Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974) - full transcript

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This film consists of five sequences.

Each sequence, two takes.
Each take, one core of film.

A normal narrative film tells
its story through editing.

Each cut indicates a gap in time
or a change of angle and point of view.

But on another level, it's editing
which produces the alternative world

which we imagine behind the screen.

It's because there are gaps
and differences of point of view

that we lend this imaginary world
extension in time and space.

It's the act of bridging over gaps
and linking together differences

which creates the sense
of another world



into which we are given
a series of privileged glimpses.

Each cut articulates this world,

and by articulating it,
it creates it.

It's for this reason we wanted
to make a film without editing.

We wanted to call
this imaginary world into question,

not to reject fiction or fantasy,

but to situate it and to locate it.

Film theorists have tended to argue

that a film without editing
would be a purely natural film

with the artifice of film-making
reduced to zero.

But in this sense
our film is unnatural.

It's a film which avoids conventional cuts
but not discontinuities or breaks.

It's a montage film.

It doesn't follow
a single unbroken thread,

the thread of a story
from beginning to end.

It's about something else,

the space between a story
which is never told

and a history
which has never been made.

In the first sequence,
which we have already seen,

there's the performance
of a mime drama

based on a play
by the German playwright Kleist,

Heinrich von Kleist,

called "Penthesilea".

In it, we see the Greeks
and Amazons in battle

during the time of the Trojan War.

We see how the Amazons
seize a prisoner

and rape him
in their Festival of Roses.

We see how the Amazon war queen,
Penthesilea,

falls in love
with the Greek hero, Achilles,

and how Achilles falls in love with her.

We see them torn between
their loyalty and their love

and how Achilles surrenders
to his enemy.

Finally, we see
Penthesilea kill Achilles.

We see her fury,
her rapture and her grief.

We see her own death,

a strange act of suicide
through sheer strength of passion.

The story enacted in the mime

is not at all the same story told
in the legends and epics of antiquity.

In these ancient legends,

it is Penthesilea who is killed.

Achilles lives,
to be killed later by Paris.

This is the legend of the Achilles heel.

In most versions of the story

Achilles falls in love with Penthesilea,

either as he kills her, thrusting
into her the spear of Pelian ash,

or after she has fallen when he removes
the helmet from her face.

It is this moment which has
most often been commemorated.

In an elegy by Propertius,
the Roman poet, we read:

"The victor vanquished
by the radiant face revealed."

So to begin with,

we have two broad versions
of the story:

the version of antiquity
and the version of Kleist

written during the period
of the Napoleonic Wars

and the consolidation of Romanticism.

Each version has
very different implications,

very different senses,

while there are also constant themes:

love, death,

amour fou, fatal passion,

love concealed
under the cloak of aggression,

the war of the sexes,
the society of women,

grief, mourning at a loss,
perhaps at a difference.

The fulcrum of all these stories
is the image of the Amazon,

the woman who is independent,
aggressive and destructive,

perhaps superior to man,
perhaps his equal,

perhaps, despite all, his inferior.

For both the ancient Greeks
and for Kleist,

the image of the Amazon was both
fascinating and frightening.

It still has the same power today.

In the third sequence of this movie,
the one right after this,

we see a series of images of Amazons,

almost all of them produced by men,

all in fact.

The fourth sequence shows
the images and words of women,

suffragettes from the early years
of this century

before the First World War.

This was the first period when
women themselves united in struggle,

fighting for political rights.

The reality of their struggle
brings myth into contact with history.

The image of the Amazon is still
projected onto the woman militant,

both by men and by women themselves
from within or outside the movement,

but it is invested now
with a new political meaning.

To my knowledge,

there has only been one other attempt
to make a film of "Penthesilea".

For years, it was the dream project
of Leni Riefenstahl,

director of "Triumph of the Will",
Hitler's protégée,

ever since she read Kleist's play
in the '20s.

She identified herself deeply,
both with Penthesilea and with Kleist.

And then the future of Penthesilea:

"If there is a transmigration of souls,

"then I must have lived her life
at some previous time.

"Every word that she speaks is spoken
from the very depths of my soul.

