The Woman at the Keyhole: Women's Cinema and Feminist Criticism

Abstract

The term seems, if not necessarily simple to define, then at least straightforward enough. But term has acquired two different meanings which, to some minds, are diametrically opposed. It is at hypothetical intersection of these two meanings, rather than with favoring of one over other, that I begin. First, women's cinema refers to films made by women. They range from classical Hollywood directors like Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino to their more recent heirs, like Claudia Weill and Joan Silver; and from directors whom many feminists would just as soon forget, like Leni Riefenstahl or Lina Wertmiuller, to other contemporary European directors concerned directly and consciously with female modes of expression, like Chantal Akerman and Helke Sander. They range as well from independent documentary filmmakers like Julia Reichert (co-director of Union Maids) and Connie Fields (Rosie Riveter) to more experimental independents attempting to reconcile feminist politics and avant-garde form, like Michelle Citron (Daughter Rite) and Sally Potter (Thriller). To attempt to account for wide diversity of films represented in even this simple definition of is a gigantic task in and of itself. The term cinema, or more precisely, woman's film, has acquired another meaning, referring to a Hollywood product designed to appeal to a specifically female audience. Such films, popular throughout 1930s, 40s, and 50s, were usually melodramatic in tone and full of highpitched emotion, from which came pejorative title: the weepies. Indeed, Molly Haskell characterizes woman's as most untouchable of film genres. Here is how Haskell defines genre: At lowest level, as soap opera, 'woman's film' fills a masturbatory need, it is soft-core emotional porn for frustrated housewife. The weepies are founded on a mock-Aristotelian and politically conservative aesthetic whereby women spectators are moved, not by pity and fear but by self-pity and tears, to accept, rather than reject, their lot. That there