A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960
by Jeanine Basinger
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Description
Now, Voyager, Stella Dallas, Leaver Her to Heaven, Imitation of Life, Mildred Pierce, Gilda…these are only a few of the hundreds of “women’s films” that poured out of Hollywood during the thirties, forties, and fifties. The films were widely disparate in subject, sentiment, and technique, they nonetheless shared one dual purpose: to provide the audience (of women, primarily) with temporary liberation into a screen dream—of romance, sexuality, luxury, suffering, or even show more wickedness—and then send it home reminded of, reassured by, and resigned to the fact that no matter what else she might do, a woman’s most important job was…to be a woman. Now, with boundless knowledge and infectious enthusiasm, Jeanine Basinger illuminates the various surprising and subversive ways in which women’s films delivered their message.Basinger examines dozens of films, exploring the seemingly intractable contradictions at the convoluted heart of the woman’s genre—among them, the dilemma of the strong and glamorous woman who cedes her power when she feels it threatening her personal happiness, and the self-abnegating woman whose selflessness is not always as “noble” as it appears. Basinger looks at the stars who played these women and helps us understand the qualities—the right off-screen personae, the right on-screen attitudes, the right faces—that made them personify the woman’s film and equipped them to make believable drama or comedy out of the crackpot plots, the conflicting ideas, and the exaggerations of real behavior that characterize these movies.
In each of the films the author discusses—whether melodrama, screwball comedy, musical, film noir, western, or biopic—a woman occupies the center of her particular universe. Her story—in its endless variations of rags to riches, boy meets girl, battle of the sexes, mother love, doomed romance—inevitably sends a highly potent mixed message: Yes, you women belong in your “proper place” (that is, content with the Big Three of the women’s film world—men, marriage, and motherhood), but meanwhile, and paradoxically, see what fun, glamour, and power you can enjoy along the way. A Woman’s View deepens our understanding of the times and circumstances and attitudes out of which these movies were created. show less
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Member Reviews
Simply fantastic. Basinger looks at the "pre-Code" and Production Code films made for a female audience, concluding that even though the Code punished transgressive behaviors, these films still provided models of such behavior for their viewers.
A doorstop of a book but worth it. Ms Basingers explores the women's films of the 1930s through 1960 including how the movies of that time influenced and affected her own life as a child and young woman. A must have for the film buff.
Well-researched, yet approachable book
Readable study...loved it.
Best film critique book
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Author Information
15+ Works 1,164 Members
Jeanine Basinger is Chair of the Film Studies Program and Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies at Wesleyan University, and Curator of the Cinema Archives there. She lives with her husband in Middletown, Connecticut.
Common Knowledge
- First words
- When I was a child, powers of observation were needed because no one told you anything. You were awash in a sea of noninformation, and it was up to you to paddle your own canoe to whatever shore of truth you could locate. -Ch... (show all)apter One, The Genre
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 791.43082
- Canonical LCC
- PN1995.9.W6
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, Sexuality and Gender Studies, History
- DDC/MDS
- 791.43082 — Arts & recreation Recreation, sports, and performing arts Public performances Motion pictures, radio, television, podcasting Motion pictures Standard subdivisions Women in film
- LCC
- PN1995.9 .W6 — Language and Literature Literature (General) Literature (General) Drama Motion pictures
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 149
- Popularity
- 218,751
- Reviews
- 5
- Rating
- (4.29)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 2
