Woman's film
Encyclopedia
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
through the 1950s and early 1960s, but were most popular in the 1930s and 1940s, reaching their zenith during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Although Hollywood
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
continued to make films characterized by some of the elements of the traditional woman's film in the second half of the 20th century
20th century
Many people define the 20th century as running from January 1, 1901 to December 31, 2000, others would rather define it as beginning on January 1, 1900....
, the term itself disappeared in the 1960s. The work of directors George Cukor
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
, Douglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk was a Danish-German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas in the 1950s.-Life and work:...
, Max Ophüls
Max Ophüls
Maximillian Oppenheimer — known as Max Ophüls — was an influential German-born film director who worked in Germany , France , the United States , and France again...
, and Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg — born Jonas Sternberg — was an Austrian-American film director. He is particularly noted for his distinctive mise en scène, use of lighting and soft lens, and seven-film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich.-Youth:Von Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to a Jewish...
has been associated with the woman's film genre. Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford , born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre....
, Bette Davis
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
, and Barbara Stanwyck
Barbara Stanwyck
Barbara Stanwyck was an American actress. She was a film and television star, known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional with a strong screen presence, and a favorite of directors including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang and Frank Capra...
were some of the genre's most prolific stars
Movie star
A movie star is a celebrity who is well-known, or famous, for his or her starring, or leading, roles in motion pictures. The term may also apply to an actor or actress who is recognized as a marketable commodity and whose name is used to promote a movie in trailers and posters...
.
The beginnings of the genre can be traced back to D. W. Griffith
D. W. Griffith
David Llewelyn Wark Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the controversial and groundbreaking 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance .Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera...
's silent films. Film historians and critics defined the genre and canon in retrospect. Before the woman's film was became an established genre in the 1980s, many of the classic woman's films were referred to as melodramas.
Woman's films are films that were made for women by predominantly male screenwriters and directors whereas women's cinema
Women's cinema
The term women's cinema usually refers to films made by women. Above all, it designates the work of women film directors and, to a lesser degree, the work of other women behind the camera such as cinematographers and screenwriters...
encompasses films that have been made by women.
Definition
Mary Ann Doane
Mary Ann Doane is currently George Hazard Crooker Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She is a pioneer in the study of gender in film....
, for example, argued that the woman's film is not a "pure genre" because it is crossed and informed by a number of other genres such as melodrama, film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
, the gothic, and horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
. Similarly, film scholar Scott Simmon argues that the woman's film has remained "elusive" to the point of having its very existence questioned. This elusiveness, he argues, is partially due to the fact that the woman's film is an oppositional genre which can only be defined in opposition to male-centered genres like the Western
Western
Western may refer to:* Western , a category of fiction and visual art centered on the American Old West** Western fiction, the Western genre as featured in literature* Western music, a type of American folk music-In geography:...
and gangster film
Mob film
Mob films are a subgenre of crime films dealing with organized crime, often the Mafia. Especially in early mob films, there is some overlap with film noir.-History:...
. It has also been noted that it is a critically rather than industrially constructed genre, having been defined in retrospect rather than at the time of the films' production. The woman's film was seen as closely related to and even synonymous with melodrama. Other terms commonly used to describe the woman's film were "drama", "romance", "love story", "comedy drama", and "soap opera". Since the late 1980s, the woman's film has been an established film genre. Film scholar Justine Ashby, however, has observed a trend in British cinema
Cinema of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...
that she calls "generic eclipse" whereby films that adhere to all the fundamental tenants of the woman's film are subsumed under other genres. Millions Like Us
Millions Like Us
Millions Like Us is a 1943 British propaganda film, showing life in a wartime aircraft factory in documentary detail. It stars Patricia Roc, Eric Portman, Megs Jenkins, and Anne Crawford, was written by Sidney Gilliat, and directed by Gilliat and Frank Launder...
(1943) and Two Thousand Women
Two Thousand Women
Two Thousand Women is a 1944 British comedy-drama war film about a camp of interned British women in Occupied France. Three RAF aircrewmen whose bomber had been shot down enter the camp and are hidden by the women from the Germans...
(1944), for example, have been described and promoted as war films rather than woman's films.
