ati's revolutionary
Fatemeh, who sacrifices her own good for a man-led cause within the
framework of a 'revolutionary family'.29 Unlike other Fatemeh-inspired
revolutionary figures, especially after the revolution, Zayer's wife is not
entirely desexualized and appears to be a calm and sexually satisfied woman.
Nevertheless, Naderi designed a movie in which the role of the woman is
secondary and even ornamental.

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The woman who actually triggers the crusade of revenge is an old, poor,
bitter woman, whose out-of-control bull dies in the opening sequence of the
movie when Zayer tries to subdue it. The old woman lashes out at him, saying
that he should have taken care of his revenge instead of interfering with her
only source of livelihood. Like the old women in A Winter Solstice Story, The
Dove, and Downpour, she represents an angry voice from the past that
interferes with the life of the young. There can be little doubt that the film
conveys a militant Marxist-Islamist message calling for a popular uprising.
What mobilizes the masses emotionally, according to this film, is not the
beauty of the young woman - symbolizing the hopes for the future - but the
anger of the old woman, representing the past and wounded honour. The
solution is revenge.
Parviz Kimya'i's 1973 The Mongols (Mogholha) does not offer such clear
solutions. The movie examines the challenges posed in Iran by modem
technology and the new media of television and cinema. The main story line
revolves around a couple, a film director and his wife, a scholar, each of
whom is immersed in a professional project. The film director is making a
documentary about the motion picture industry and, at the same time,
covering the story of the construction of a television relay station in the desert
for a TV news programme, while his scholar spouse is writing a history of the
Mongol invasion of Iran. Through intriguing sequences based on relational
editing and effective crosscutting, the advent of the modem media is likened
to the Mongol invasion.
Of all the female characters presented thus far, the woman figure in The
Mongols is the most independent, serious, and, being a scholar, the most
intellectually impressive. She has influence on the hero's psyche and her
contribution stands at the centre of the dramatic narrative. Through her
research project, she comes to understand the meaning of the threat of the
mass media. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, she is unable to provide a
solution to her husband's dilemmas, whether emotionally, culturally or
intellectually. This is apparent in the shot of the couple lying in bed, back to
back, each engrossed in their own thoughts. He is doomed to go through a
symbolic suicide/execution. With all her power, she is helpless.
In the two movies described below, from 1973 and 1974, respectively, the
female characters are significantly more active and persistent in pursuing
their dreams. They have the brains and the looks to achieve their goals, if not
the status or the education. They do their best, with their persistence,
dexterity and femininity, but do not necessarily succeed.
Shapur Qarib's 1973 The Gamecock (Khorus) begins with a beautiful scene
of a cockfight in a small village. The excitement of the onlookers and the

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drama of the event set the stage for this dramatic movie. Twenty years earlier,
the teahouse owner, Mashdi, had lost the woman he loved in a cockfight bet.
This woman, now a widow, who secretly loves Mashdi's rival, the butcher
Allahyar, and wishes to marry him, is Ali's mother. Ali, however, blocks his
mother's hopes of remarrying by refusing to get married first himself. He
changes his mind later on as he falls in love with Mashdi's daughter. His
mother's sexual appetite gets the better of her and she plans with the butcher
to kill Mashdi. Similar to the famous scene in Hamlet, Ali stabs the butcher to
death, and then kills his mother. Ali is arrested for murder. Mashdi and his
daughter remain in the village, devastated.
The message of the film is twofold: first, that the younger generation is a
victim of the corruption and misconduct of the mid-life generation. The
young are pure, but may become violent in their struggle against corruption.
The second message is that the power of the female characters to achieve
positive results is limited. Both women are portrayed as possessing a better
understanding of reality than their men and both appear to have a
considerable say in what happens. Nonetheless, whether in plotting a murder
or in showing the way to pure innocent love, both women characters fail to
reach their goals. They do, indeed, play the role of a soul and compass for
their men, but following these directions leads to disaster. This is in contrast
to the role of women in the following film, in which a woman saves the day.
Iraj Qadiri's 1974 The Cage (Qafas) juxtaposes traditional social and
family values, such as morality, honour, reputation and revenge, with human
interpersonal values and emotions, such as love, compassion and friendship.
Davud, a gambler, hides his fugitive friend Asghar, who has raped a
woman and killed a man, in the attic of his father's house, assisted by his
mother and then by Mehri, his cousin, with whom he has fallen in love.
Asghar, trapped in his hideout - the cage of the title - passes the time by
peeking at the stunning Mehri. As she is the one bringing him food, a certain
closeness develops between them. One night, drunk, he rapes her, the scene
interspersed with shots of Davud engaged in a violent fistfight in a bar.
Asghar cries and asks Mehri not to tell Davud, the only person who believes
in him, about the rape. From this point on, the story spins out of control.
Mehri has fallen pregnant and Davud's younger brother discovers the
hideout, which brings the father into the picture. The father loses his honour
and his job. Husain, the murdered man's brother, and the police are closing in
on Asghar, and Davud moves his friend to another hideout. Mehri follows
Asghar, whom she now wants to marry in order to save herself from the
disgrace of being unwed and pregnant. Only then does she discover that
Davud, her true love, loves her as much as she loves him. Davud, however,
leams about the rape of Mehri and joins Husain in pursuing Asghar. By
means of a kind of heavenly intervention, the movie comes to a miraculous

