The Woman's Film of the 1940s

Gender, Narrative, and History

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by Alison L. McKee

Type

Studies

Subject

On Films > Per period

Keywords

1940s, women, gender

Publishing date

2018

Publisher

Routledge

1st publishing

2014

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 240 pages
6 ¼ x 9 ½ inches (16 x 24 cm)

ISBN

978-1-138-54854-1

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Book Presentation:
This book explores the relationship among gender, desire, and narrative in 1940s woman’s films which negotiate the terrain between public history and private experience. The woman’s film and other form of cinematic melodrama have often been understood as positioning themselves outside history, and this book challenges and modifies that understanding, contextualizing the films it considers against the backdrop of World War II. In addition, in paying tribute to and departing from earlier feminist formulations about gendered spectatorship in cinema, McKee argues that such models emphasized a masculine-centered gaze at the inadvertent expense of understanding other possible modes of identification and gender expression in classical narrative cinema. She proposes ways of understanding gender and narrative based in part on literary narrative theory and ultimately works toward a notion of an androgynous spectatorship and mode of interpretation in the 1940s woman’s film.

About the Author:
Alison L. McKee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Television, Radio, Film, and Theatre at San Jose State University, US

Press Reviews:
"The Woman’s Film of the 1940s provides a welcome focus on images of women in crisis in a key period in social history " - Sue Harper, University of Portsmouth, UK

See the publisher website: Routledge