Summary
Culture & Reviews
See the full content of this document
Extract
Hollywood's second sex: Women and the movies.
Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood, by Mick LaSalle, New York: St. Martin's Press, 293 pages, $25.9
Fast-Talking Dames, by Maria DiBattista, New Haven: Yale University Press, 365 pages, $27.95 Dark city Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir, by Eddie Muller, New York: HarperCollins, 292 pages, $29.95 A CURIOUS PROBLEM arose while filming the 1948 noir classic Force of Evil. Director Abraham Polonsky wanted a traveling shot that followed female lead Marie Windsor as she sauntered up to star John Garfield. But at 5'9", Windsor was three inches taller than Garfield. What to do? Marie herself came up with a solution as bizarre as the problem: Once her legs were out of camera range, she'd bend at the knees until she reached an acceptable height. Even a progressive like Polonsky (who, for Gold War reasons, was prevented from making another film for 21 years) accepted the rule that a female love interest couldn't tower ov...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