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conclusion. As Davud and Husain come to kill Asghar, Mehri succeeds in

convincing Davud that Asghar was not really responsible for the rape,
because he was drunk. Davud tries to save Asghar from Husain, but to no
avail: he dies in Davud's arms with Davud reassuring him that they are
friends forever. Davud and Mehri will marry, suggests the ending of this
'never a dull moment' film.
Examining the women characters in the movie through its many twists and
turns reveals a mixture of power and powerlessness. The women are portrayed
as soft and compassionate. Davud's mother tries to save Asghar from her
husband's rage and Mehri feels sorry for Asghar as well. Still, through their
influence on men, they determine much of how the story unfolds. At the
beginning of the film, Mahmud, whose girlfriend was raped by Asghar, states
that his loved one came to him in a dream and insisted that he avenge her rape.
She achieves her goal. Davud's mother wants her husband to admit her son
back into the home. Davud returns home. Mehri, too, displays her own will.
She defends Asghar from Davud's father's rage and also protects him from
Davud's revenge. Later, she is able to convince Davud to give up his manly
honour by not killing her rapist, and by taking her, a deflowered pregnant
woman, to be his wife. In doing so, she also saves her bridegroom-to-be from
the prospect of a long jail term, thus securing their marriage.
In short, while maintaining traditional decorum outwardly, the women in
this movie have a say in their life and sexuality. The film detects cracks in the
patriarchal system, as represented by the father and the state bureaucracy.
One may argue that The Cage also preserves an image of women as soft on
values, truth and dignity, and possessing an inherent sexuality that is
irresistible to men, an argument often raised by clerics to justify curbs on
women. Nonetheless, with all their faults and weaknesses, the impression is
that the women characters were created to be well liked by the audience.
Hence, the film provides a fantasy of resolving some of the contradictions
experienced by Iranian society in a mild, pragmatic and non-ideological way.
Thus, it suggests that there were voices in the Iran of the 1 970s other than the
either/or attitudes of the regime and its opponents. As in the other movies of
the 1972-74 period, this film, too, presents a woman who represents a
mixture of weakness and the beginnings of inner strength.
Over time, women characters are shown not only to be more pro-active and
striving to influence events by any number of behind-the-scenes tactics, but
also as individuals openly defending their rights and wishes.
One such character is Fati in Mas'ud Kimya'i's The Deer (Gavaznha,
1 975).30 Fati (Fatemeh), a stage actress who supports her drug
husband Seyyed, is overworked and miserable. Everything changes, however,

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when Qodrat, a wounded bank robber and an old school-friend of Seyyed,

seeks refuge in the home of the couple. Qodrat, representing an Islamist-
Marxist guerilla fighter, generates a transformation in Seyyed's personality.
He becomes assertive and fights for justice: he kills his oppressive drug
dealer, defends the other tenants of the compound in their struggle against the
landlord, and punches an abusive colleague of Fati's on the nose. In the last
sequence of the movie, the police surround the building complex and the two
men die heroically in the ensuing shoot-out.
The movie carries a political message.31 Fatemeh clearly is an allusion to
the heroic daughter of the prophet Muhammad, who became a role model for
Iranian revolutionary women. Indeed, the entire screenplay is commensurate
with the Islamist-Marxist ideology of guerilla groups like the Mojahedin-e
Khalq and with the worldview of Ali Shari'ati, especially as described in his
'Fatemeh Fatemeh Ast' ('Fatima is Fatima'). Fati is an actress who plays a
variety of roles and mingles with men. She is loyal and honest, but not
particularly religious. Arguably, an acting career and religious observance
were incompatible for an Iranian woman of the period. She is definitely a
strong woman who copes with difficult conditions, but she also complains a
lot about the hardships. All in all, her role is to hold the pieces together until
the moment for change comes.
Fati stands between the old paradigm of quiet perseverance and open
revolutionary action. She works and struggles and defends herself and her
drug-addict husband as best and as bravely as she can. The change itself,
however, is inspired by the party line as preached by Qodrat, the male
intellectual guerilla fighter. Indeed, as the final scene is about to begin,
Seyyed is careful to send his wife out of harm's way, relegating her to the
status of traditional woman - protected and passive.
Against this background, a cinematic character that stands alone is Ra'na
in Bahram Beiza'i's 1975 The Stranger and the Fog (Gharibeh va Meh). The
story takes place in a village by the sea, some time in the primordial past.
Ra'na, a young woman whose husband had been lost at sea, marries Ayat, a
young man who came from the sea, but lost his memory. Anxieties associated
with Ayat's past life haunt the couple. At first, Ayat appears to be the stronger
of the two, but then the roles shift and Ra'na becomes the more determined
and courageous. When mysterious strangers in black attire come after Ayat,
he wants to flee, but Ra'na insists on them staying and fighting. Ra'na plays a
heroic role in the battle and the villagers win. Ayat, however, has a change of
heart. He decides that he must go back to sea to find out, once and for all, why
these strangers are after him. Ra'na tears off her garments and emerges
dressed in black widow's weeds, weeping, covering her face with mud.
In 1975, the year the movie was released, the Shah's regime was as strong
as ever. After four years of fierce struggle against Marxist and Islamist-

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Marxist guerillas, the gov

agreement reached with Iraq brought Iran territorial gains; and unheard-of
quantities of petrodollars were pouring in largely as a result of the Shah's
leadership in OPEC. The gap between the state and the people, however,
continued to grow as is evident from the failure to muster popular support for
a single-party political system. Revolution was not really an option, but
movies of the period did feature revolutionary scenes. The Stranger and the
Fog is unique in the way it presents this fantasy.
The concluding battle scene of the movie paradoxically implies both a
victory in a popular struggle and the futility of such a victory. Beiza'i, indeed,
was among the very few who could appreciate the cultural complexity of the
Iranian situation in the 1970s and the impossibility of solving deep-rooted
socio-cultural problems with an uprising or a revolution. In his movie,
Beiza'i proposes that victory in battle would mean, for men, a loss of
individuality, and, for women, a return to loneliness and abandonment as
black-clad widows. One cannot but marvel at the farsightedness of this film
director in presenting a scenario in which men were on the verge of losing
their desire for individualism and women of losing their hard-earned new
status in society - very much like a dress rehearsal for the Revolution and its
aftermath.
The character of Ra'na suggests that women figures can play leadership
roles and, when they know what they want, act and pursue their goals. Unlike
Atefeh in Beizai's previously mentioned film, Downpour, Ra'na is able to
marry the man she loves, overcoming significant social resistance. Similarly,
the character of Ra'na's mother, who encourages her defiant young daughter,
takes the opposite stance to Atefeh's sick old mother, who blocks her
daughter's prospects of love and personal growth. Of all the characters
described in this article, Beiza'i's Ra'na comes closest to a feminist view of a
woman who is able to lead, fight, and still remain feminine. The Stranger and
the Fog develops a theme that appears in other films, such as The Gamecock
in 1973 and The Cage in 1974, in which women figures are both emotionally
feminine and goal-oriented. Ra'na's struggle does not entail sacrificing her
individuality for a male-focused cause.
Projecting these female characters onto the social domain, the message of
the film appears to be that society needs a combination of a search for
identity (the 'emotionally feminine' in the films) and a struggle against
dictatorship (the 'goal-oriented' female characters). The latter is primarily
against the 'other', while the former is primarily for finding a new meaning
through introspection, free speech and open debate. The final defeat of Ra'na
implies that the director himself was doubtful as to whether combining a
struggle against oppression with introspection was realistic at the time. As
will be shown below, in films closer to the time of the Revolution, the focus

