Woman's film

Bette Davis in Jezebel (1938), one of the quintessential woman's films. Davis plays a Southern belle who loses her fiancé (Fonda) and her social standing when she defies conventions. She redeems herself by self-sacrifice.[1]

The woman's film is a film genre that includes women-centered narratives, female protagonists and is designed to appeal to a female audience. Woman's films usually portray stereotypical women's concerns such as domestic life, family, motherhood, self-sacrifice, and romance.[2] These films were produced from the silent era through the 1950s and early 1960s, but were most popular in the 1930s and 1940s, reaching their zenith during World War II. Although Hollywood continued to make films characterized by some of the elements of the traditional woman's film in the second half of the 20th century, the term itself disappeared in the 1960s. The work of directors George Cukor, Douglas Sirk, Max Ophüls, and Josef von Sternberg has been associated with the woman's film genre.[3] Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck were some of the genre's most prolific stars.[4]

The beginnings of the genre can be traced back to D. W. Griffith's silent films. Film historians and critics defined the genre and canon in retrospect. Before the woman's film became an established genre in the 1980s, many of the classic woman's films were referred to as melodramas.

Woman's films are films that were made for women by predominantly male screenwriters and directors whereas women's cinema encompasses films that have been made by women.[5]

  1. ^ Basinger, Jeanine. Jezebel. Audio commentary, 2006 DVD re-issue.
  2. ^ Doane 1987, pp. 152–53.
  3. ^ Heung, Marina (1990). Howard, Angela; Kevenik, Frances M. (eds.). Handbook of American Women's History. New York: Garland. ISBN 978-0-8240-8744-9.
  4. ^ Basinger 2010, p. 163.
  5. ^ Ashby 2010, p. 153.