How Muriel Box broke down doors for female directors in Britain

The second feature directed by Muriel Box, Street Corner (1953), contains a brief cameo by Dora Bryan as a ‘streetwalker’ complaining to the desk sergeant in a London police station: “Next time you want to pinch me you send one of the boys along,” she demands. “I don’t mind being knocked off occasionally… but I’m sick and tired of being knocked off by coppers in skirts. It’s bad for business!” 

Street Corner set out to portray the work of women police officers, and this scene is one of several brilliantly observed vignettes scattered throughout the film that highlight aspects of women’s lives in postwar Britain. It’s very likely to be based on Box’s research into the experiences of female officers; it’s also funny, beautifully written and acted and, like many of the incidents in the film, rather risqué for 1953. 

Box was not afraid to deal with topics that were largely taboo in British cinema – including sex before marriage, bigamy, domestic violence, infidelity and venereal disease – even if this desire to portray society as it is, warts and all, got her into battles with both the censor and the Home Office. Above all, she believed in entertainment, and her films were never didactic, but – subtly and with a wry humour – she gave audiences food for thought during the 1940s and 50s. 

As a feminist, she was particularly interested in exploring women’s changing role in society. She understood that being strong and independent was not at odds with femininity; yet she also saw that the desire for a glamorous lifestyle could lead to dangerous impulses. Gwen (Jean Kent) in Good-Time Girl (1948; directed by David MacDonald from a script co-written by Box) and Peggy Cummins’ young mother in Street Corner both yearn to escape domesticity but eventually accept the security it offers and rejoin the right path, as censors and producers demanded at the time.

Sixty years after her last film, Box remains the most prolific female director in British cinema, leaving us with 13 feature films and two (surviving) shorts. There’s also her substantial body of work as a screenwriter: she was the first woman to win an Oscar for best original screenplay, for the 1945 film The Seventh Veil, and film historian Sue Harper rightly describes Box as “the most important female screenwriter in postwar British cinema”.

Much has been made of the fact that her directing career was facilitated by her marriage to Sydney Box, who began producing at Gainsborough Studios in the late 1940s (and with whom she co-wrote The Seventh Veil). Women were certainly dependent on male patronage within the industry at this time, but Sydney only got his foot in the studio door because of Muriel’s contacts. Starting out as a secretary in the late 1920s, she had worked her way up to continuity and was assistant to Michael Powell during the 1930s, helping Sydney move from journalism into advertising films and then documentaries. 

A self-described member of the “respectable poor”, she grew up in the London suburb of Tolworth. Returning to her childhood home in 1974 for an Evening Standard interview, she recalled feeling like she was being “slowly stifled in a suburban brick-box from which there seemed small chance of escape”. Aspects of her family life would later surface in her writing: in her directorial debut, The Happy Family (1952), the patriarch (played by Stanley Holloway) works on the railway, as Muriel’s father did, while his youngest daughter echoes Muriel’s ambitions to be a ballerina.

The war brought Muriel the chance to direct a couple of propaganda shorts, but feature direction seemed out of reach until Sydney’s move into production. Her diaries from the 1940s, held in the BFI National Archive, reveal the extent of her involvement in all her husband’s films, most of which went uncredited and unacknowledged. She threw herself into every aspect of production, from sourcing books and plays to adapt, writing and editing scripts, casting and dealing with censorship issues, and even taking over directing duties on one film. 

When she did finally get the chance to direct features, it had to be done by stealth. Sydney pretended they were directing The Happy Family together, discreetly leaving her to it once shooting started. The effect this had on her time is reflected in her diaries, which go from long entries detailing all aspects of her working and domestic life, to brief notes announcing a casting or dubbing session. Directing work meant she had less time for writing, but the high points of her 1950s output are those films she did manage to script: most notably Street Corner, The Passionate Stranger (1957) and The Truth About Women (1957). 

The Truth About Women offers the most perfectly distilled essence of Box’s views on the battle of the sexes. It’s a journey in flashback through one man’s relationships, illustrating that it takes a lifetime to understand women and suggesting that a wise man rejects stereotypical roles and accepts marriage as an equal partnership. It’s an eminently enjoyable film in which the lavish sets and Cecil Beaton’s stunning costumes are shown to their best advantage in Technicolor, but the biggest draw is the cast of female stars – Julie Harris, Diane Cilento, Mai Zetterling and Eva Gabor – who are given the kind of complex, varied roles rarely found in British cinema of the period. 

Stills held by the BFI National Archive offer an interesting window into Box’s presence on set. Occasionally snapped peering through the viewfinder, she’s more often to be found with the actors, deep in discussion or walking them through a scene. Her own stage experience gave her an insight into performance and the sensitivities of actors; though she generally had a good rapport with them, there were notable exceptions. Her experience with Shelley Winters on To Dorothy, a Son (1954) proved to be challenging, while Kay Kendall and Peter Finch, the stars of Simon and Laura (1955), apparently took exception to being directed by a woman.

The most innovative of Box’s features, The Passionate Stranger, gave ample scope for the cast to shine. It was filmed in black and white and colour, to differentiate between ‘reality’ and the fantasy of the romantic novel written by the main character. The lead actors take roles in both, Margaret Leighton and Ralph Richardson playing the central couple with great style, though the laurels go to Patricia Dainton, whose transformation from a shy Scottish maid into a slinky seductress is a joy to watch. 

Box’s final film as director, 1964’s Rattle of a Simple Man, proved a difficult production. The BBFC raised many objections, including to the hints of incest and “accumulation of sex material”, which led to demands for drastic cuts that threatened to render the film incomprehensible. Sydney had paid £50,000 for the rights to the play, an immense sum, but the film disappointed at the box office and, with Muriel and Sydney’s marriage at an end, her film career also came to a halt. 

But Box wasn’t ready to retire. Instead, she established the first women’s imprint, Femina, as well as writing books, one of which, The Big Switch (published in 1964), describes a utopian world created by women after a nuclear war. She published her memoirs, Odd Woman Out, in 1974, and later wrote a biography of her second husband, former Labour MP Gerald Gardiner. She also edited a book about Marie Stopes, founder of Britain’s first birth control centre.

Throughout her life, Muriel Box foregrounded women’s stories, perhaps most successfully during her years in the British film industry. Working at a time of enormous social change in postwar Britain, Box played a key role, using her position in the film industry to further the cause of women’s liberation. In doing so, she also left behind some wickedly funny, quietly disruptive and hugely entertaining British features, which deserve to be much better known. Hopefully the new season at BFI Southbank in May will bring her work into the limelight.

Muriel Box: A Woman’s Take runs at BFI Southbank in May.