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is either on the revolutionary theme or on introspection and search for

meaning.
Iranian New Wave films produced in the 1970s often portrayed a despairing
picture of a squalid and disintegrating society. On the one hand, the women
characters in the following three films continue the trend of struggling for and
trying to express their love and identity, but on the other, are helpless in the
face of reality.
Sohrab Shahid Sales' 1975 Still Life (Tabiat-e Bijan) is a critically
acclaimed film that brings to life the minute details of the everyday life of an
old couple, a railway signalman and his wife. A simple story line slowly
unfolds as some of these details are loosely strung together. There is an
ominous visit by three officials from the railway authority. Traders purchase
for very little money a rug made by Muhammad Agha's wife. The couple's
son, a conscript soldier, comes to visit and stays overnight, in transit from one
base to another. Muhammad Aqa receives a letter informing him that he is
laid off. The new young signalman arrives and is accepted as a guest by the
couple. Muhammad visits the railway office in the nearest town, trying, to no
avail, to reverse his dismissal. He is ignored. The two leave their home of 33
years.
In this couple, both man and woman are helpless. The woman, however, is
portrayed as having a stronger feeling for reality. She works harder, knows
what she wants and what is needed, and asks her husband to provide it. Again
and again, she asks him to order sugar, which he does not do. She wants to
buy a chador. She prepares the meals, serves tea, cleans the empty room, and
sits weaving the rest of the time. She also takes care of their son when he is at
home. She does not participate in the negotiations with outside elements,
such as the traders or the railway authority; that is her husband's job.32 The
husband, thus, is the more helpless of the two, since he does not fulfil his role
of handling relations with outside elements. Nevertheless, although she is
portrayed as fully functional and serious, her traditional mentality does not
allow her to take charge or change the couple's destiny.
Women characters in The Custodian (Saraydar, 1976) also face dual
repression - that of their traditional family roles and that of the merciless
power of Iran's brand of capitalism. Director Khosrow Haritash created a
long, depressing, black-and-white film about a young man, Fakhri,
clandestinely shooting an amateur film - cinema verite' style - of his father's
life. To the embarrassment of everybody involved, he broadcasts the film on a
TV station, exposing his father, a poor caretaker, and the rest of the family t
public humiliation. The father is consequently fired and becomes a peddler on
the freezing streets of snowy Tehran; Fakhri is thrown out of his parents'

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home and his younger, retarded brother, commits suicide. Fakhri's greatest
loss, however, seems to be his serious, clandestine and very erotic love affair
with the daughter of Ja'far, a neighbour and a former co-worker of his father
who is clever at working the rules to his own advantage. The opportunistic
Ja'far marries off Fakhri's girlfriend to another man. The marriage ceremony
takes place as Fakhri's family mourns the death of the young brother. All
Fakhri can do is watch and suffer. As the picture vanishes from the screen,
the soundtrack of party music, voices of the party revellers and fireworks
turns into what could be easily interpreted as gunshots and crowds shouting
battle cries. Sexual and emotional repression turn into a filmed revolutionary
cry.
In terms of female characters, one cannot but infer that, in- a society of
exploiters and the exploited, women are among the exploited. Moreover, they
are portrayed to a large an extent as a background for the struggles of men.
There are three types of women around the custodian's boss: his secretary,
whose job is to serve him; his wife, who appears to be treated like a house
pet; and the prostitutes who entertain him when he is not at home. Fakhri's
mother is a hard-working woman who blames her husband for all her
miseries. She is unable to change him or anything else, and has to obey the
men in her family, including her son, whom she loves, and even to accept the
occasional beating. Finally, Ja'far's daughter - Fakhri's clandestine lover - is
a voluptuous young woman who is open about her sexuality and her love. She
is portrayed, however, as having no say in her own destiny, and also becomes
a victim.
An important message of the film, represented in both female and male
characters, is that expressing one's own identity in a cruel traditional
capitalistic and exploitative society, as Iran of the 1970s is portrayed, is a
dangerous and futile business. Just as Fakhri cannot express his true
perception of his father without dire consequences, and just as his brother has
to pay with his life for his handicap, so Ja'far's daughter is doomed to endure
an unhappy marriage. Her efforts to be a pro-active, loving woman are no
more than another exercise in futility.
The search for genuine love and intimacy continued, however, even as the
country was engulfed in the flames of the Revolution. Amir Naderi's 1978
Elegy (Marsiyeh) is a sensitive, low-key film describing the life of the
underclass on the periphery of the bustling metropolis of Tehran. The femal
characters of the film are prostitutes or helpless women.
The main protagonist is the gloomy and lonely Nasrollah, a released
prisoner who sets up a target for people to shoot at: a wooden board covered
with magazine photographs of girls in swimsuits. While the customers are
mostly male, a group of coarse, giggly prostitutes joins in. Nasrollah
befriends two other street entertainers. One of them is a pardehdar, a story-