"At no time could I act differently
from Penthesilea."

She sees Penthesilea
as a superheroine,

half human, half divine.

In fact,
she restores the sexual duality

to Nietzsche's vision of the Übermensch.

Again, following Nietzsche,

the superheroine is more Dionysiac
than Apollonian.

The project is saturated with Nietzsche's
return to Hellenism from the other side,

his discovery in Ancient Greece

of a counter doctrine which would
reinvigorate the German people,

a monstrous mixture of tragic gloom
with manic laughter.

Her film was very nearly made.

Serious preparations
got underway for filming,

detailed work on script
and art direction,

searching out locations in Libya,
casting.

She was going to play the main part
herself as well as directing.

Then the war broke out
and the project was abandoned.

All that remains are her notes,

notes which vividly convey
the movie Leni Riefenstahl saw

as she read Kleist's pages.

Leni Riefenstahl
was not the only woman

in the aftermath of Nietzsche

to identify herself with the Amazon.

In the Futurist Manifesto for women
written in March 1912,

Valentine de Saint-Point replies

to Marinetti's absolute derogation
and rejection of women.

We find the same themes,
this time within a Futurist perspective.

"Women are Furies and Amazons.

"Semiramis, Joan of Arc,
Jeanne Hachette,

"Judith and Charlotte Corday,

"Cleopatra and Messalina,

"warriors who fight
more ferociously than men,

"agents of destruction
who contribute to natural selection

"by wasting the weak
out of pride and desperation."

The superheroine joins the superhero,

set apart from the mediocre,
the masses.

The image of the Amazon loses
all its resonance of solidarity,

membership of a society of women.

In Kleist's play,
Penthesilea rejects her comrades.

Even beyond that,
the army of Amazons is set apart

from the mass of other women.

The Amazon warriors are the gold
who set off the diamond of Penthesilea.

They are splendid and glamorous,

fascinating to other women
for the fear which they arouse in men,

but impossible to emulate
except in fantasy.

Their weapons and their strategy
are men's weapons and strategy.

They offer an alternative
which is magical, not political.

This division between
ordinary women and Amazons

is found in ancient literature too.

Quintus of Smyrna wrote
an epic about the Trojan War,

probably in the third or fourth century
after Christ.

He includes a scene in his narrative

where the women of Troy
watch from the city walls

the Amazons fighting the Greeks.

Greek heroes are falling
like autumn leaves

before the Amazon onslaught.

One of the Trojan women proposes
they should join the battle too.

"We ourselves should share the battle.

"We are not much different
from vigorous men.

"We have the same courage.
Eyes and limbs are alike.

"Light and air are common to all.

"Our food is not different.

"So why do we run away from fighting?"

They are all about to join in,

when they are restrained
by the priestess of Athena.

She argues
they should stay at home weaving

and avoid the tumult and misery of war.

It's true that all human beings
are from the same stock,

but different persons
practise different jobs,

and that job is best where a person
works with knowledge in their head.

The argument is one that
has been used over the centuries

to keep women in their place.

It's based on the idea that the division
of labour is virtually irreversible.

The Amazons appear
as exceptional women

who have broken down
the division of labour for themselves,

but whose example is not
relevant to other women.

Of course, ultimately, there is still
the physical division of labour

involved in reproduction.

It's this which brings the Amazons
to Troy in the first place,

in Kleist's version at least,

in order to take prisoners

who will breed with the Amazons
during the Festival of Roses.

Otherwise, the Amazons would be
a society completely apart.

The myth would no longer be
about sexual division and conflict.

It would lose the erotic meaning
which keeps it alive.

By a roundabout route,
this brings us back to Kleist.

The fascination and revulsion
caused by sexual difference

runs like a red thread
through Kleist's work.

Like Leni Riefenstahl,
he identified himself intimately

with Penthesilea,
both as woman and as warrior.

She combined in one character
two fantasies

which Kleist could never combine
in real life:

the dream of dying
together with a lover

and the dream of dying
on the battlefield.

In the end, Kleist chose
dying together, joint suicide.

Kleist was born
into an aristocratic family

which traditionally sent its sons
into the Prussian army.

