Dorothy Arzner and female film authorship

Like some film blogs of great note, Film Studies For Free has been pondering Kathryn Bigelow's recent Oscar for achievement in film directing. All in all, it concurs with Steven Shaviro's assessment in his wonderful recent blogpost on this event:

Given the Academy’s lame choices for best film and best director over the years, Bigelow’s Oscars can scarcely be credited as a verification or proof of her auteurial status; but I am nonetheless greatly pleased, and indeed thrilled, and indeed a bit amazed, that so singular and powerful an artist has actually (and quite unusually) received this sort of recognition.

FSFF's very own Bigelow links post is in preparation, but today, in part prompted by an excellent article in the latest issue of Sight & Sound by Sophie Mayer, this blog brings you a little list of links to online and openly accessible scholarly writing touching on the wonderful work of Dorothy Arzner, one of Bigelow's (acclaimed but unrewarded by the Academy) female forbears in the commercially-successful, Hollywood, movie-directing business.

Like Bigelow, Arzner has been a hugely important figure to feminist film scholars and theorists, and so some of the work below explores her work in that context.

• Sarahjane Blum, 'The Decade After The Decade Before: Merrily We Go to Hell', Brooklyn Rail, June 2009

• Nicholas Butler, 'The Bride Wore Red', Senses of Cinema, No. 33, 2004

• Louise Cole, 'Dance Girl, Dance', Senses of Cinema, No. 33, 2004 

• Kendahl Cruver, 'The Wild Party', Senses of Cinema, No. 33, 2004 

• Jane Gaines, 'Dorothy Arzner's Trousers', from Jump Cut, no. 37, July 1992, pp. 88-98 

• Jane Gaines, 'Women and representation', from Jump Cut, no. 29, February 1984, pp. 25-27 

• Theresa Geller, 'Dorothy Arzner', Senses of Cinema, April 2003 

• Catherine Grant, ‘Secret Agents: Feminist Theories of Women’s Film Authorship’, Feminist Theory Vol. 2, No. 1, April 2001, pp. 113-130 

• E. Ann Kaplan, 'Aspects of British feminist film theory: A critical evaluation of texts by Claire Johnston and Pam Cook', from Jump Cut, no. 2, 1974, pp. 52-55

• Aspasia Kotsopoulos, 'Reading against the grain revisited', from Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, No. 44, Fall 2001

• Erich Kuersten, 'Dizzy from the Altitude, Happy to Plummet: Pre-Code Cinema and the Post-Code-Shock Syndrome', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 63, February 2009

• Sophie Mayer, 'Queen of Hollywood', Sight and Sound, March 2009

• Rosanna Maule, 'The Importance of Being a Film Author: Germaine Dulac and Female Authorship', Senses of Cinema, No. 23, 2002

• Lauren Rabinovitz, 'Past Imperfect: Feminism and Social Histories of Silent Film', Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, Volume 16, numéro 1, Automne 2005, p. 21-34

• Anneke Smelik, 'Gay and Lesbian Criticism' Hill and Church Gibson, eds., The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)

• Rachel Williams, '"It's Like Painting Toys Blue and Pink" (Martha Coolidge, 1996): Marketing and the Female-Directed Hollywood Film', Scope, December 2000