History 3070    Summer 2008

Film Analysis Oral presentation

The "woman's film"— is a Hollywood genre produced from the silent era until today. Made for, about, and sometimes by women, such films strongly address a presumed female audience and as such have performed an important role in society's ordering of gender and sexual difference. Beginning with the silent era's "Flapper film" comedies and ending with contemporary women's independent cinema, there are prevailing narrative paradigms, recurring figures and characterizations, and the thematic obsessions that mark these films as woman's films or "chick flicks."  Subgenres associated with the woman's film include:

• the problem of domesticity in the melodrama
• film censorship and the "fallen" woman's film in the 1930s
• cross-dressing in the screwball comedy
• paranoia and the gothic film
• "passing" in the racial melodrama
• the femme fatale in the "noir" melodrama
• trans-gender identity in independent cinema.

Students will choose one of the following to talk about the messages given in films about cultural expectations of women:  Use the Internet Movie Database for information. (See also "Chick Flicks" from Greatest Films: http://www.filmsite.org/chickflicks.html

 

the "sexual" woman of 1920s: It, Pandora's Box	The "fallen woman" of the 1930s: Blonde Venus, Marked Woman	Screwball comedy: It Happened One Night,  My Man Godfrey, Bringing Up Baby, The Lady Eve	Self-sacrificing women: Stella Dallas, Mildred Pierce, All That Heaven Allows	"Passing": Pinky
Gothic films: She, Bride of Frankenstein, Psycho	Femme fatale in "film noir": The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, Out of the Past	Fast-talking Dames; His Girl Friday, The Awful Truth, The Thin Man	Trans-gendered Identity: Boys Don't Cry

Consider:

1. the relevance of the films to issues we have been discussing
2. your reaction to the films--what surprised you? what had you not considered previously?
3. why or why not are you recommending these films to your colleagues?

Provide your colleagues with a handout:  Handout should include information about the filmmakers (screen writer, producer, director, cinematographer), a short summary of the story, a description of the character of the female lead.