His father was an army officer,

and after his death, Kleist was sent
away from home by his mother,

first to study
and then, when he was 14,

to join the Regiment of Guards
as a cadet.

He served in the Guards seven years

in the great wars against France
which dominated his lifetime.

Even after he left the army
when he was 21,

he tried several times to rejoin,

usually times of psychological crisis.

The last attempt was
just before his death.

The fatal project of joint suicide
reoccurs several times in Kleist's life.

He proposed double suicide
to at least five people of both sexes,

probably even more.

Two of them were friends with whom
he had been a cadet in adolescence,

Ernst Pfuel
and Rühle von Lilienstern.

Pfuel, in particular, he proposed
joint suicide to more than once.

He also read "Penthesilea" for him.

It was not a play for women,
Kleist said, but for men,

and even then only for the strongest
and most virile men

such as his friend.

The most important woman in his life
was his half-sister Ulrike.

He told her that if it had not been
for the ban on incest

he would've been glad
to join his life with hers.

It was her masculine appearance
which fascinated him.

"She has nothing of her sex
but the hips.

"Masculine yet maternal."

On a trip they took together to Paris,

Ulrike wore men's clothes.

But finally, she rejected Kleist.

She felt he disgraced the family name.

Psychoanalysts have concentrated
on Kleist's relationship with his mother,

the equation of womb and tomb,

and the travelling significance of death,

dying as the last
of the many fugue-like journeys

Kleist undertook during his life.

In this context, the Amazon queen
appears as the powerful mother

to whom the disarmed and childlike hero
wishes to surrender.

But she is also
the hostile, vengeful mother.

In the play, Achilles is shocked

to find that Penthesilea
has cut off her left breast

according to Amazon custom.

Finally,
the mother devours the child.

She takes the metaphor
of devouring love

and turns it into reality.

"I did what I had spoken,

"word for word."

Devoured by the woman,
dying with the woman,

a double fantasy of sexual union.

Kleist's final depression
followed his rejection by Ulrike

when he tried to borrow money from her
to buy military equipment

in order to rejoin the army.

His only solace was his friendship
with Henriette von Vogel

who herself was dying of cancer.

She was one of the few people
he still saw in society.

On 20th November, 1811,

Kleist was now just 34 years old,

the couple set out on a trip
from Berlin to Potsdam.

In the afternoon they stopped
at an inn by a small lake

and sent their coach back to the city.

They sat in their room all night,
drinking coffee

and composing letters of farewell.

At nine the next morning, they walked
down to the edge of the lake.

The innkeeper heard two shots
but thought nothing of it.

Later, their two bodies
were found in a hollow.

Kleist had shot Henriette von Vogel
in the left breast

and then himself in the mouth.

The bodies were buried together
in one grave.

One biographer writes

that the only period of happiness
during Kleist's life

was the time he spent
in a prison camp.

He was arrested
by French Occupation forces

after the defeat of Prussia
at the Battle of Jena.

In fact, it was in the camp that he wrote
and rewrote much of "Penthesilea".

The play is full of echoes
of Kleist's life

as well as anticipations of his death.

Happiness and captivity,
military ambition, sexual confusion.

Kleist found in the cycle of Greek legend

the constellation
of his own fears and fantasies,

a world as full of loss, violence
and contradiction as his own.

Myths are stories
which repeat themselves

in an endless sequence of variations.

Myths can never conclude anything.

They can only die when the problems
they express are superseded,

problems such as the meaning
of sexual difference.

As the terms of the problem vary,
so do those of the myth.

The story of Penthesilea has survived
for nearly three millennia,

changing with the demands
of different epochs and societies.

At times it was almost lost completely.

The chain can be traced back
to the post-Homeric epic of Arctinus,

"The Aethiopid",

which takes up the story of Troy
where Homer left off.

We only know this version of Arctinus
because it was summarised by Proclus

in a fragment of his chrestomathy,

only a few brief lines.

"The Amazon Penthesilea arrived
to fight with the Trojans.

"She was the daughter of Ares
and came from Thrace.

"Achilles killed her in full glory
and the Trojans buried her.

