Her 'Women' left a giant legacy

A documentary about Alcott opens at the MFA

Elizabeth Marvel (left) as Louisa May Alcott and Maranna Bassham as May Alcott in 'The Woman Behind Little Women.''

Fresh from taking the Providence Film Festival Grand Prize at the Rhode Island International Film Festival last month, "Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women," comes to the Museum of Fine Arts Wednesday at 8 p.m. for a seven-show premiere engagement ending Oct. 18.

The movie was directed and produced by Lexington-based Nancy Porter and written and produced by Harriet Reisen; it is a portrait of the woman most known for her children's books but who was, as the movie puts it, "deeply interested in the darker side of human character and emotions." The best-known of Alcott's more than two dozen books is "Little Women."

The movie intersperses talking heads commentary by current historians with actress Elizabeth Marvel, as Alcott, speaking directly to the camera and Jane Alexander, also in full 19th-century dress as Alcott's biographer Ednah Cheney, giving her insight. Alcott and Cheney's words are drawn from their own writing and other firsthand accounts.

Reenactments of Alcott's life were shot around the Boston area. Fruitlands, the Harvard property Alcott's father co-founded as a transcendentalist commune in the 1840s, is featured, and the film lays out how the experiment in self-sufficiency nearly tore the family apart. Other locales include Orchard House in Concord, where the Alcotts lived after their time at Fruitlands, and Ralph Waldo Emerson's house, also in Concord. (All three properties are now historical sites open to the public.)

Alcott is no Jane Austen in terms of market fervor, but "Little Women" is still wildly popular internationally and does have its own mini-industry - the Broadway musical "Little Women" will be playing Boston's Semel Theater in December, for instance. So it's something of a surprise that this is the first documentary film biography of the writer.

Porter and Reisen, who first worked together at WGBH, will be at all the MFA shows. A Saturday screening at 12:30 p.m. is being co-presented with John Matteson, author of "Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and her Father," which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. The 5 p.m. show on Sept. 26 will be co-presented by the Filmmakers Collaborative, Center for Independent Documentary, and Women in Film and Video/New England. Guests for the 10:30 a.m. screening on Sept. 27 will be Megan Marshall, author of "The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism," Beverly Lyon Clark, co-editor of "Little Women and the Feminist Imagination," and poet Gail Mazur. And the 4 p.m. show on Oct. 18 will feature Jan Turnquist of the Orchard House Museum, and Maud Ayson and Laurie Butters of the Fruitlands Museum.

The film will be presented on PSB television stations in 2009 as part of the American Masters series. The movie's website, www.alcottfilm.com, features a history of Alcott including a nifty interactive timeline. For more about the MFA shows, call 617-267-9300 or go to www.mfa.org/film.

MASS VOTERS SUPPORT FILM CREDITS: Public opinion is tilting strongly toward the initiatives of the Massachusetts Film Office to bring more filmmaking to the state: Almost two thirds of state voters polled last month say the tax credits for production companies are a good thing.

Here is the exact wording of the question: "A recent tax credit for movie companies has resulted in 14 movies made in Massachusetts in the past 12 months. Proponents say the tax credit is good because it brings added jobs and new money into the state. Opponents say that a tax credit for movie companies is bad policy because it costs the state more than it is worth, given other state programs that need revenue. Which is closer to your view?"

Sixty-three percent said the credits are good, 22 percent said they're bad, and 15 percent were undecided.

The question was put to 400 registered voters statewide by 7NEWS/Suffolk University.

SCREENINGS OF NOTE: Today at 2 p.m., locally produced martial arts films take the screen in the first ever Boston Action Film Festival, a one-day event at the Regent Theatre in Arlington. Also on tap will be a presentation on weapons-based fight choreography and a conversation with filmmakers (781-646-4849 and www.regenttheatre.com).

Among the offerings at the Boston Film Festival, which opened this weekend at the Loews Boston Common and continues through Wednesday, are "Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning," with Hannah Endicott-Douglas, Barbara Hershey, and Shirley MacLaine, Monday at 8:15 p.m.; "Detained: The New Bedford Immigration Raid," Jenny Alexander's snapshot of the 2005 arrest of 361 undocumented factory workers, Tuesday at 6 p.m.; and "Flash of Genius," with star Greg Kinnear attending, Wednesday at 7 p.m. (www.bostonfilmfestival.org). "Bird's Nest - Herzog De Meuron in China" is a look at the architects and vision behind the Chinese stadium at the center of last month's Olympics, and plays the MFA Wednesday at 12:15 p.m. and next Sunday at 12:15 p.m. Also at the museum is "The Gates," Christo and Jeanne-Claude's 2005 public art installation in New York City's Central Park, Thursday at 2 p.m., Saturday at 10:30 a.m., and next Sunday at 2 p.m. And, next Friday at 7:30 p.m. the new Mike Leigh film, "Happy-Go-Lucky," opens the three-day, six-film, Telluride by the Sea festival at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, N.H.. The Music Hall will be debuting its Beaux Arts lobby renovation, which festival organizers say is the biggest upgrade in the hall's 130-year-old history (603-436-2400, www.themusichall.org). Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com.