British Women's Cinema

Description

British Women’s Cinema examines the place of female-centred films throughout British film history, from silent melodrama and 1940s costume dramas right up to the contemporary British ‘chick flick’.

The woman’s film has sometimes been regarded as a cuckoo-in-the-nest of a national cinema dominated by ideas of restraint and realism, but this collection of essays by leading scholars in the field sets out to demonstrate the central position in British cinema of films for and about women.

Discussing an impressive variety of films, including The Tidal Wave, Love Story, Ladies in Lavender, Calendar Girls and Bend it like Beckham, contributors consider the importance of both female stars and female audiences in understanding the British woman’s film and engage in a lively dialogue with key themes such as class, community, domesticity, romance, sexuality, motherhood, friendship, ageing and female creative agency in British cinema.

Contents

1. The Hour of the Cuckoo: Reclaiming the British Woman's Film Melanie Bell and Melanie Williams 2. Pictures, Romance and Luxury: Women and British Cinema in the 1910s and 1920s Nathalie Morris 3. '20 Million People can't be Wrong': Anna Neagle and Popular British Stardom Josephine Dolan and Sarah Street 4. The Hollywood Woman's Film and British Audiences: A Case Study of Bette Davis and Now, Voyager Mark Glancy 5. Ingénues, Lovers, Wives and Mothers: the 1940s Career Trajectories of Googie Withers and Phyllis Calvert Brian McFarlane 6. A Landscape of Desire: Cornwall as Romantic Setting in Love Story and Ladies in Lavender Rachel Moseley 7. 'A Prize Collection of Familiar Feminine Types': the Female Group Film in 1950s British Cinema Melanie Bell 8. Swinging Femininity, 1960s Transnational Style Marcia Landy 9. The British Women's Picture: Methodology, Agency and Performance in the 1970s Sue Harper 10. 'The Hollywood Formula has been Infected': the Post-Punk Female Meets the Woman's Film - Breaking Glass Claire Monk 11. 'It's been Emotional': Reassessing the Contemporary British Woman's Film Justine Ashby 12. Not to be looked at: Older Women in Recent British Cinema Imelda Whelehan 13. Selective Filmography Melanie Bell and Melanie Williams

Author Bio

Melanie Bell is Lecturer in Film at Newcastle University. She is a member of the Women’s Film History project and has published on British cinema and gender in the Journal of British Cinema and Television and Women’s History Review. She is the author of Femininity in the Frame: Women and 1950s British Popular Cinema (2009).

Melanie Williams is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of East Anglia. Her work on British cinema has appeared in various books and journals including Screen, Sight and Sound and Cinema Journal and she is the author of Prisoners of Gender: Women in the Films of J. Lee Thompson (2009).

Related Subjects

1. Feminism
2. Film Studies
3. British Cinema
4. Gender & Cinema