"Achilles killed Thersites

"who taunted him
for his profession of love for her.

"A quarrel broke out among the Greeks
over Thersites' death."

Different chains of illusion and memory
surface at different points.

By the time it reached Kleist,

the story had passed through
the Trojan cycles of medieval authors,

the Renaissance rediscovery
of Greece and Rome,

the Neoclassicism of Weimar.

Goethe features an Amazon
in "Wilhelm Meister",

a lady on a white horse
wearing a man's cloak,

who rescues the hero
when he is left wounded by robbers.

He falls in love with her
the moment she takes off her cloak

to cover him.

Then came Kleist,

who talked badly, stammering,

muttering to himself, falling silent,

living in the realm of the written word.

What he wrote forms another level
of the entire tortuous palimpsest.

If Leni Riefenstahl had made
her film of Penthesilea,

it would have appeared
as the culmination of a process,

the fusion of Greek and German culture

in a final union of the arts,

a great film opera
which tied all the strands together.

In the ideal world of art,

difference, domination,
conflict and death

take on an ideal meaning
called beauty.

But history will go on
regenerating the story.

If we can understand it,

retelling it
with its gaps and its spaces,

absences as well as presences,

then perhaps one day
we will be able to end it in history

rather than in words or images.

When Kleist first published Penthesilea

in his magazine, "Phoebus",
which he started with a friend,

he sent a copy to Goethe,
anxious to hear his judgment,

"on the knees of my heart".

A strange moment,
Goethe in Weimar,

his garden adorned
by a perfect sphere,

a symbol of universal reason,

confronted by the printed page

whose words shattered that sphere
in fantasy.

Goethe did not like what he read,

and he sent Kleist a cold letter,

a letter which was hard and hurtful
for Kleist to read.

Goethe found the play
strange and fabulous.

He could not respond to it.

He compares Kleist
to a Jew awaiting the Messiah,

a Christian awaiting
the new Jerusalem,

a Portuguese awaiting
the return of Saint Sebastian.

Goethe saw in Kleist's play
a flight from the world.

In one sense, he was right.

Kleist's play, with its elephants
and its scythed chariots,

has hardly ever been performed.

But in another sense, he was wrong.

Goethe's flight was from the world
of the unconscious psychic reality.

It is only through the detours
of fantasy and dream

that we can return to history
and act there,

in the knowledge that the unconscious
is always running through us.

It's in this sense
that we should take

Goethe's characteristic
injunction to Kleist,

"Hic Rhodus, hic salta."

(Vocals, words indistinct)

(Clash of weaponry)

(Woman crying)

(Vocals resume)

(Instrumentals added)

Is it impossible
for all women to work together

to uproot an injustice common to all?

Is there no way to bring this about?

Surely there should be.

We must be rid of mere ladylikeness.

We must succeed in making
the oppressed class of women

the most urgent in the demand
for what we all must have.

When we have brought this about,

we women shall be irresistibly strong.

For the most part the handsome ladies
are well satisfied with their personal lot,

but they want the vote
as a matter of justice,

while the fluttering, jammed-in,
subway girls are terribly blind

to the whole question
of class oppression and sex oppression.

Only the women of the working class
are really oppressed,

but it is not only the working class
to whom injustice is done.

Women of the leisure class
need freedom too.

All women of whatever class

must become conscious
of their position in the world.

All must be made to stand erect,

to become self-reliant,
free human beings.

If we could but see
our possible strength

and our existing weaknesses,

should we not become
such a mighty, marching crowd

that the ladylike parade
would be swept away

and engulfed in masses
of aroused womanhood?

What, then, are we doing
to reach working women?

In reality, suffragists come
to the working class as outsiders.

They do not show any knowledge
whatsoever of working-class interests.

And aside from futile argument,
what do they do?

Do they ever come forward
with vigorous backing

of purely working-class legislation?

Has there been
a single protest anywhere

against the Mexican situation?

Have they taken pains
to point out to working women

the trend of our court decisions?

What are the arguments
the working-class girl hears

when she stops to listen

to the impassioned soap-box orator
from the suffrage ranks?