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teller specializing in the

dramatic scenes painted on a long canvas. The bonding of the three provides
Nasrollah with a substitute family until one of them dies and the other,
Morshed the pardehdar, has an affair with a lottery-ticket seller. In another
sad relationship, Nasrollah adopts the wife and son of a fellow prison inmate.
The destitute woman, pregnant by another man, is having an abortion, and
Nasrollah helps the family.
Emotional and sexual deprivation are one focus of the film. The thrill of
shooting at pictures of half-naked women and prostitution represent cheap
substitutes for a meaningful love life. Nasrollah himself uses the services of a
prostitute, although what he clearly wants and needs is a woman to marry and
a child to raise. He uses pornography to make a living, but prays in the
mosque. Similarly, Morshed makes money by stirring up religious emotions,
but after work, engages in drinking, card playing and non-marital sex with his
lottery ticket-seller girlfriend - all activities prohibited by Islam. In one
disturbing sequence, Nasrollah spends an evening drinking and joking with
Morshed and his girlfriend, after which the three of them sleep on mattresses
on the floor, with only a thin cloth curtain separating the couple from
Nasrollah. Embarrassingly, he is virtually in the room when they make love.
The woman goes out and smokes a cigarette with Nasrollah after her satisfied
lover has fallen asleep. This combination of intimacy and loneliness, decency
and lewdness, religiousness and license is typical of the movie as a whole.
Indeed, although it shows the power of religion, Elegy does not assume a
self-righteous, revivalist 'Islam-is-the-solution' posture, but rather a low-key,
sceptical and humane view of society, which is at the same time empathetic
and pessimistic. The long sequences of Nasrollah wandering the streets or
criss-crossing busy thoroughfares carrying his air-gun and target board
provide a stark contrast between the weakness of the man with the gun,
supposedly a deadly weapon but here a useless prop, and the overwhelming
presence of the big city. His is not the gun of the Mojahedin or Fedaiyan
guerillas. No gun can kill the loneliness of man.
In the three films discussed above - Still Life (1975), The Custodian (1976)
and Elegy (1978) - one finds women and men struggling in a meaningless,
oppressive and disintegrating society. The focus of these characters is
personal and their effort is directed towards building or maintaining a loving
family or an intimate relationship. These and other films suggest that at least
parts of Iranian society were not looking for a violent uprising, but for many
more low-key changes and for genuine emotional relationships among
individuals. Indeed, these sensitive and humanistic works of art are
reminiscent of some of the more renowned Iranian films of the 1990s that
refocused attention back from the weighty revolutionary themes to the
individual. In the atmosphere of the late 1970s, however, the majority of

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society rejected the search for individual intimacy and emotional fulfillment
in favour of a goal-directed revolutionary zeal. Attendance at movie
screenings sharply declined.
The Revolution rejected displays of emotional intimacy. Sexuality and
intimacy, for which the entire female population of Iran became a symbol,
was barred from the public sphere. Real women - now people-turned-
symbols - had to put up with being segregated and wearing clothes that
covered them from head to toe. The process of forgoing intimacy is portrayed
in two films released prior to the Revolution. The first describes a woman's
reaction to an attack on her intimacy, and the second, women forgoing
intimacy to become part of the one revolutionary body. In both cases, the
women characters are struggling with power rarely seen before.
Eighteen-year-old village girl Ruy Bekheir is the main character in Marva
Nabili's 1977 film The Sealed Soil, made in Iran before the Revolution, but
edited and released later in the USA. Ruy Bekheir refuses to marry and rejects
all her suitors. Her method of resistance to the enormous pressure exerted on
her by the entire village is mentally letting go. Ruy Bekheir's pre-teen young
sister, Golabetun, comfortably follows the example of her female teacher who
wears the shirt-and-trousers uniform of the Shah's Literacy Corps (Sepah-e
Danesh). The influence of the teacher worries the mother who cannot
understand why Golabetun is becoming so careful about personal grooming
and dressing. The village chief, Ruy Bekehir's uncle, helps the government to
turn life upside down in the name of progress. Women, however, should stick
to the old ways. The chief treasures the memory of the woman's lot of not so
long ago: little girls married off and bearing children at puberty. Ruy Bekheir,
then, is caught in the middle: she lives in modern times, but must sacrifice
herself as if nothing had changed. Unlike her young sister, she lacks the
training and awareness of an assertive new woman; in the symbolism of this
film, she cannot groom herself and dress up. She takes her clothes off.
Again and again, she goes to the open areas outside the village either to
wash the laundry or to collect green branches like other village girls. At one
point, she takes off her head cover and sleeps in the open. Another scene
shows three women gossiping about her, talking about how weird she has
become and how she rejects her suitors. It starts raining and, in a dramatic
scene, Ruy Bekheir, finding herself alone in the open, removes her clothes
from the waist up and lets her body be washed by the downpour. Nude in the
wilderness, she stands separate from both suffocating tradition and intrusive
modernization.
Iran's 1978/79 Revolution, it is argued, was both progressive and
reactionary. It was a fight against the old ways as much as against
modernization and reform. This movie's women characters exemplify this
paradox. On the one hand, one is presented with the teacher from the Literacy

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Corps and the little girl Golabetun pushing for new roles for women. On the
other hand, the entire village takes Ruy Bekheir to the traditional healer. The
scenario as a whole is not unlike what actually happened in Iran in 1978/79:
in the midst of a modernization campaign, the people turned to the person
whom they took to be a harmless old healer, Ayatollah Khomeini, and
expected him to cure the country's ailments with some tried-and-true
traditional medicine.
Ruy Bekheir, however, not unlike the Iranian nation, does not react so well
to the traditional medicine. She has nothing to offer men. In her weakness and
perplexity, she displays strong resistance to the system that wants to co-opt
her into the patriarchal way of life. Her solution is disintegration and being
cleansed by the rain.
An entirely different type of female character - the revolutionary woman -
can be seen in Mas'ud Kimya'i's 1978 The Journey of the Stone (Safar-e
Sang).33 In Mohammad Abad, a village on the Iranian plateau, the area's
landowner also controls the only local mill. In order to grind their grain, the
poor villagers must pay whatever he charges and put up with his overbearing
behaviour. All efforts to find an alternative are easily thwarted by the owner
and his gang of ruffians. A brave stranger manages to assemble a small group,
including himself, a couple of villagers, two women (Fatemeh and the
daughter of a local spiritual leader), the fool and the old blacksmith. They
ride to the quarry to complete the mission of carving a huge millstone. After
many obstacles, clashes and scenes of martyrdom, in which the women
actively participate, they succeed in towing the stone all the way to the
village where a final showdown with the landowner takes place. The rebels
roll the huge stone down a hill until it hits and destroys the landowner's
stately mansion.
The world of this movie is very clear: a bad guy cynically exploits the poor
and frightened people. The solution to this clear-cut problem is equally clear-
cut: the exploiter must go. The message is basically an Islamic guerilla
message along the lines of Shari'ati's Islam as a revolutionary ideology. A
group of pioneering avant-garde fighters leads the way in the struggle. Their
courage and belief in the Islamist-Leninist message provides a sure recipe for
victory. The female figures in the movie fit into the revolutionary mould, for
example, in the use of the name, Fatemeh, the daughter of Prophet
Muhammad, who became the ideal and typical revolutionary woman in Iran.
Indeed, the two women characters are prototype revolutionary yet traditional
figures. In the early scenes, they adopt traditional women's roles. They obey
men and await their instructions. They sit apart from the men and take on
serving and tending tasks. As the story evolves, however, they become more
and more like the men. They help in pushing the huge stone, they prod the
mules, shouting at and kicking them, and, indeed, in some climactic shots,

