A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960 by Jeanine Basinger

In this highly readable and entertaining book, Jeanine Basinger shows how the woman's film of the 30s, 40s, and 50s sent a potent mixed message to millions of female moviegoers. At the same time that such films exhorted women to stick to their proper realm of men, marriage, and motherhood, they portrayed -- usually with relish -- strong women playing out liberating fantasies of power, romance, sexuality, luxury, even wickedness. Never mind that the celluloid personas of Bette Davis, Myrna Loy, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, or Rita Hayworth see their folly and return to their man or lament his loss in the last five minutes of the picture; for the first eighty-five minutes the audience watched as these characters wore great clothes, sat on great furniture, loved bad men, had lots of sex, told the world off for restricting them, even gave their children away. Basinger examines dozens of films -- whether melodrama, screwball comedy, musical, film noir, western, or biopic -- to make a persuasive case that the woman's film was a rich, complicated, and subversive genre that recognized and addressed, if covertly, the problems of women. Editorial Reviews From the Back Cover Now, Voyager, Stella Dallas, Leave 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 - films that not only delivered on their inherent promise to entertain but also opened a door to the Other, the Something Else, that audiences came to the theater yearning to see and feel, if only for a couple of hours. Films 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 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 (Kay Francis, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Rosalind Russell, Susan Hayward, Myrna Loy, and a host of others) and helps us understand the qualities - the right off-screen personae, the right on-screen attitudes, the right faces, the right figures forcarrying the right clothes - 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 woman'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. It is, besides, as compelling and satisfying an entertainment as the best of the wonderfully idiosyncratic movies it brings into new focus. --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition. Amazon Review When film experts talk about the woman's picture, a Hollywood genre that flourished in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, they often squabble over whether these films were liberating or constraining. Jeanine Basinger argues that they were both at the same time. She maintains that they freed their female protagonists to break social bonds while also punishing any women who seemed too free and feisty. This lively and exceedingly thorough book covers every major aspect of this fascinating film genre, including the roles female stars were expected to play, the fabulous clothes they wore, the social behaviors they were condemned to adopt, the ways they responded to and were treated by men, and the ideals of femininity Hollywood producers tried to impress upon their audiences. --Raphael Shargel --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition. About the Author JEANINE BASINGER is Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies and Curator of Cinema Archives at Wesleyan University. Her most recent book is Silent Stars (1999), and her other books include American Cinema (1994), The It's a Wonderful Life Book (1990), and The World War II Combat Film (1986). --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition. From Publishers Weekly Full of sharp and entertaining insights, this exhaustive study analyzes dozens of women's films-- The Man I Love , My Reputation , Women's Prison , etc.--which presented the contradiction of covert liberation and overt support for women's traditional roles. Basinger, chair of the Film Studies Program at Wesleyan Univeristy, mostly avoids citing interviews and fan magazines, relying instead on her own perceptions. She offers clever epigrams--the constrained choices of the woman's world are a Board Game of Life--as she explores issues including men, marriage, motherhood and fashion. The film Jezebel , the author suggests, deserved a subtitle: How Society Forces Bette Davis to Conform by Making Her Change Her Dress. Basinger's gimlet eye generates several schema, from the basic rules of film behavior to the four kinds of mothers. And while observations like one that finds similarities between women in prisons and in department stores are amusing, they also hit home. Photos not seen by PW. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition. From Library Journal Basinger (film studies, Wesleyan Univ.) has written a knowledgeable and entertaining study of the woman's film genre. With examples from hundreds of films, she demonstrates that these movies offered women the contradictory message that other roles were accessible to them, while simultaneously reaffirming their roles as housewives and mothers. Basinger covers every facet of the genre, including stars, the role of fashion, fan magazines, men, marriage, motherhood, and women in a man's world. She describes the woman's world in these films as a series of limited spaces with the woman struggling to get free of them and explores four typical settings: the prison, department store, small town, and house. Her lively analyses and amusing comments make this volume interesting to the fan of old movies as well as the film student. For most serious film collections. - Marcia L. Perry, Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Mass. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition. From Kirkus Reviews Serious, extended study of the woman's film during the three decades of its heyday (1930-60), filled with both obscure and well- remembered titles. Basinger (Film/Wesleyan; The World War II Combat Film, 1986, etc.--not reviewed) enlivens her text with gleeful vocalizing (``Wheeeeee!'') while her bass notes support a thesis-driven breakdown of women's films into types and themes. Fewer actresses and films might have served the author better than this taxonomy, where the author's livelier voice gets muffled. Main theme: that the woman's picture ``held women in social bondage and released them into a dream of potency and freedom.'' Typically, a woman's picture reaffirmed the status quo--for example, by releasing a woman from stony boredom into happy activity that first becomes suspect and then a disaster, confirming the better value of things as they are. But Basinger points out that, unlike Westerns and other genre films, few women's pictures stuck absolutely to formula--they became much too unrealistic and contradictory for stable definition. The woman's picture placed a woman ``at the center of the story universe (`I am a woman and I am important')''; it reaffirmed that ``a woman's true job is that of just being a woman''; and it provided ``an escape into a purely romantic love, into sexual awareness, into luxury, or into the rejection of the female role that might only come in some form of questioning (`What other choices do I have?').'' Basinger's retellings of the films themselves bring much uplift--she goes into each story filled with intelligence and gusto, her sense of fun often overcoming stuffiness. And no doubt the 45 b&w illustrations will boost reader interest. -- Copyright ¬Æ1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition. Review “Witty, spirited, [and] satisfyingly comprehensive . . . A Woman’s View is bright, lively, jargon-free, densely argued, never ponderous . . . Basinger knows how to nail what she’s going after.”—Boston Globe “Ms. Basinger analyzes Hollywood’s view with affectionate wit and verve . . . Her book is a timely reminder that female rebellion didn’t start with Thelma and Louise.”—New York Times Book Review “An intelligent, thought-provoking look at a genre too often dismissed as either sheer trash or simply another cultural instrument of female oppression. Basinger possesses—and conveys—a lively appreciation for the complexities of popular culture.”—Washington Post Book World “A book about the ‘woman’s film,’ and written in clear, intelligible prose, is almost as alluring as the best of the films themselves . . . a book with fascinating detail that stays readable to the end.”—Cineaste --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition. From the Publisher 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 trim. 46 illus. LC 95-17136 --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition.