This is the very first film of the modern women's movement. Produced in 1971, it caused controversy and exhilaration. It was widely used by consciousness-raising groups to generate interest and help explain feminism to a skeptical society. The film looks at female socialization through a personal look into the lives of six women, age 4 to 35, and the forces that shape them--teachers, counselors, advertising, music and the institution of marriage....

A lurid tale of sex and psychosis is among the wildest of the Gainsborough melodramas. Set in Italy, it begins as a comparatively sedate tale about a respectable, convent-raised woman who is haunted by the memory of being raped as a teenager. But when her grown daughter returns from school, her life begins to unravel in monumentally surprising ways.