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they even let their hair blow wildly in the wind when they are completely
absorbed in their enthusiasm for the struggle. This kind of unveiling does not
denote a feminist-oriented defiance, as in the case of the famous provocative
unveiling in public of the ninteenth century Qorrat ol-'Eyn,34 or the kind of
passive individual defiance of Ruy Bekheir's undressing in The Sealed Soil.
In fact, the roles of the women in the film are akin to the roles of women in
actual revolutionary organizations, as described, for example, by Haideh
Moghissi. She explains that the role of women in the Marxist Fedaiyan-e
Khalq was typically subservient to men's leadership and, at times, women
assumed outright men's roles. In both cases women were not fighting for
particularly female or feminist issues, such as equality or sexual freedom,
because rights and needs of women were seen as distracting and too
bourgeois to be taken seriously.35 Hence, the two women characters of The
Journey of the Stone have no romantic interests, no relations with men of
their own age and no maternal or marital roles, not to mention professions.
They are soldiers in a revolutionary army led by men and fight side by side
with men as men.
Indeed, the entire group of characters in the revolutionary avant-garde
suggests blurring the differences between the various members of society and
rising up together to meet the revolutionary challenge. Hence, the group
includes an outsider (Khomeini?), the old, a mentally unstable person, and
women. They sport multi-coloured headwear, including green and red,
suggesting a common ground between Islam and socialism. The group fits the
description of a religious revolutionary movement as defined by Shari'ati:
A spirit and a motion which is moving toward a purpose, and all its
followers, and all the issues, orders, ideas and functions, slogans and
even ceremonies which exist among its followers, all aim at that
purpose, and everything and everybody is an instrument to accomplish
that purpose for which the movement has come to exist.36
Women, then, are included as part of a wall-to-wall coalition in motion

and not as individuals with special needs and rights. Iranian audiences,
watching the two women characters, saw determination, power and sacrifice
in a struggle against the Pahlavi state. In this movie, however, there is nofor,
only against. Without an individual feminine perspective, the women
characters in the film have little to offer by way of showing where all this
will lead once the revolution is over. They are part of the battle, but they are
not a 'female compass': by sacrificing both femininity and feminism, they
cannot inspire the audience as to what their life will look like after the
revolution. Their solution to the crisis of disintegration, which is evident in
so many films, is the use of anger as an integrating emotion.37 This strategy

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clearly can only work as long as there is an enemy against whom anger can
be directed.
Thus, on the eve of the Revolution, one can see two contradictory ways of
desexualizing women: the refusal of a young woman to marry and her
insistence on remaining intimate only with herself and nature; and women
who are so busy fighting that they have no time for individual self-
exploration of their emotions and sexuality.
One of the social dilemmas represented by the female film characters in the
period under discussion is the extent to which people were satisfied with their
social environment and way of life. As shown above, at least in the eyes of
the artists who created these women, helplessness, weakness and despair
were not far below the surface in Iran even in those seemingly happy days of
the late 1960s and early 1970s. This mood of despair grew more acute as time
passed.
Another social dilemma represented by cinematic female figures deals with
the general self-confidence of society vis-'a-vis the dictatorial regime. As the
characters of women presented in the films gradually evolve from helplessly
passive to assertively pro-active, one wonders whether this development of
the growing inner strength of the typically exploited woman does not suggest
a growing determination of the people to take a stand against oppression.
The picture is somewhat more nuanced, since the abuse suffered by female
characters illustrates not only the weakness of the nation, but also the cruelty
of the state. Hence, the suffering of the women figures may suggest mounting
rage and growing revolutionary awareness. Nonetheless, the pattern of
growing inner strength appears to be the rule. The process is gradual: from
complete helplessness to weak and passive women characters (1969-70), to
stronger but still passive female figures (1972-73), to the more pro-active and
determined, but still weak, women (1973-75), to a very strong woman
(1975), and, finally, to the protester and the fighter (1977-78). Out of
weakness and passivity, strength of character slowly develops. The use of
newly discovered power is gradually being implemented, culminating in a
revolutionary-style masculine-like struggle on the eve of the Revolution.
Interestingly, fantasies of violence and rebellion are present throughout the
1968-1978 decade, beginning with the 1969 blockbuster Qaisar. In terms of
social struggle, however, violence in the movies is not an indication of
violent collective action. While the leftist guerillas had engaged in violence
since 1971, the majority joined in only later, some time after the cinematic
female characters displayed a degree of resolution and self-confidence.
A third social dilemma is whether the nation should move full-steamn ahead
towards an economically and culturally westernized society or cling to its

