Dorothy Arzner’s films find reception in France
Dorothy Arzner on the set Dorothy Arzner’s films were marginalized by male film historians until the advent of women’s film festivals in the mid 1970’s. The first major and largely anecdotal accounts of American cinema by male film historians omitted or glossed over her career: Andrew Sarris: “The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968” (1968- Arzner completely omitted); Kevin Brownlow’s “The Parades Gone By” (1968); Lewis Jacobs, “The Rise of the American Film” (1939, reprinted 1967). Her films have been the subject of scholarship and film retrospectives, richly documented in essays and books by feminist film theorists and historians since the 1970’s. When Arzner was rediscovered in women’s film festivals in the 70’s, in part promoted by British feminist film theorist Claire Johnston, her historical place in film history was well motivated by the body of work she had done between 1929-1943 above all how her characters challenge the fixed gender roles of wo...