Jennifer M. Bean & Diane Negra.
A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema.
Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2002.
ISBN: 0 822 32999 9
584pp
US$27.95 (pb)
(Review copy supplied by Duke University Press)

The women of silent cinema are in the process of being re-discovered. An international Congress on Women and the Silent Screen was held in Montreal in 2004: others in this series are planned for Guadalajara and Sydney. Meanwhile, publications are proliferating – both reference works designed to make women’s contribution visible again, and analytical works designed to re-assess that contribution. So, this book is timely (even if this review is a little late).

The journal Camera obscura was early and consistent in publishing work from both feminist film scholars and scholars of early film, so it is not surprising that the confluence of these two fields should lead to a special issue (no.48, January 2002) on “Early women stars”. The present volume re-publishes some of the essays from that journal issue, but adds substantially to this – both in number (increasing from five essays to twenty) and in scope. There is plenty here on “early women stars” – essays on Alla Nazimova, Musidora, Mary Pickford, Pola Negri, Greta Garbo, and incidental references to many others. But there is also much more: essays that address (among other things) authorship, spectatorship, commodification, politics, performance, periodization – in fact, most of the major areas currently exercising the minds of film scholars in general, including those concerned particularly with film history.

“Early cinema” may prove misleading for some readers. In some contexts, the term is applied to roughly the first twenty years of film, up to somewhere between the inauguration of Hollywood in 1913 and the end of World War 1 in 1918: however, the editors of this book position it as the whole of the silent period, which may mean as late as 1935. There is also the usual focus on the American industry, despite one essay each on women in early Chinese and Italian cinema, the occasional reference to the European careers of people who eventually joined the “real” industry in USA, and some discussion of the circulation of foreign films within America.

Some of the chapters provide excellent visual illustration of the argument – Gaylyn Studlar on Mary Pickford, and Lori Landay on the Flapper film are cases in point. Others suffer from insufficient illustration. Angela Dalle Vacche, for instance, could have used illustrations to explicate the assumed (but not explained) difference between androgyny and gynandry.

All the chapters are about the interaction between social history, film history and film theory, particularly feminist theories of spectatorship, flânerie, and commodification. Some are more immediately concerned with social history rather than with film history, or with film theory rather than with film history, but the best manage to interweave all three productively. Some fall into the jargon trap, or take the long and complicated route to a conclusion that could have been better presented simply and briefly.
Every reader will find their own favourites in this smorgasbord, so I have decided to admit to partiality, and take a closer look at those writers who share my own particular interests.

First, there are several who address issues of historical methodology and of the interaction of this with film theory. Some even do this for the very early (pre-World War 1) period, which is my own preferred era. Jane Gaines (“Of cabbages and authors”, discussing Dorothy Arzner as well as Alice Guy-Blaché) rejects auteurism, but as a feminist is interested in retrieving the work of women and making sure that women film workers are given the credit they deserve: her article addresses the apparent conflicts (even contradictions) between these two positions. I find the division proposed by Amelie Hastie (“Circuits of memory and history”), between memory (subjective and fallible) and history (objective and factual) unconvincing: I prefer to think of memory as the raw material of history, with both being equally subjective and fallible. However, her discussion of  The Memoirs of Alice Guy-Blaché is always intriguing.

I have a particular interest in the problem of assigning production roles in that very early period, when these had not yet stabilised industrially. Gaines wonders if using the term “director” for Alice Guy-Blaché may be misleading, and Radha Vatsal (“Footnotes: women directors of the silent era”) describes the Women Film Pioneers Project at Duke University, which is trying to establish a full filmography of women film-makers, while acknowledging such terminological difficulties.

Then there are those whose specialised interest in film history overlaps with my own. Shelley Stamp, in “Taking precautions, or regulating early birth-control films”, provides a very straightforward narrative history of the censorship of birth control and/or abortion films in US, in the period 1915-1917. Like some of my own work on Australian film, she links the questions of censorship of film (On grounds of promoting truth, like journalism? Or on moral grounds, like literature or drama?), with the social questions (Is sex a matter of private or public concern? Should sexual information, including information on contraception, be available to all or on class grounds?). Her conclusion is that Where are My Children?  was banned by the Board of Review because it was confused in its message (advocating birth control for the lower classes, but deprecating abortion for the middle classes, who should be encouraged to have lots of children to keep their dominance within society), that is, on journalistic grounds. Birth Control and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, on the other hand, were passed by the Board of Review (because they met the necessary standards of “truth”) but met with trouble from state boards on moral grounds. At the same time, she proposes that public opinion was shifting away from the view of film as an appropriate educational tool, and towards requiring that it be judged solely as entertainment.

I find myself sometimes in disagreement with some of these writers, but it seems hardly fair to single out any one for detailed criticism, just because she happens to share some of my own concerns: particularly when it is precisely those shared concerns that drew me first to these articles out of all those available. So, if your own interest in early cinema is already established, you will find something stimulating and provocative here, in the wide range of topics and approaches on offer. If you are just entering this territory, this collection provides a rich selection to whet your appetite for further explorations.

Ina Bertrand
Australia.

Created on: Monday, 6 December 2004 | Last Updated: 6-Dec-04