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traditional way of life. Most of the films, as reflected by many female

characters, are critical of westernized society, a significant conclusion since
the film-makers were part of the modern intellectual elite. A number of films
suggests that accommodation of the old and the new is all but impossible,
while others, evidently inspired by the ideas of Ali Shari'ati, feature young
Islamist women conceived to fit the mould of Fatima, the Prophet's daughter.
Yet another social dilemma is echoed by the fact that most of the women
characters in this group of movies are not truly independent, economically or
professionally. In the few cases in which they do have an occupation (scholar,
actress, singer), it does not bring happiness or power. As a reflection of the
nation, the women characters suggest that pre-revolutionary fantasies,
although often revolving around freedom from oppression, do not include a
vision of a free, independent and self-reliant citizenry.
The fifth social dilemma represented by the women characters on screen is
the question of the extent of receptiveness of contemporary Iranian society to
individual needs for intimacy and emotional expression. Some of the movies
also emphasize sexual deprivation of both men and women and the
relationship between this predicament and the power structure of society.
As one sees in the female figures in the movies, the problem of intimacy and
interpersonal relations was presented with growing pessimism right up to
1978. A vision combining a solution to the intimacy problem and an effort to
change society as a whole is reflected only in Beiza'i's 1975 The Stranger
and the Fog.
To emphasize this point, the main female characters of two of the late films
are juxtaposed. In 1977, The Sealed Soil, the main character takes off her
clothes when she is alone in the rain, as a symbol of her search for self and
refusal to marry a man just because she is expected to do so. In 1978, The
Journey of the Stone, desexualized female characters keep themselves
covered in traditional dress while participating in revolutionary action.
Hence, paradoxically, both nudity and fundamentalist concealing of the body
reflect society's difficulties with intimacy and feminine expression. In one
case, nudity represents a refusal to adopt a proscribed sexual role, and, in the
other, the covered female soldier of the revolution simply avoids entirely the
subject of intimacy and sexuality.
Hence, the sixth social dilemma suggested by this study is that there is a
close connection between the extent to which female characters were
portrayed as having a right to pursue happiness and the existence of basic
human rights, especially to free speech, in society at large. In a number of
films serious love relationships are nipped in the bud largely because of
issues related to exposing unpleasant realities. In other films, these
relationships are blocked by rigid social censorship. A woman who is
reading and writing is raped; a woman's intimacy is abused by an agent of

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the state repression apparatus. In another example, a woman loses her love
when the male character forgoes free will and free thinking. One character
has a breakdown and, rejecting marriage and intimacy, cuts herself off from
rational discourse. Other women figures melt into a monolithic revolutionary
front in which they have no say and no love life. The most that some movies
allow for is either for women characters to agree lovingly with men's wishes
or cautiously and indirectly to convince men to make the right decision.
Hence, it appears that none of the movies envisages a society that appreciates
freedom of speech.
In conclusion, the Iranian case suggests that female characters in the
movies can inform us about society in ways that go far beyond the status of
women themselves. The films can show how strong and willing society is to
stand up to oppression; to what extent it is ready to move ahead with
processes of modernization; whether its citizens aspire to political and
economic self-reliance; how open it is to intimacy and interpersonal relations;
and to what extent it values public debate and free speech. The solutions
advanced by the film-makers provide an insight into the period and its
aftermath. They tell us that despair was prevalent, readiness to rebel was
mounting, and the attitude to modernization was one of suspicion. Yet, there
was no aspiration to be a self-reliant citizenry, openness to intimacy was
problematic, and attitudes to free speech were mixed.
Furthermore, these female characters - fashioned mainly by westernized
film-makers, but watched by larger audiences - indicate that change was in
the air and that there was more than one vision of the preferred outcome. A
number of these characters, mainly in commercial feature films, reflect the
belief that patience combined with pro-active pragmatism could resolve even
the most difficult of social tensions. Several of the New Wave characters,
alternatively, emphasize the deep cultural confusion and the complexity of
the quest for authentic identity. Female characters in yet another group of
movies straightforwardly point to the direction of an Islamist revolution.
Intriguingly, the only film presented in this article that depicts a perfect
marital love life is Tangsir (1975), in which the wife is portrayed as loving,
loyal, and obedient. This woman's relationship with her revolutionary
husband, if projected onto Iran of a decade later, outlines the expectations of
Iran's spiritual leader from his nation: to love and to obey.
NOTES
The author is grateful to Dr Ruth Roded, Professor Emmanuel Sivan and the late Dr Sorour
Soroudi for their invaluable comments, and Ms Edna Sachar for editorial assistance.
1. Akrami defines the 1969-79 decade as 'The Progressive Cinema'. Jamshid Akrami, 'Cinema
II. Feature Films', in Ehsan Yarshater (ed.), Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol.5 (1992), pp.572-

