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Abel Ferrara’s funky and nasty 1981 cult über thriller is a feminist take on the good-old-bad-old days of ’70s and ’80s Manhattan that gave rise to films like “Death Wish” and “Taxi Driver.”
Screenwriter Nicholas St. John teaches his own school of dramatic form with an unprecedented double inciting incident that will blow your mind. Think of Abel Ferrara as New York City’s other Scorsese.
Mute garment-district seamstress Thana (played by the lovely and brilliant Zoë Tamerlis – aka Lund) gets raped not once, but twice after a long day at work at the sewing machine. New York City was no piece of cake. The second violation occurs in Thana’s crummy little Hell’s Kitchen apartment. There she gets the better of her misogynist attacker with the business end of an iron.
After some piecemeal bathtub corpse removal, Thana makes use of the rapist’s gun to go on a revenge-killing spree that proves more cathartic, and more stylish, than the one Charles Bronson famously committed in “Death Wish,” and its sequels. Watch as Thana lays a big lipstick kiss on each bullet before placing it in the chamber.
It’s a shame that when the film was finally released on DVD, nearly a minute of footage was cut from the original version. Abel Ferrara’s fearless creativity is refreshing in its indictment of verbal, physical, and psychological abuse against women, and serves as a significant time capsule of this still underanalyzed era in American culture. Not that women don’t still have to suffer from constant catcalls and public humiliation by dumbass men regardless of where they walk in the United States.
“Ms. 45” is filled with tons of droll humor, a great soundtrack, and a determinedly unsanitized version of New York in the early ’80s. James Lemmo’s camera work doesn’t miss a single detail of atmosphere and squalor. The cool post-punk tone of the movie is exceptional. I went through a period when I kept my VHS copy of “Ms. 45” in the player for about six months and watched it repeatedly. “Rosemary’s Baby” is the only other film I’ve ever had such a close relationship with.
There’s a depth of symbolic imagery and magic in this movie. There’s also more than a little sex appeal from its traumatized mute protagonist in all of her full-blossoming glory. Abel Ferrara’s movie is pure cinema, straight into the vein of its audience. Get smacked baby. You’ll come running back for more.
