Women filmmakers in early Hollywood

Abstract

Mahar, Karen Ward. Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 336 pp. $45. Think of Hollywood filmmakers of early twentieth century, and Cecil B. DeMille or D.W.Griffith may come to mind while Alice Guy Blache, Gene Gauntier, and Lois Weber probably do not. Active movie makers in 1910s and early 1920s, these and other women wrote scripts, produced and directed movies, and edited film before studio system relegated women to subordinate positions in mid-1920s. Karen Ward Mahar's Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood examines these women's careers, revealing a window in time when women enjoyed greater opportunities than before or since. more than a decade, she writes, appeared that creative and powerful women were going to be norm in American film industry, not exception. Women filmmakers were said to be at beginning of their stories-that exceptional would soon be unexceptional and that workday parity with men was in near future. Yet it was not to be. Mahar argues that between about 1896 and 1908, novel new technologies and content for men dominated filmmaking. Thus, the American film industry emerged within a masculinized context. Longer, more dramatic films developed around 1908, bringing middle-class concerns that nickelodeon fare was harming impressionables. A censorship crisis and resulting uplift movement meant industry needed women, who were thought to be morally superior. Opportunities followed. The greatest value of Mahar's book is that it introduces female filmmakers who might otherwise be forgotten. Blache, for example, was one of first filmmakers of either sex, a French expatriate who made more than 100 films before coming to United States in 1907. As director-general of Solax, she made typical films: melodramas, comedies, westerns, and military pictures. However, Mahar says, her films were marked by strong female agency, cross-dressing, and struggles against patriarchy. For example, Cupid and Comet is about a woman who takes her father's military uniform to elope with her fiance. The father, having no clothes, arrives at wedding in his daughter's dress. In Year 2000 features women who rule and men who obey. Gauntier, meanwhile, started as an actress but wrote scenes, directed, played leading roles, and worked with technical aspects such as developing, printing, and titling. Like many women, she learned several jobs to succeed in business. Women also directed at large companies, including Universal and Vitagraph, and several female stars had their names on companies, though these were often backed by major producers such as Louis B. …