TCM puts women filmmakers in focus

As the saying goes, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” How about women ignored for 12 decades?

TCM launches “Women Make Film” (8 p.m.), a 12-week series of hourlong examinations of women filmmakers from the earliest silents to our present decade. Each episode will run on Tuesday, accompanied by a festival of films directed by women from many countries and six continents.

Many of the films and filmmakers will be obscure to viewers. And a revelation, as well.

Night one of “Women” begins with a clip from the 1961 film “We Were Young,” a deeply romantic moment where two lovers find their way through postwar rubble lit only by their flashlights. Their tear-stained faces are revealed only after their two spotlights converge. It’s a stunning bit of cinematography equal to anything in “The Third Man,” it was directed by Binka Zhelyazkova, a Bulgarian woman filmmaker, who, it’s almost safe to say, nobody has ever heard of.

This collection of hidden gems, and revelatory visions, is accompanied by an undercurrent of anger and frustration. As Tilda Swinton, narrator of the first hour, observes, Hollywood has been a boys’ club and its attitudes have had a stranglehold on audiences’ experience and imagination.

Speaking of boys’ clubs, one can almost hear a cynic, dismissing “Women Make Film” as hopelessly academic: “Oh great, feminist film theory and Bulgarian masterpieces!” The series both embraces and transcends its didactic nature, offering its lessons as a kind of alternative film school, broken into chapters including, “How to open a film,” “How to present a dream sequence,” “How to introduce a character.”

Only in this “course,” the answers to all of those questions are provided by clips from films by innovative women directors, from silent legend Dorothy Arzner to Sophia Coppola, and female visionaries from the old USSR, India and yes, Bulgaria.

This series is the very definition of “thoughtful” programming, and something for which TCM is uniquely suited. It’s

refreshing to see a network maintain its vision and high standards. With “Women Make Film,” it has topped itself.

“Women Make Film” can also be streamed on HBO Max.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

› Christopher Plummer stars as billionaire J.P. Getty, subjected to a 1973 kidnapping extortion scheme, in the 2017 true-life drama “All the Money in the World” (7:45 p.m., FXM, TV-MA). Plummer’s performance was spliced into the movie, replacing those shot with scandal-engulfed star Kevin Spacey.

› “America’s Got Talent” (8 p.m., NBC, TV-PG) presents live performances.

› Secret ingredients in “Hell’s Kitchen” (8 p.m., Fox, repeat, TV-14).

› “The Contenders:

They Ran and Lost But Changed Political History” (8 p.m., CSPAN) discusses Adlai Stevenson.

› 2020 U.S. Open Tennis (8 p.m., ESPN).

› NBA basketball (8:30 p.m., ABC).

› Student addicts are the focus of the new series “16 & Recovering” (9 p.m., MTV, TV-14).

› A leaker heads for the border on “FBI: Most Wanted” (10 p.m., CBS, repeat, TV-14).

SERIES NOTES

› A hostage drama on “NCIS” (8 p.m., CBS, repeat, TV-14).

› On two helpings of “Dead Pixels” (8 p.m., CW, TV-14): in the flesh (8 p.m.), following the script (8:30 p.m., repeat).