"The right to vote is the natural,
inherent, unalienable right

"of every human being."

She turns away.

She knows as a matter of fact
she has no right to vote

and she doesn't care.

But before she is out of earshot
comes the plea,

"Women must have the ballot
to protect their homes and children."

She has no home nor any children,

and no, she couldn't do much
to protect either on $3 a week.

So the disappointed orator
wonders what is wrong.

There must be something wrong
in a method

that fails to enlist the sympathy

of the very women
who need the ballot most.

Yet in the main, suffragists simply
have an ever-present consciousness

of what the middle-class average person
will think about this question or that.

They make expediency
the guiding star of suffrage conduct

and dread the prospect of mixing
suffrage up with outside interests.

An incident during the impressive
march of workers

after the Triangle Fire

pointed out this attitude.

A girl from the marching crowd
ran out to join me, calling me by name.

After marching for a few moments,
she spoke of the protest meeting

held by the College Equal Suffrage
League a few nights before

and said expressively,

"I thought you suffragists
weren't any good.

"But if you're that sort,
I'll change my mind."

She voiced the feeling
of the majority of working-class girls.

And yet some suffragists had tried
to persuade the College League

not to hold the meeting

as it would hurt suffrage
by mixing it up with outside interests.

(Machinery whirring)

(Women conversing)

In the past, strikes were almost
wholly the affairs of men,

while women have always shared
the sacrifice and responsibility

and often, by their bravery,
helped the men to victory,

or, by their lack of sympathy,
brought defeat.

They have themselves
been outside the strike.

Today, however, some of the most
remarkable strikes are those of women.

When once the idea of union
is accepted by working women,

they hold to it
with an unquestioning loyalty and pluck.

They have the fervour of their sex
and an unconquerable devotion.

They have shown
the beginning of solidarity

which is one
of the most remarkable things

in the whole history
of the women's movement.

If in the beginning
of women's industrial struggle

women can show
such an unswerving determination

to stick together and win,

what may we not look for
in the future

when women have political power
and more confidence in themselves?

Every struggle is an object lesson

in the need for solidarity.

For ages, men have been
sex-conscious.

Men are always loyal to men.

But in the industrial struggle,

the competition for mastery has been
between men workers on the one hand

and men employers on the other hand.

It has not been a sex struggle
but a class struggle.

But with women the case is different.

They have had to struggle against
sex privilege as well as class privilege.

Working men have bitterly opposed

and resent
the entry of women into industry

and still treat them
with scant justice in their unions

and in their various schemes
for self-protection.

It is only recently
that men have begun to see

the necessity and the justice
of women's suffrage.

And so women have had to fight men
as competitors in work,

as well as against men employers.

And for this reason, the struggle has
never been clear-cut along class lines

but is still complicated
with the struggle across sex lines.

One curious difference
to be observed

between the records of recent strikes
by men and those by women

is the attitude toward the strikers

of women who are not
themselves workers,

women who belong
to the non-gainful class,

college women, professional women,

women of leisure
and those who control money.

In large numbers,
they have thrown themselves

into the very ranks
of the working girls.

They have given them
their wholehearted sympathy.

They have done picket duty

and they have not shrunk from
the attendant arrests by the police.

In several instances,
they have passed the night in the cells.

They have given money
as well as raised it.

And they have worked in many ways,

showing a splendid sex-conscious spirit

that foretells great victories
for the future.

This, of course, is what gives
the vital force to the women's movement

and it counts
for the strange phenomenon

of wealthy women joining hands
with the poorest of working girls.

It is this sense of sexual oppression

that has brought women
all over the world

to the banners
of radical advanced movements.

Consciously or unconsciously,

women have
a great bond of sympathy.

They see in the great struggle
going on in all parts of the world

the signs of a brighter day

and a better life.

There is something
always inspiring about a strike.

It may be ill-timed, ill-advised
and foredoomed to failure,

yet it always stands
for sacrifice, heroism and hope.

Back of this voluntary acceptance
by the workers

of their great dread,
unemployment,

lie long years of patient suffering,

of self-repression
and of uncomplaining useful work.