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86. Golmakani points out that many consider Davud Mollapour's 1968 Mr Ahu 's Husband to
be the first film of the Iranian New Wave. Houshang Golmakani, 'The Pre-Revolution Years
of Iranian Cinema', n.d. (downloaded on 5 Feb. 2000 from http://www.cinemairan.com), first
published in Film Magazine. Hamid Naficy, 'Cinema as a Political Instrument', in Michael
0. Bonine and Nikki R. Keddie (eds.), Continuity and Change in Modern Iran, (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1981), pp.265-83; Peter J. Chelkowski, 'Popular
Entertainment, Media, and Social Change in Twentieth Century Iran,' in (eds.) Peter Avery
et al., The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol.7, (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1991), pp.765-814; Massoud Mehrabi, Tarikh-e Sinema-ye Iran: Az Aghaz ta Sal-e 1357
(Tehran: Entesharat-e Film, 1987).
2. John Foran, 'The Iranian Revolution of 1977-79: A Challenge for Social Theory', in John
Foran (ed.), A Century of Revolution: Social Movements in Iran, (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1994), pp.160-88.
3. For more on this movie, including clips and interviews with the director and with experts,
see: Jamshid Akrami-Ghorveh, 'Dreams Betrayed: A Study of Political Cinema in Iran
(1969-79)' (Columbia University: Doctoral Dissertation, 1986).
4. Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (28 July 1830) is the classic. For many
examples see: Marilyn Yalom, A History of the Breast, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998),
pp.105-45; Paul Trouillas, Le Complexe de Marianne (Paris: Seuil, 1998); Maurice Agulhon,
Marianne into Battle: Republican Imagery and Symbolism in France, 1789-1880, tr. Janet
Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Other examples are Italia and
Germania in Europe and the statue of liberty in the USA. For Egypt, see Beth Baron,
'Nationalist Iconography: Egypt as a Woman', in J. Jankowski and I. Gershonieds,
Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab World, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
In the Old Testament see Ezekiel 23 and Hosea 2: 4-17. For the use of woman as a trope for
the Land of Israel (Palestine), awaiting the return of the Jewish people, in the literature of the
first Aliyah (1882-1903), see Yaffah Berlovitz, Inventing a Land, Inventing a People (Tel
Aviv: Hakkibutz Hameuchad, 1996), pp.8-9 and passim. For imaginary and other city muses
see: Sandow Birk, In Smoke and Thunder: Historical Works from the Great War of the
Californias (Laguna Beach, CA: Laguna Art Museum, 2000), pp.19, 20, 33.
5. Afsaneh Najmabadi, 'The Erotic Vatan [Homeland] as Beloved and Mother: to Love, to
Possess, and to Protect', Comparative Studies of Society and History, Vol.3, No.39 (1997)
pp.442-67; C.M. Amin, 'Selling and Saving "Mother Iran": Gender and the Iranian Press in
the 1940s', International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.33, No.3 (2001).
6. For examples see: Hassan Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature (Bethesda, MD:
Iranbooks, 1996); Azar Naficy, 'Images of Women in Classical Persian Literature and the
Contemporary Iranian Novel', in M. Afkhami and E. Friedl (eds.), In the Eye of the Storm:
Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994),
pp.1 15-30. See also: P. Qazisa'id, 'Rosva'i' [Shame] in his Farar (Tehran: Entesharat-e
Asia, 1966), pp.129-38; Fattaneh Hajj-Sayyed Javadi (Parvin), Bamdad-e Khomar [A
Morning Hangover] (Tehran: 1994). See illuminating discussion in Ali Ferdowsi, 'Havas-e
Kham: Hades-e Enqelab dar Bamdad-e Khomar,' Iran Nameh, Vol.15, No.3 (Fall 1998).
7. Parvin Paidar, 'Feminism and Islam in Iran,' in Deniz Kandioti (ed.), Gendering the Middle
East: Emerging Perspectives, (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1996); Haleh Esfandiari,
Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran's Islamic Revolution (Baltimore and London: The
John Hopkins University Press, 1997), pp.1-9.
8. Najmabadi, 'The Erotic Vatan'.
9. According to Neumann, 'The anima is the vehicle par excellence of the transformative
character. It is the mover, the instigator of change, whose fascination drives, lures, and
encourages the male to all the adventures of the soul and the spirit, of action and creation in
the inner and outward world.' Erich Neumann, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the
Archetype, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Princeton University Press, 1955), p.33.
10. Peter J. Chelkowski and Hamid Dabashi, Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the
Islamic Republic of Iran (London: Booth-Clibborn Editions, 1999); Haideh Moghissi,
Populism and Feminism in Iran: Women 's Struggle in a Man-Defined Revolutionary

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Movement (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), pp.60-61; Ferdowsi, 'Havas-e Kham,'
especially pp.656, 669-73.
11. Charles Issawi, 'The Economy: An Assessment of Performance', in Ehsan Yar-Shater (ed.),
Iran Faces the Seventies (New York: Praeger, 1971); Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the
Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), p.322;
Mohammad Gholi Majd, 'Small Landowners and Land Distribution in Iran, 1962-71',
International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol.32, No. 1 (2000); Nikki R. Keddie, Roots of
Revolution: An Interpretative History of Modern Iran (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1981), pp.142-82; Fred Halliday, Iran: Dictatorship and Development, 2nd
ed. (New York: Penguin, 1979); Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982); Said Amir Arjomand, The Turban for the
Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Misagh
Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers
University Press, 1989).
12. Ervand Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999) pp.2, 98-123.
13. Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Gharbzadegi (Weststruckness) trans. by John Green and Ahmad Alizadeh
(Lexington, KY: Mazda, 1982); Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The
Tormented Triumph of Nativism (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996), p.65.
14. Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals, especially 52-76; Brad Hanson, 'The 'Westoxication' of
Iran: Depictions and Reactions of Behrangi, Al-e Ahmad, and Shariati', International
Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.15, No.1, (1983).
15. Mollapour's screenplay is based on a 1961 novel of that title by Ali Mohammad Afghani.
16. For two women characters as two alternative worldviews in the 1980s and 1990s see Bahram
Beiza'i's 1988 Maybe Some Other Time (Shayad Vaqti Digar), Rakhshan Bani-E'temad's
1992 Nargess and Tahmineh Milani's 1999 Two Women (Do Zan).
17. As Haim points out, 'From the earliest days of European contact with Islam, polygamy has
been singled out for Western attack.' Sylvia G. Haim, 'East and West: Love in an Arab
Climate', Encounter (Feb. 1978), p.88. Polygamy was used in a recent Israeli novel to
portray a quintessential divide between West and East, cutting in half Medieval Judaism.
A.B. Yehoshua. A Journey to the End of the Millennium, trans. N. De Lange (New York:
Doubleday, 1999).
18. The screenplay, by Dariush Mehrju'i and Gholam Hossein Sa'edi, is based on the latter's
story ' Gav', included in his book Azadaran-e Bayal (The Mourners of Baya[). Naser
Zera'ati, ed. Majmu 'ah-ye Maqalat dar Mo 'arrefi va Naqd-e Asar-e Daryush-e Mehrju'i
(Tehran: Entesharat-e Nahid, 1996), pp.141, 169; Chelkowski and Dabashi, Staging a
Revolution, p.188; Akrami, 'Cinema II', pp.574-5.
19. Iranian reviewers generally agree that the relationship between man and cow in this film is
that of lovers, i.e., 'lover and beloved' ('asheq va ma'shuq): Hosami (Zera'ati, Majmu 'a-ye
Maqalat, p.166); Bijan Khorsand (Daftarha-ye Sinema, 4, 1981/1360, reprinted in idem,
173). Behzad Eshqi describes this love as mad and mystic (shadi and 'erfani). Mihan
Bahrami (Motavaselani) argues that Iranians are not particularly concerned with love of
animals and hence this relationship should be understood as an allegory (Setareh-ye Sinema,
10, 1350. reprinted in idem, p.l62). Hushang Ka'usi focuses on the relationship between man
and his source of subsistence. He alludes to the Marxist worldview of Sa'edi and compares
the man-cow relationship in The Cow with the man-bicycle relationship in Vittorio De Sica's
1948 Ladri di biciclette (The Bicycle Thiej). Ka'usi's 1969 in Bahman Maghsoudlou, Naqd-e
Film dar Iran, Entesharat-e Babak, 1973, in Zera'ati, Majmu 'ah-ye Maqalat, pp.155-8, and
in Mehrabi, Tarikh, pp.129-30. Houshang Golmakani, Aqa-ye Bazigar: Zendegi va Asari-ye
Ezzatollah-e Entezami (Tehran: Rowzaneh-ye Kar, 1997), pp.76-87, and especially p.87;
Akrami-Ghorveh, 'Dreams Betrayed' pp.23-5.
20. Compare to Henri Verneuil's 1959 La Vache et le prisonnier.
21. Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries: The Encounter between Contemporary Faiths
and Archaic Realities, trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1975), pp.59-72.
Mary Boyce, 'Cattle, ii in Zoroastrianism,' in Ehsan Yarshater(ed.), Encyclopaedia Iranica,

