Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood

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Macmillan, 2000 - 293 páginas
For five short years, between 1929 and 1934, women in American cinema were modern! They took lovers, had babies out of wedlock, got rid of cheating husbands, enjoyed their sexuality, led unapologetic careers, and, in general, acted the way many think women only acted after 1968. Before then, women on screen had come in two varieties--good or bad--sweet ingenue or vamp. Then two stars came along to blast away these common stereotypes. Garbo turned the femme fatale into a woman whose capacity for love and sacrifice made all other human emotions seem pale. Meanwhile, Norma Shearer succeeded in taking the ingenue to a place she'd never been: the bedroom. Garbo and Shearer took the stereotypes and made them complicated. In the wake of these complicated women came others, a deluge of indelible stars--Constance Bennett, Ruth Chatterton, Mae Clarke, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Kay Francis, Ann Harding, Jean Harlow, Miriam Hopkins, Dorothy Mackaill, Barbara Stanywyck, Mae West, and Loretta Young all came into their own during the pre-Code era. These women pushed the limits and shaped their images along modern lines. Then, in July 1934, the draconian Production Code became the law in Hollywood and these modern women of the screen were banished, not to be seen again until the code was repealed three decades later. Mick LaSalle, the film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, takes readers on a tour of pre-Code films and reveals how this was the true golden age of women's films and how the movies of the pre-Code are still worth watching. The bold, pioneering, and complicated women of the pre-Code era are about to take their place in the pantheon of film history, and America is about to reclaim a rich legacy.
 

Índice

Introduction
1
The Ingenue Gets a Life
11
Like a Virgin
32
I Said Yes
54
Not Too Young and Not Too Nice
75
Im in an Orgy Wallowing
97
Shopgirls and Sex Vultures
118
Getting Away with Murder
142
The Great Garbo and Norma Who?
214
Garbos Granddaughters
230
Norma in the New Millennium
241
Epilogue
253
Complicated Women on Television and Video
257
Acknowledgments
269
Bibliography
273
Index
281

The Ghastly Job of Living Together
165
The Censors Strike Back
189

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Sobre el autor (2000)

Mick LaSalle is the author of Complicated Women and was an associate producer of the Timeline Films/Turner Classic Movies documentary of the same name. He is the San Francisco Chronicle's movie critic.

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