Female film critics and film criticism in 1950s Britain.

在20世纪40年代和50年代，电影评论在英国是一个特别活跃的领域。英国电影在战争期间的成功导致了专业期刊的发展，如企鹅电影评论和视觉与声音，电影评论和评论也成为主流出版物如《好管家》和BBC广播节目的既定特色。目前，女性作为影评人和影评人所扮演的核心角色还没有得到广泛认可。这个项目调查了两位重要的影评人弗莱达·布鲁斯·洛克哈特和凯瑟琳·德拉罗什的贡献，他们都以不同的方式呼吁电影参与“女性问题”，即战后女性的抱负和焦虑。它询问这些女性产生了什么样的批评，是否与她们同时代的男性不同，以及她们如何利用电影评论进入关于改变女性社会角色的辩论。通过考虑这些问题，该项目将使人们能够更全面地了解女性对电影批评的贡献，以及战后时期女性观众是如何被想象和对待的。这些问题没有被现有的战后电影评论所质疑，这些评论假定男性和女性评论家对相同的主题和主题感兴趣。此外，还强调出版的印刷材料，尽管广播是一种跨越阶级分歧的流行媒体，女性批评家在其中找到了正常的家。考察不同的媒体将使这个项目能够绘制一幅更全面和更具包容性的电影批评地图。构建女性电影史往往依赖于非常规和广泛分散的来源，因为女性进入电影业的途径和途径往往是多样化的。除了杂志和电影期刊等更容易获得的印刷材料外，位于卡弗沙姆的英国广播公司书面档案馆还提供了与《在电影院》有关的丰富材料来源。《在电影院》是英国广播公司第四台《S》的女性小时节目。除了带有注释的广播剧本外，还有备忘录、私人信件和一些非委托项目的剧本，主题从《现代女主角》到《女人与电影》。事实证明，查阅这些被忽视的材料在研究Freda Bruce Lockhart和Catherine de la Roche是如何作为广播行业的批评者、他们认为女性观众感兴趣的主题以及他们的观点与广播制作人的观点不同方面是特别有成效的。此外，平面媒体上的批评表明，关于剪辑的讨论是如何被用来框定关于女性平等的辩论的，以及如何写关于布景设计和室内装饰的文章，以承认女性观众被认为带来了阅读电影的技能和兴趣。这个项目将对我们理解电影批评和女性在这一领域所扮演的角色做出重大贡献。它将突出关于女性社会角色的辩论是如何经常使用新颖和意想不到的方法进行的，并将让我们看到20世纪40年代和50年代女性观众被理解和对待的一些重要方式。

SummaryFilm criticism was a particularly buoyant area in Britain during the 1940s and 1950s. The success of British films during the war led to the development of specialist journals such as Penguin Film Review and Sight and Sound, and film criticism and reviewing also became an established feature of mainstream publications such as Good Housekeeping, and BBC radio programmes. What has not been widely recognised is the central role that women played as critics and reviewers of film at this time. This project investigates the contributions made by two important film critics, Freda Bruce Lockhart and Catherine de la Roche, both of whom, in different ways, called for film to engage with 'the woman question', that is, the aspirations and anxieties of women in the post-war period. It asks what kind of criticism these women produced, whether it differed from that of their male contemporaries, and how they used film reviewing to enter into debates about changing social roles for women. By considering these questions, the project will enable a fuller understanding of women's contribution to film criticism and how female audiences for film were imagined and addressed during the post-war period. These questions have not been interrogated by existing accounts of post-war film criticism, which has assumed that male and female critics were interested in the same themes and subjects. In addition there has been an emphasis on published print materials, despite the fact that radio was a popular medium that crossed class divides, and within which female critics found a regular home. Examining different media will allow this project to draw a more comprehensive and inclusive map of film criticism.Constructing women's film history often relies on unconventional and widely-dispersed sources because women's routes into, and paths through, the film industry were often diverse. Alongside the more readily available print materials such as magazines and film journals, the BBC Written Archives at Caversham have provided a rich source of material relating to 'At the Cinema', the film slot for Radio 4's 'Woman Hour.' Alongside broadcast scripts, complete with annotations, are memos, personal correspondence and a number of scripts for un-commissioned projects on subjects ranging from 'The Modern Heroine' to 'Woman and Cinema.' Consulting these neglected materials has proven particularly fruitful in examining how Freda Bruce Lockhart and Catherine de la Roche operated as critics within the radio industry, the subjects they believed were of interest to female audiences, and where their opinions differed from those of radio producers. In addition, criticism in print media suggests how discussions about editing were used to frame debates about female equality, and how articles on set design and interior decoration were written in recognition of the skills and interests that female audiences were thought to bring to reading film.This project will make a significant contribution to our understanding of film criticism and the role played by women in this field. It will highlight how debates about women's social roles were often engaged with using novel and unexpected methods, and will allow us to see some of the important ways in which female audiences for film were understood and addressed across the 1940s and 1950s.