Women's movies

Women's movies is a movie genre. These movies are ones that moviemakers expect women to like. They are about women. They have themes that moviemakers think would interest women such as home, family life, being a mother, making sacrifices, and romance.^[1] Women's movies are movies that were made for women by predominantly male screenwriters and directors whereas "women's cinema" is movies that have been made by women.^[2] Women's movies have been made for years and years, ever since the silent movie days. It took a while for the term "woman's movie" to be used though. These movies were called "melodramas" at first. They were very popular during World War II. Their production fell off in the 1960s. The term "woman's movie" went south in the 1960s even though such movies were still being made. George Cukor, Douglas Sirk, Max Ophüls, and Josef von Sternberg directed woman's movies.^[3] Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck made many woman's movies.^[4] Mildred Pierce, Jezebel and Stella Dallas are examples of woman's movies.

Joan Crawford made many women's movies.

References

1. Doane 1987, pp. 152–53.
2. Ashby 2010, p. 153.
3. Heung, Marina (1990). Howard, Angela; Kevenik, Frances M. (eds.). Handbook of American Women's History. New York: Garland. ISBN 9780824087449.
4. Basinger 2010, p. 163.

• Ashby, Justine (2010). "'It's been emotional.' Reassessing the Contemporary British Woman's Film". In Bell, Melanie; Williams, Melanie (eds.). British Women's Cinema. London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0203872000.
• Basinger, Jeanine (2010). "The Woman's Film. When Women Wept". In Mintz, Steven; Roberts, Randy (eds.). Hollywood's America: Twentieth-Century America Through Film. Chichester; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1405190039.
• Doane, Mary Ann (1987). The Desire to Desire: The Woman's Film of the 1940s. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0253316820.