Mia Farrow, in the documentary "Allen v Farrow" -
OCS
“Allen v Farrow” is available on OCS.
“Nobody wanted to employ me anymore”: Mia Farrow explains having had a lot of difficulty playing in important films after accusing Woody Allen of having sexually assaulted her daughter.
Other actresses suffered the same fate: Delphine Seyrig's career fell sharply after she spoke out on sexism in 1976.
It is one of the strong passages of the documentary Allen v Farrow, although not very developed.
In this film in four episodes of about an hour each, broadcast on demand only on OCS in France, the directors highlight one of the little-known aspects of the affair between the actress Mia Farrow against her ex-companion the director Woody Allen, accused by the latter of sexual violence and incest against their daughter, Dylan Farrow.
It is about the collapse of Mia Farrow's career, after her daughter Dylan told her she was sexually assaulted by her adoptive father, and the case was made public.
We rewind
To understand, we must remember the context, which the documentary traces.
Mia Farrow has been in a relationship for ten years with Woody Allen, although they live separately.
She already has children from a first union, and has adopted others.
Woody Allen, with whom she has found love, does not want to hear about children at first, but finally agrees to adopt a little girl, Dylan, with whom he becomes infatuated in a way that attracts suspicion. of his companion.
Deeming Woody Allen too clingy, even suffocating with his Dylan, even though he does not have the same regard for the many other children in the family (Mia Farrow will have up to 14 children), she sends him to the psychologist , who will judge his behavior inappropriate, and will organize his follow-up, without going so far as to raise suspicions of incest.
But everything is racing when Mia Farrow discovers in 1992 pornographic photos of her companion with her own daughter Soon-Yi, adopted at the age of 8, and who was then 22 years old, 35 years younger than Woody Allen.
The couple breaks up, and the director retains visiting rights over his daughter Dylan, who is therefore more closely watched by her mother.
Until the day she records Dylan Farrow telling her that her adoptive father touched "her private parts", during a day when he appears to have disappeared for about twenty minutes with his daughter in the attic.
Was Dylan Farrow "manipulated" by his mother, as Woody Allen is persuaded, or was he sexually assaulted, as the documentary believes, constructed as a relentless demonstration but leaving little behind. place for contradictory?
"No one wanted to employ me anymore"
Still, from that date, the career of Mia Farrow, depicted in many media as a "bad mother" and a "manipulator", collapses.
The actress, who was the muse of Woody Allen, and who had shone in
Rosemary's Baby
or
The Magnificent Gatsby
, but also in films by Claude Chabrol and Robert Altman, only appears on smaller films, and a lot for television.
She is told that she will "no longer shoot in the United States", she testifies facing the camera.
In fact, as evidenced by her filmography, most of the filming offers that Mia Farrow received at that time mainly concerned European films, where she generally only played a supporting role.
“No one wanted to employ me anymore, except overseas,” she says.
I had proposals in Ireland, in France.
I took all the offers that were made to me.
".
"Mia Farrow was the first, and she paid a heavy price for it", summarizes Geneviève Sellier, film historian and founder of the site Le Genre et l'Ecran.
The actresses who open it paid for it
Mia Farrow is not the only actress to have paid with her career for daring to talk about sexism and sexual violence.
This was the case for Delphine Seyrig, as demonstrated by researcher Alexandre Moussa, author of a thesis on the actress.
From 1976, when she spoke about sexism in the entertainment industry in the video
Be beautiful and be silent!
Delphine Seyrig's career fell sharply.
From three films per year on average between 1961 and 1975, she only shoots one and a half films on average per year between 1976 and 1990. Yves Montand forbids hiring the actress, reports the researcher, for whom "certain practices sexist ”have harmed the career of the actress.
Are actresses who have denounced sexual violence blacklisted?
In any case, this is what some of these women say themselves, like Julie Delpy.
“At the age of 13, during one of my first auditions, a director made me an unhealthy reflection / proposition,” explains the actress and director.
He caught the script in his face and my reputation as a bitch began (…).
Afterwards, I wore my shell avoiding the traps, and I moved forward with no turtle because obviously everything is less easy when you say no and in addition you open it ”explained the actress.
“Julie Delpy started her career very young and was forced to go into exile in the United States after denouncing this sexual violence because no one wanted to run it in France”, confirms Geneviève Sellier.
Pygmalion effect
To have been one of the very first women to take this fight in the public square is probably not the only factor which led Mia Farrow to see her career collapse.
In addition, there are at least two other reasons, considered "current" by the historian of cinema.
The first is that Mia Farrow, from the moment she met Woody Allen, has built her career almost entirely on this director, cutting herself off from her entire professional network.
Between 1982 and 1992, when the case broke, out of 15 films where Mia Farrow played, only two were not directed by Woody Allen.
“It's a recurring phenomenon, which appeared during the New Wave, where we see filmmakers playing Pygmalion with actresses.
When they are then put aside by these men, who have wrung them out well, they have difficulty finding a place ”, comments Geneviève Sellier.
Pygmalion, let us remember, is under the prose of the Latin poet Ovid a sculptor and king of Cyprus, who fell in love with the statue he had sculpted.
In France, actresses like Stéphane Audran with Claude Chabrol or Anna Karina with Jean-Luc Godard suffered the same fate, according to the historian, the latter being until her death presented as "the eternal muse of Jean-Luc Godard".
"Tunnel of the 50-year-old actress"
Finally, Mia Farrow undoubtedly suffered, from the mid-1990s, from a well-documented phenomenon for actresses of her age: the "tunnel of the 50-year-old actress".
Recall that in 1992, Mia Farrow was then 47 years old.
However, for example, while one in two adult women is over 50 years old in France, out of all the French films in 2019, only 8% of the roles were attributed to actresses over 50 years old, reports a association specializing in the subject.
It is therefore perhaps not only for denouncing sexual violence that Mia Farrow's career collapsed, but perhaps also for other reasons which are nonetheless sexism rooted.
Only glimmer on the board, that the documentary notes: the word of Dylan Farrow, from 2018 at least, will not have known the same fate as that of his mother.
Or to use the words of his brother, Ronan Farrow, the journalist who uncovered the Weinstein affair, behind the MeToo movement: “Culture has changed.
"
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Dylan Farrow thanks those who support her and maintains that she is telling the truth
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Woody Allen and Soon-Yi respond to new HBO documentary on Dylan Farrow affair
Incest
Violence against women
Woody allen
Sexual violence
Culture