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Vol.5 (1992), pp.80-4, and especially p.83; Hossein Mirmobini, 'Gav va Hekmat-e Qorbani
Kardan dar Ayinha-ye Mazhabi', Rahavard, Vol.12, No.47 (1998).
22. Gholam R. Afkhami, The Iranian Revolution: Thanatos on a National Scale (Washington,
DC: The Middle East Institute, 1985), especially pp.173-95. Bakhash pushes Aflhami's
argument to include blaming the Shah and other 'men in far more powerful positions' within
the regime for their inaction. Shaul Bakhash, 'Iran', The American Historical Review,
Vol.96, No.5 (Dec. 1991), pp.1492-3. Arjomand uses Durkheim's anomie for this
phenomenon: The Turban, pp.108-14, 194-8.
23. On the discourse dilemma see: Mansoor Moaddel, Class, Politics, and Ideology in the
Iranian Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
24. Mehrabi, Tarikh, pp.126-9. Bahman Maghsoudlou, Iranian Cinema (New York: Hagop
Kevorkian Centre for Near Eastern Studies, New York University, 1987), pp.208-209.
Akrami, 'Cinema IL', pp.574-5. Gholam Haydari, 'Naqd'-Nevisi dar Sinema-ye Iran:
Bar'rasi-ye Tarikhi (Tehran: Entesharat-e Agah, 1989), p.1 13.
25. For and excellent discussion on the tough guy (luti) film genre: Hamid Naficy, 'Iranian
Cinema', in Oliver Leaman (ed.), Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North
African Film (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), pp.146-53.
26. For a full discussion see my 'It's All in the Movies: Feature Films and the Islamic Revolution
in Iran, 1953-78' (UCLA: Doctoral Dissertation, 1999), pp.205-32.
27. For a full discussion see: ibid., pp.167-88.
28. Ervand Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedin (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1989).
29. Ali Shari'ati, Fatimah Is Fatimah, trans. Laleh Bakhtiar (Tehran: Shari'ati Foundation,
1980). Based on a 1971 lecture. Parvin Paidar, Women and the Political Process in
Twentieth-Century Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp.178-82. Nahid
Yeganeh and Nikki R. Keddie, 'Sexuality and Shi'a Sexual Protest in Iran,' in Shi'ism and
Social Protest, ed. Juan R.I. Cole and Nikki R. Keddie (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1986), pp.108-36. Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in
Contemporary Iran (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp.213-15.
30. Deer in the plural. A freer translation could be 'The Hunted.'
31. Hamid Naficy, 'Islamicizing Film Culture in Iran: An Update,' CEMOTI, No.20 (1995),
pp.150-51.
32. Haleh Afshar, Women, Work, and Ideology in the Third World (London: Tavistock, 1985),
pp.75-7.
33. Based on Stanley Kramer's 1957 The Pride and the Passion. Compare to Henri-Georges
Clouzot's 1952 Le salaire de la peur.
34. See, for example: Mangol Bayat-Philipp, 'Women and Revolution in Iran, 1905-1911,' in
Lois Beck and Nikki R. Keddie (eds.), Women in the Muslim World (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1978), p.296.
35. Moghissi, Populism.
36. Ali Shari'ati, Tashayyo'e 'Alavi va Tashayyo 'e Safavi (Tehran: Hosainiyyeh-ye Ershad,
n.d.), pp.73-4, quoted in Naghi Yousefi, Religion and Revolution in the Modern World: Ali
Shari 'ati's Islam and the Persian Revolution (New York: University Press of America,
1995), p.103.
37. Peter L. Giovacchini, 'The Regressed Patient and the Psychosomatic Focus', in L. Bryce
Boyer (ed.), Master Clinicians on Treating the Regressed Patient (Northvale, NJ: Jason
Aronson, 1990), pp. 85-106.

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Iranian Cinema, 1968-1978: Female Characters and Social Dilemmas on the Eve of the

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Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.40, No.3, May 2004, pp.29-54

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inseparable from the question of how to define women's role in society.7 At

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who created women cinematic characters, even in those seemingly happy

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The character of Atefeh is clearly very positive. She is beautiful, traditional,

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conclusion. As Davud and Husain come to kill Asghar, Mehri succeeds in

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when Qodrat, a wounded bank robber and an old school-friend of Seyyed,

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Marxist guerillas, the gov

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is either on the revolutionary theme or on introspection and search for

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teller specializing in the

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Women, then, are included as part of a wall-to-wall coalition in motion

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traditional way of life. Most of the films, as reflected by many female

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