The woman's film differs from other film genres in that it is primarily addressed to women. Cinema historian Jeanine Basinger
Jeanine Basinger
Jeanine Basinger , a film historian, is Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies and Founder and Curator of The Cinema Archives at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut....
argues that the first of three purposes of the woman’s film is "to place a woman at the center of the story universe". In most other and particularly men-oriented film genres the opposite is the case as women and their concerns have been assigned minor roles. Molly Haskell
Molly Haskell
Molly Haskell is an American feminist film critic and author. Her most influential book is From Reverence to Rape: the Treatment of Women in the Movies...
explains that "if a woman hogs this universe unrelentingly, it is perhaps her compensation for all the male-dominated universes from which she has been excluded: the gangster film, the western, the war film, the policier, the rodeo film, the adventure film
Adventure film
Adventure films are a genre of film.Unlike pure, low-budget action films they often use their action scenes preferably to display and explore exotic locations in an energetic way....
". The second purpose of the woman's film, according to Basinger, is "to reaffirm in the end the concept that a woman's true job is that of being a woman". A romantic ideal of love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
is presented as the only "career" that will guarantee happiness and that women should aspire to. The third purpose of the genre, as suggested by Basinger, is "to provide a temporary visual liberation of some sort, however small – an escape into a purely romantic love, into sexual awareness, into luxury, or into the rejection of the female role". Basinger argues that the major – if not only – action of the woman's film and its biggest source of drama and tragedy is the necessity to make a choice. The heroine will have to decide between two or more paths that are equally appealing but mutually exclusive as, for example, romantic love and a fulfilling job. One path will be "right" and consistent with the film’s overall morality and the other path will be "wrong" but it will provide liberation. As the films' heroines were punished for following the "wrong" path and ultimately reconciled to their roles as women, wives, and mothers, Basinger argues that woman's films "cleverly contradict themselves" and "easily reaffirm the status quo for the woman's life while providing little releases, small victories or even big releases, big victories".
Identifying characteristics
Unlike male-centered movies which are frequently shot outdoors, most woman's films are set in the domestic sphere, which defines the lives and roles of the female protagonist. Whereas the events in woman's films – weddings, proms, births – are defined by nature and society, the action in male films – chasing criminals, participating in a fight – is story-driven.The themes in woman's and male-oriented films are often diametrically opposed: fear of separation from loved ones, emphasis on emotions, and human attachment in women's films, as opposed to fear of intimacy, repressed emotionality, and individuality in male-oriented movies. The plot conventions of woman's films revolve around several basic themes: love triangles, unwed motherhood, illicit affairs, the rise to power, and mother-daughter relationships. The narrative pattern depends on the activity engaged in by the heroine and commonly includes sacrifice, affliction, choice, and competition. The maternal melodrama, the career woman comedy, and the paranoid woman's film, a sub-genre based on suspicion and distrust, are the most frequent sub-genres. Female madness, depression
Depression
Depression or depress may refer to:-Medicine:* Depression , a state of low mood and aversion to activity** Mood disorder, a class of mental illnesses featuring depressed mood...
, hysteria
Hysteria
Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes unmanageable emotional excesses. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to an overwhelming fear that may be caused by multiple events in one's past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part, or,...
, and amnesia
Amnesia
Amnesia is a condition in which one's memory is lost. The causes of amnesia have traditionally been divided into categories. Memory appears to be stored in several parts of the limbic system of the brain, and any condition that interferes with the function of this system can cause amnesia...
were frequent plot elements in Hollywood's woman's films of the 1940s. This trend took place when Hollywood tried to incorporate aspects of psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
. In the medical discourse in films like Now, Voyager
Now, Voyager
Now, Voyager is a 1942 American drama film starring Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains, and directed by Irving Rapper. The screenplay by Casey Robinson is based on the 1941 novel of the same name by Olive Higgins Prouty....
(1942), Possessed
Possessed (1947 film)
Possessed is a 1947 Warner Bros. film starring Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, and Raymond Massey in a tale about an unstable woman's obsession with her ex-lover. The screenplay by Ranald MacDougall and Silvia Richards was based upon a story by Rita Weiman. The film was directed by Curtis Bernhardt and...
(1947) and Johnny Belinda (1948), mental health is visually represented by beauty and mental illness by an unkept appearance; health was restored if the female protagonist improved her appearance. Friendship
Friendship
Friendship is a form of interpersonal relationship generally considered to be closer than association, although there is a range of degrees of intimacy in both friendships and associations. Friendship and association are often thought of as spanning across the same continuum...
among women was fairly common, although the treatment was superficial and focused more on women's dedication to men and female-male relationships than on their friendships with each other.