At last, the worker has
a faint gleam of hope

that better days may dawn for her

and through her
for her entire class.

But we must not be socialistic.

That would be outrageous.

So in come the protests,
and, oh, very violent ones.

And what about, pray?

About nothing more serious
than my poor words.

Really?

Just what is wrong with them,
I don't know.

But someone muttered
something about socialism.

This being the case,
what shall I do?

How can I cure
what my critics say is wrong

if I can't see how it is wrong?

I refuse to contemplate the ballot
through a magnifying glass,

for suffrage is only a part,
though an important one,

of the worldwide movement
for a real democracy

and to give women
their true inheritance.

To concentrate on votes alone

is like freeing one wing of the eagle
while leaving the other tied.

One wing will not suffice
to carry him up to the heavens blue.

Besides, I would not if I could

write with my finger upon the pulse
of our great genteel ones,

seeking to please them,

picking my words
and shaping my thoughts

to meet their beautiful,
delicate sensibilities.

My sympathies are not with these,

but rather are with the great,
simple working class.

With these
I would gladly take my stand,

if they would have me.

But, oh, you great genteel ones,

you who resent the words
of such as I,

could you but feel the scorn
in which our class is held

by the class you fear so much,

could you but be for one hour

in the midst of real wage-earning girls
as one of them

and read their souls through
their clear, fierce, young eyes,

could you but understand
what they think of us

and all our privileges,

you would not perhaps respect so much
the opinions of our politicians,

of our sleek respectables,

of our kid-gloved gentlemen

from whom we beg the ballot
on bended, trembling knee.

Could you but feel
the tingle in the blood

that comes
when a mass of them together,

the young working people,

shout out clearly and triumphantly,

"March on,

"march on to victory or death,"

you would know that no real freedom
will ever come to women

that does not come through
those same women of the working class.

What to them is our buzzing
about their battles?

What do they care for our twitterings,

however revolutionary, radical,
dangerous or whatnot we may call them?

If I could write for them,

if I could but reach their ears.

But they judge us by our deeds,

and words ring hollow when they come
from the ranks of the privileged ones.

Those who stand by the wayside
while we speed by,

those who are hidden from our sight
by the dust we raise,

these dare to know the present
as it is, fearlessly,

because through their brooding eyes,
thank God, they see the future.

(Whir of machinery)

But these never hear my words.

And so I sing my swansong.

It only seems fair to tell my friends,

and I have a few, you know,

why there will be no more
of my outrageous utterances

spread before the helpless readers
of the official organ.

I don't want to ruin the movement,

nor do I pine to kill the cause.

That would really be too bad.

Though it is delightfully flattering
to think how easily, according to some,

I could accomplish
more inflammatory words.

The official board,
with all its weight of suffrage authority,

has not formally
requested silence of me.

(Indistinct words repeated)

(Man) ...called Penthesilea.

In it, we see the Greeks
and Amazons in battle

during the time of the Trojan War.

We see how the Amazons
seize a prisoner

and rape him
in their Festival of Roses.

We see how the Amazon war queen,
Penthesilea,

falls in love
with the Greek hero, Achilles,

and how Achilles falls in love with her.

We see them torn between
their loyalty and their love

and how Achilles surrenders
to his enemy.

Finally, we see
Penthesilea kill Achilles.

We see her fury,
her rapture and her grief.

We see her own death,

a strange act of suicide
through sheer strength of passion.

The story enacted in the mime

is not at all the same story told
in the legends and epics of antiquity.

In these ancient legends,

it is Penthesilea who is killed.

Achilles lives,
to be killed later by Paris.

This is the legend of the Achilles heel.

In most versions of the story,
Achilles falls in love with Penthesilea,

either as he kills her, thrusting
into her the spear of Pelian ash,

or after she has fallen

when he removes the helmet
from her face.

It's this moment which has
most often been commemorated.

In an elegy by Propertius,
the Roman poet, we read:

"The victor vanquished
by the radiant face revealed."

So to begin with,

we have two broad versions
of the story:

the version of antiquity
and the version of Kleist

written during the period
of the Napoleonic Wars

and the consolidation of Romanticism.

