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Article: Ladies in the dark: there haven't been lots of films with lots of dames above the title.(HOLLYWOOD HERSTORY: THE FEMALE-ENSEMBLE PIC)
- Article from:
- Daily Variety
- Article date:
- June 17, 2008
- Author:
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The Women," Diane English's remake of the 1939 MGM classic, revives a relatively obscure subgenre of the so-called "woman's film": the female ensemble. Its purpose was to elevate the traditional woman's film out of the cinematic ghetto through star power. If you cast Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Marjorie Main, Butterfly McQueen, Hedda Hopper and more, maybe you could gain status and ditch the labels of "woman's film," "soap opera" or "weepie." (Today we call films about women "chick flicks." It's funnier and hipper, but it's still dubious.)
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It's significant that a film starring ...