Celluloid Sisters: Women and Popular Cinema

Examines representations of women in films successful at British box offices between 1945 and 1965, considering their value for conmtemporary female audiences. Taking De Lauretis' proposition that popular cinema is a "technology of gender" the book explores the representation of women and the reading activity of female audience members in respect of a group of 18 films successful at the British box office between the relevant years. A method for the analysis of fictional characters is presented and the discursive context within which contemporary meanings were formed is explored through reference to the press, particularly that addressed to a female readership. Following an introductory discussion of the idea of "the popular", the book outlines cinema in Britain in the post-war period, attending particularly to its representation of women. Changes in the features of box office hits in the mid-forties, mid-fifties and mid-sixties are noted and the thematics, genres and stars apparently typical of each of these three periods are then summarized. The book then offers a detailed examination of the female characters in 18 successful films, asking how the question "what is it to be a woman?" might have been answered by contemporary female audiences. A method for the analysis of filmic characters is presented and theoretical problems raised in discussion of the reading process are explored in relation both to particular fictional characters and to the wider discursive context in which meanings are formulated - hence reference is made to contemporary reviews of films and their underlying assumptions about the fictional representations of women.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 What does "popular cinema" mean to women?: the analysis of fictional characters; the introduction of female characters; the definition of female characters; the resolution of female characters. Part 2 Popular forms and popularity: the idea of the popular; some meanings of "the popular"; "the popular" in critical discourse; "the popular" and the trade press; why is "the popular" important?; the trade; the audience. Part 3 Popular cinema in Britain 1945-1965: the films - the forties, the fifties, the sixties; genre; star personae - box office winners, from the "artful female" to the "grown up doll". Part 4 The films - narrative themes: the forties - women and sacrifice; the fifties - men and national unity; the sixties - youth and authenticity. Part 5 The construction and definition of female characters: male and female characters - numbers, central major and minor characters, figures; the introduction of female characters - central characters, major characters, minor characters, figures; the definiton of female characters - class race and nationality, age and sexual status, occupations and aims; representations of women in popular cinema - summary. Part 6 The narrative resolutions of female characters: what is the narrative resolution?; marriage and the family; alienation and solitude - Kate in "East of Eden", Bernice in "Maurice", Sister Mary Benedict in "The Bells of St Mary's", Mary in "Mary Poppins"; Death - Diana in "Piccadilly Incident", Maddalena in "Madonna of the Seven Moons", Barbara in "The Wicked Lady"; the significance of endings. Part 7 The film audience and the female reader: readers and the audience - the audience, the readers, the differentiated audience; theories of reading - the stautus of the text, spectorial strategies; theories of the audience. Part 8 Female readers and the text: mothers and motherhood; love and marriage; female friendships; female knowledge and power; rape and assault; the social experience of the female reader - working/wage earning women, divorce, education, the women's movement; representation of women and female readers - screen women, real women.