The female protagonist is portrayed as either good or bad. Haskell distinguishes three types of women that are particularly common to woman’s films: the extraordinary, ordinary and the "ordinary woman who becomes extraordinary". The extraordinary women are characters like Scarlett O'Hara
Scarlett O'Hara
Scarlett O' Hara is the protagonist in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and in the later film of the same name...
and Jezebel who are played by equally extraordinary actresses like Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier was an English actress. She won the Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire , a role she also played on stage in London's West End, as well as for her portrayal of the southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, alongside Clark...
and Bette Davis. They are independent and emancipated "aristocrats of their sex" who transcend the limitations of their sexual identities. The ordinary women, in contrast, are bound by the rules of their respective societies because their range of options is too limited to break free of their limitations. The ordinary woman who becomes extraordinary is a character who "begins as a victim of discriminatory circumstances and rises, through pain, obsession, or defiance, to become mistress of her fate." Depending on the type of heroine a film champions, a film can be either socially conservative or progressive. Certain archetypal characters appear in many woman's films: unreliable husbands, the other man, a female competitor, the reliable friend, usually an older woman, and the sexless male, frequently depicted as an older man who offers the protagonist security and luxury but makes no sexual demands on her.
A common motif in Hollywood's woman's films is that of the doppelgänger
Doppelgänger
In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune...
sisters (often played by the same actress), one good and one bad who vie for one man as Bette Davis
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
in her double role in A Stolen Life (1946) and Olivia de Havilland
Olivia de Havilland
Olivia Mary de Havilland is a British American film and stage actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 and 1949. She is the elder sister of actress Joan Fontaine. The sisters are among the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s.-Early life:Olivia de Havilland...
in The Dark Mirror
The Dark Mirror
The Dark Mirror is a 1946 American psychological thriller film directed by Robert Siodmak, starring Olivia de Havilland as a pair of twins, and Lew Ayres as their psychiatrist. The film marks Ayres' return to motion pictures following his conscientious objection to service in World War II...
(1946). The good woman is portrayed as passive, sweet, emotional, and asexual whereas the bad woman is assertive, intelligent, and erotic. The conflict between them is resolved with the defeat of the bad woman. A central element of the 1980s British woman's film is the motif of escape. Woman's films allow their respective female protagonists to escape their everyday lives and their socially and sexually prescribed roles. The escape can take the form of a journey to another place such as the USSR in Letter to Brezhnev
Letter to Brezhnev
Letter to Brezhnev is a 1985 British comedy film about working class life in contemporary Liverpool. It was written by Frank Clarke and directed by Chris Bernard. It starred Alfred Molina, Peter Firth, Tracy Lea, Alexandra Pigg, Margi Clarke amongst others...
(1985) and Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
in Shirley Valentine
Shirley Valentine (film)
Shirley Valentine is a 1989 British/American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Lewis Gilbert. The screenplay by Willy Russell is based on his 1986 one-character play of the same title.-Plot:...
(1989) or education as in Educating Rita
Educating Rita (film)
Educating Rita is a 1983 film of Willy Russell's play of the same title directed by Lewis Gilbert and stars Julie Walters, Michael Caine, and Maureen Lipman with a screenplay by Russell.-Premise:...
(1983) and sexual initiation as in Wish You Were Here
Wish You Were Here (1987 film)
Wish You Were Here is a 1987 British drama/comedy film starring Emily Lloyd and Tom Bell. The film was written and directed by David Leland. The original music score was composed by Stanley Myers.-Plot:...
(1987).
History
The beginnings of the genre can be traced back to D. W. GriffithD. W. Griffith
David Llewelyn Wark Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the controversial and groundbreaking 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance .Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera...
whose one– and two–reelers A Flash of Light
A Flash of Light
A Flash of Light is a 1910 short silent drama film directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Charles West and featuring Mary Pickford and Blanche Sweet.-Cast:* Charles West - John Rogers* Vivian Prescott - Belle* Stephanie Longfellow - The Older Sister...
(1910) and Her Awakening
Her Awakening
Her Awakening is a 1911 short predating feature-length films starring comedienne Mabel Normand and directed by D. W. Griffith. Normand portrays a vivaciously effervescent young woman ashamed to introduce her poorly dressed mother to her elegant suitor...
