Anatomy of Rape: How Martha Coolidge Turned Her Sexual Assault into a Visionary, Shattering Film

Martha Coolidge was a 16-year-old high school student when, one fall night in 1962, she was raped by a high school classmate, a repeater five years older who invited her to go to a party with other friends.

Years after the attack, Coolidge decided to make that traumatic episode of his adolescence the center of his debut feature,

Not a Pretty Picture

(1976), a film shot in 16 millimeters with a budget of $50,000 that, 48 years later, was released. It is seen as a visionary and devastating work of avant-garde political cinema.

Restored by the Academy Film Archive and the Film Foundation,

Not a Pretty Picture

opens this Friday in Spain.

The way in which it addresses such current issues as consent is astonishing, or because of its dissection of the layers that surround an act of sexual violence: desire and curiosity, discomfort and fear, disgust, guilt and silence, rejection and social stigma and the urgent need to turn the page in order to move forward.

At 77 years old, with an irregular commercial career in Hollywood, some cult romantic comedy such as

Valley Girl

(1983), as well as a long career as a director of advertisements and episodes of such popular series as

Sex and the City,

Coolidge is living with “excitement and enthusiasm” how his debut meets an audience that “finally knows how to ask the right questions.”

“A few months ago, at a screening organized by MoMA, I was able to see the importance of these new perspectives.

The film was shown amidst great expectation and for me the surprise was finding an audience that perfectly understood what it was saying.

It was very exciting,” Coolidge recalls in a telephone conversation from her Los Angeles home, far from her hometown in New Haven, Connecticut.

“After so many years here I'm still an East Coast person, even if that just means I read more,” she jokes.

Not a Pretty Picture

is a film permeated by Bertolt Brecht's scenic ideals in which Coolidge mixes a series of dramatized sequences - the car ride to the party with her attacker is especially disturbing - with other documentaries that record the filming in a

loft

. New Yorker.

There, while the rape is being filmed, Coolidge creates a space for representation through reflection, debate, improvisation and experimentation with the film's team, especially with the performers.

In broad daylight, with the drums on the city rooftops looming between large windows, the film transforms into something unusual: the anatomy of a sexual assault in which Coolidge contemplates his own rape while discussing the details and points of view. with her actors, especially with actress Michele Manenti, chosen by the filmmaker because she had also suffered abuse, and with actor Jim Carrington, who does what he can to understand and justify his character's impulse.

In the film, violence emerges through phrases as seemingly innocuous as “please relax.”

“I didn't do much therapy, but organizing, thinking and talking about this film helped me a lot.

Seeing myself in the face of my own violation was very revealing, also for the rest of the team,” the director recalls.

“I didn't want the viewer to relive the abuse without thinking about it, with all the implications of it.

The film is a document of that process in which it was very important that the performers express themselves freely and without fear.

We work exploring every detail and its truth.

“For me it was essential that everyone on the set was very aware of the human commitment of the film.”

Coolidge says that the idea arose when he and a group of documentary filmmakers watched the short

No Lies

(1972), by Mitchell Block, in which, using the language of

cinéma vérité

, an actress narrated an attack on camera.

The way in which that film exploited a rape “again” led him to reflect on how one could talk about sexual abuse without falling into morbid exhibition or exploitation of the actress's body by the camera itself.

“

No Lies

is a very interesting film, but when I saw it I thought everything I knew was missing.”

A knowledge that was added to the experience of making this hybrid and autobiographical documentary: “I learned many things during the process and also afterwards, when I finished and traveled organizing small screenings.

In some, the entire audience was gay;

in others, there were only women;

and in others, men and women.

It was in those contacts with the public when I met many raped men, and it was very interesting because I found that the silence and stigma was even greater than with women,” she recalls.

Martha Coolidge with Jack Lemmon (left) and Walter Matthau (right) at the premiere of 'Por rumbas ya lo loco', a film that she directed in 1997 and the two actors starred in.

Galella Rum (Galella Collection Rum via Getty)

When reviewing some famous films about rape, the director lets out a loud outburst when naming

Irreversible

, by Gaspar Noé, and laments a sexist system that avoids putting itself in a woman's point of view.

“Most men prefer to ignore the perspective of a raped woman.

The world has changed a lot, but not enough.

I made this film because I needed to hear answers, to know what had happened, and in that sense women are much braver.”

Regarding whether the role of women has evolved in Hollywood, she is skeptical, and even more so if she is asked about the dominance of the male gaze: “Of course we are still dominated by the

male gaze.

They are the bosses, they rule and they have the money.

Something is changing, but I don't know how much, or if it will be enough.

Without a doubt, there are more women now, and that, for example, substantially changes the atmosphere on filming.

At least now we have the feeling that we do belong to this society and that our voice and thoughts are also important.”

Not a Pretty Picture

was released the same year as

Carrie,

Dino de Laurentiis's King

Kong

or

All the President's Men.

It was screened for the first time at the Whitney Museum in New York and at the first edition of the Sundance Festival, then the Utah American Film Festival.

It had a certain critical echo, although it never left the festival circuit.

Coolidge kept the source material in a safe.

Almost half a century later, she is surprised by the question of whether her attacker — “the man who raped me had raped others before and nothing happened” — ever saw or knew about the existence of her film.

"No!

I wouldn't even want him to see her, he couldn't handle it.

He had a lot of problems and on top of that his father was a sheriff.

In any case, I didn't make this film to get revenge on him.

“I have never wanted revenge.”

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