Each version has
very different implications,

very different senses,

while there are also
constant themes:

love, death,

amour fou, fatal passion,

love concealed
under the cloak of aggression,

the war of the sexes,
the society of women,

grief, mourning at a loss,
perhaps at a difference.

The fulcrum of all these stories
is the image of the Amazon,

the woman who is independent,
aggressive and destructive,

perhaps superior to man.

(Soundtrack from mime sequence
repeated)

(Man) "They are splendid
and glamorous,

"fascinating to other women
for the fear which they arouse in men,

"but impossible to emulate
except in fantasy.

"Their weapons and their strategy
are men's weapons and strategy.

"They offer an alternative
which is magical, not political."

This division between
ordinary women and Amazons

is found in ancient literature too.

Quintus of Smyrna wrote
an epic about the Trojan War,

probably in the third or fourth century
after Christ.

He includes a scene in his narrative

where the women of Troy watch
from the city walls

the Amazons fighting the Greeks.

Greek heroes are falling
like autumn leaves

before the Amazon onslaught.

One of the Trojan women proposes
they should join the battle too.

"We ourselves should share the battle.

"We are not much different
from vigorous men.

"We have the same courage.
Eyes and limbs are alike.

"Light and air are common to all.

"Our food is not different.

"So why do we run away from fighting?"

They are all about to join in,

when they are restrained
by the priestess of Athena.

She argues
they should stay at home weaving

and avoid the tumult and misery of war.

It's true that all human beings
are from the same stock,

but different persons
practise different jobs,

and that job is best where a person
works with knowledge in their head.

The argument is one that
has been used over the centuries

to keep women in their place...

(Soundtrack from previous section
repeated)

(Soundtrack form mime sequence
repeated)

(Woman) ...what may we not
look for in the future,

when women have political power
and more confidence in themselves.

Every struggle is an object lesson
in the need for solidarity.

For ages, men have been
sex-conscious.

Men are always loyal to men.

But in the industrial struggle,

the competition for mastery has been
between men workers on the one hand

and men employers on the other hand.

It has not been a sex struggle,
but a class struggle.

But with women the case is different.

They have had to struggle against
sex privilege as well as class privilege.

Working men have bitterly opposed

and resent
the entry of women into industry,

and still treat them with scant justice
in their unions

and in their various schemes
for self-protection.

It is only recently
that men have begun to see

the necessity and the justice
of women's suffrage.

And so women have had to fight men
as competitors in work,

as well as against men employers.

And for this reason, the struggle has
never been clear-cut along class lines,

but is still complicated
with the struggle across sex lines.

One curious difference
to be observed

between the records of recent strikes
by men and those by women

is the attitude towards the strikers

of women who are not
themselves workers,

women who belong
to the non-gainful class,

college women, professional women,

women of leisure
and those who control money.

In large numbers
they have thrown themselves

into the very ranks
of the working girls

and they have given them
their wholehearted sympathy.

They have done picket duty

and they have not shrunk from
the attendant arrests by the police.

In several instances, they have
passed the night in the cells.

They have given money
as well as raised it.

And they have worked
in many ways,

showing a splendid
sex-conscious spirit

that foretells
great victories for the future.

This is what gives the vital force
to the women's movement

and it counts
for the strange phenomenon

of wealthy women joining hands
with the poorest of working girls.

It is this sense of sexual oppression

that has brought women
all over the world

to the banners
of radical advanced movements.

Consciously or unconsciously,

women have
a great bond of sympathy.

They see in the great struggle
going on in all parts of the world...

(♪ LUCIANO BERIO: "Visage",
sung by Cathy Berberian)

Women looked at each other
through the eyes of men.

Women spoke to each other
through the words of men.

An alien look.

An alien language.

We can speak with our own words.

We can look with our own eyes.

And we can fight with our own weapons.

(Man) Stop.

Women looked at each other
through the eyes of men.

- That's terrible.
- (Man) Stop.

Women looked at each other
through the eyes of men.

Women spoke to each other
through the words of men.

An alien look.

An alien language.

We can speak with our own words.

We can look with our own eyes.

And we can fight with our own weapons.