(1911) feature the trademark narratives of repression and resistance that would later define a majority of women's films. The genre was particularly popular in 1930s and 1940s, reaching its zenith during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The film industry of that time had an economic interest in producing such films as women were believed to comprise a majority of movie-goers. In line with this perception, many woman's films were prestigious productions which attracted some of the best stars and directors. Some film scholars suggest that the genre as a whole was well-regarded within the film industry, while others argue that the genre and term "woman's film" had derogatory connotations and was used by critics to dismiss certain films. Production of women's films dropped off in the 1950s as melodrama became more male-centered and as soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
s began to appear on television. Although Hollywood
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
continued to make films marked by some of the features and concerns of the traditional woman's film in the second half of the 20th century
20th century
Many people define the 20th century as running from January 1, 1901 to December 31, 2000, others would rather define it as beginning on January 1, 1900....
, the term itself disappeared in the 1960s.
The genre was revived in the early 1970s. Attempts to create modern versions of the classic woman's film, updated to take account of new social norms, include Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is a 1974 American drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Robert Getchell. It stars Ellen Burstyn as a widow who travels with her preteen son across the American Southwest in search of a better life, along with Alfred Lutter as her son and Kris...
(1974), An Unmarried Woman
An Unmarried Woman
An Unmarried Woman is a 1978 American comedy-drama film that tells the story of the wealthy New York wife Erica Benton whose “perfect” life is shattered when her stockbroker husband Martin leaves her for a younger woman. The film documents Erica's attempts at being single again, where she suffers...
(1978) by Paul Mazursky
Paul Mazursky
Paul Mazursky is an American film director, screenwriter and actor.-Personal life:He was born Irwin Mazursky in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jean , a piano player for dance classes, and David Mazursky, a laborer. Mazursky was born to a Jewish family; his grandfather was an immigrant from...
, Garry Marshall
Garry Marshall
Garry Kent Marshall is an American actor, director, writer and producer. His notable credits include creating Happy Days and The Odd Couple and directing Nothing In Common, Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride, Valentine's Day, and The Princess Diaries.-Early life:Marshall was born in the New York City...
's Beaches
Beaches (film)
Beaches , is a 1988 American comedy-drama film adapted by Mary Agnes Donoghue from the Iris Rainer Dart novel of the same name...
(1988), and Fried Green Tomatoes
Fried Green Tomatoes (film)
Fried Green Tomatoes is a 1991 comedy-drama film based on the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg. It was released in the UK under the novel's full title. Directed by Jon Avnet and written by Fannie Flagg and Carol Sobieski, it stars Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy,...
(1995) by Jon Avnet
Jon Avnet
Jonathan Michael "Jon" Avnet is an American director, writer and producer.-Early life:Avnet was born in Brooklyn, the son of Joan Bertha and Lester Francis Avnet, a corporate executive and electronics distributor. He attended Great Neck North High School in Great Neck, New York...
. Similarly, the 2002 films The Hours
The Hours (film)
The Hours is a 2002 drama film directed by Stephen Daldry, and starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Ed Harris. The screenplay by David Hare is based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title by Michael Cunningham....
and Far from Heaven
Far from Heaven
Far from Heaven is a 2002 drama film written and directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, and Patricia Clarkson....
took their cues from the classic woman's film. Within British cinema
Cinema of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...
, David Leland
David Leland
David Leland is a director, screenwriter and actor who came to international fame with his directorial debut Wish You Were Here in 1987.-Life:...
returned to the formula of the 1980s woman's film in The Land Girls
The Land Girls (film)
The Land Girls is a 1998 movie directed by David Leland and starring Catherine McCormack, Rachel Weisz, Anna Friel, Steven Mackintosh and Ann Bell. It is based on the book Land Girls by Angela Huth.-Synopsis:...
(1998). The film tells the story of three young women during World War II and offers its heroines the opportunity to escape their old lives. Bend It Like Beckham
Bend It Like Beckham
Bend It Like Beckham is a 2002 comedy-drama film starring Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys Myers, Anupam Kher, Shaznay Lewis, and Archie Panjabi first released in the United Kingdom. The film was directed by Gurinder Chadha...
(2002) emphasizes the key generic theme of female friendship and casts the heroine in a conflict between the restrictions of her traditional Sikh
Sikh
A Sikh is a follower of Sikhism. It primarily originated in the 15th century in the Punjab region of South Asia. The term "Sikh" has its origin in Sanskrit term शिष्य , meaning "disciple, student" or शिक्ष , meaning "instruction"...
upbringing and her aspirations to become a football player. Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar
Morvern Callar (film)
Morvern Callar is a 2002 British film directed by Lynne Ramsay and starring Samantha Morton in the title role. It is based on Alan Warner's 1995 novel Morvern Callar.-Plot synopsis:...
is based on the woman's film tradition; a young woman escapes to Spain and pretends to be the author of her boyfriend's novel. While Morvern's journeys and transformations allow for liberation, she ends up where she started.
Response
Basinger notes that woman's films were often criticized for reinforcing conventional values, above all, the notion that women could only find happiness in love, marriage and motherhood. However, she argues that they were "subtly subversive". They implied that a woman could not combine a career and a happy family life, but they also offered women a glimpse of a world outside the home, where they did not sacrifice their independence for marriage, housekeeping, and childrearing. The pictures depicted women with successful careers as journalists, pilots, car company presidents, and restaurateurs. Similarly, Simmon notes that the genre offered a mixture of repression and liberation, in which repressive narratives are regularly challenged, partly via mise-en-scène and acting but also by conflicts within the narratives themselves. He further states that such resistances were present in some of the earliest woman's films and became the rule with Douglas SirkDouglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk was a Danish-German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas in the 1950s.-Life and work:...
's postwar American woman's films. Others have argued, however, that the narratives of these films offer only the repressive perspective and that viewers must read the texts "against the grain" to be able to find a liberating message. Critics such as Haskell have criticized the term "woman's film" itself. She writes:
What more damning comment on the relations between men and women in America than the very notion of something called the 'woman's film'? (...) A film that focuses on male relationships is not pejoratively dubbed a 'man's film' (...), but a 'psychological drama.'"
Some woman's film have been met with critical acclaim. Woman's films that were selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" include It Happened One Night
It Happened One Night
It Happened One Night is a 1934 American romantic comedy film with elements of screwball comedy directed by Frank Capra, in which a pampered socialite tries to get out from under her father's thumb, and falls in love with a roguish reporter . The plot was based on the story Night Bus by Samuel...
(1934), Imitation of Life
Imitation of Life (1934 film)
Imitation of Life is a 1934 American drama film directed by John M. Stahl. The screenplay by William Hurlbut, based on Fannie Hurst's 1933 novel of the same name, was augmented by eight additional uncredited writers, including Preston Sturges and Finley Peter Dunne...
(1934), Jezebel (1938), Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
(1939), The Women
The Women (1939 film)
The Women is a 1939 American comedy-drama film directed by George Cukor. The film is based on Clare Boothe Luce's play of the same name, and was adapted for the screen by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin, who had to make the film acceptable for the Production Code in order for it to be released.The film...
(1939), The Lady Eve
The Lady Eve
The Lady Eve is a 1941 American screwball comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges, and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. The film is based on a story by Monckton Hoffe about a mismatched couple who meet on board a luxury liner...
(1941), Now, Voyager
Now, Voyager
Now, Voyager is a 1942 American drama film starring Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains, and directed by Irving Rapper. The screenplay by Casey Robinson is based on the 1941 novel of the same name by Olive Higgins Prouty....
(1942), Mildred Pierce
Mildred Pierce (film)
Mildred Pierce is a 1945 American drama film starring Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, and Eve Arden in a film noir about a long-suffering mother and her ungrateful daughter. The screenplay by Ranald MacDougall, William Faulkner, and Catherine Turney was based upon the 1941...
(1945), Letter from an Unknown Woman
Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948 film)
Letter from an Unknown Woman is a film directed by Max Ophüls. It was based on the novella of the same name, which was written by Stefan Zweig...
(1948), Adam's Rib
Adam's Rib
Adam's Rib is a 1949 American film written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin and directed by George Cukor. It stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as married lawyers who come to oppose each other in court. Judy Holliday co-stars in her first substantial film role...
(1949), All About Eve
All About Eve
All About Eve is a 1950 American drama film written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, based on the 1946 short story "The Wisdom of Eve", by Mary Orr.The film stars Bette Davis as Margo Channing, a highly regarded but aging Broadway star...
(1950), and All That Heaven Allows
All That Heaven Allows
All That Heaven Allows is a romance feature film starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson in a tale about a well-to-do widow and a younger landscape designer falling in love. The screenplay was written by Peg Fenwick based upon a story by Edna L. Lee and Harry Lee...
(1995).