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Film Criticism as ‘Women's Work’: theGendered Economy of Film Criticism inBritain, 1945–65Melanie BellPublished online: 01 Jun 2011.

To cite this article: Melanie Bell (2011): Film Criticism as ‘Women's Work’: the Gendered Economyof Film Criticism in Britain, 1945–65, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 31:2, 191-209

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Historical Journal of Film, Radio and TelevisionVol. 31, No. 2, June 2011, pp. 191–209

FILM CRITICISM AS ‘WOMEN’S WORK’:

THE GENDERED ECONOMY OF FILM

CRITICISM IN BRITAIN, 1945–65

Melanie Bell

Film criticism occupies a liminal space in film history. As a practice and body of work,it is secondary to the film itself; an ancillary form that is entirely dependent on thecontinued release of films. Yet criticism is necessary to the health and survival of film,part of what Richard Maltby called the ‘sense-making apparatus that allows cinema tobe meaningful in society’.1 It is connected to, yet stands apart from, official studiopromotion, and in its most elegant, or polemic, iterations has the capacity to functionas a form of creative writing.2 Film industries have typically had an ambivalentrelationship with film critics whose poor notices at best demonstrated a lack ofawareness of popular audience taste and at worst had the potential to damage a film’scommercial success. This ambivalent relationship is duplicated in academic studywhere film scholars have found the gulf between critical and audience responsedifficult to bridge. Indeed citing film critics has fallen out of favour within receptionstudies (previously its natural home) where the analysis of discursive surround hasbecome more sophisticated and our understanding of the historical audience has beenenriched through oral history.3 Nor has there been much space afforded critics outsidereception studies. Within the studies of film industry personnel the director, star andoccasionally producer have typically been prioritised as the legitimate subjects ofcritical enquiry. This is perhaps not surprising given that the critic is widely assumedto occupy a position outside of the film industry and more readily connected tohistories of journalism and broadcasting. Those few critics who have attractedattention—Parker Tyler, James Agee, Iris Barry, Lindsay Anderson—are the ‘starperformers’ of film criticism; writers who can be fitted into the prevailing model of

Correspondence: Melanie Bell, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, PercyBuilding, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK. E-mail: Melanie.Bell@newcastle.ac.uk

ISSN 0143-9685 (print)/ISSN 1465-3451 (online)/11/020191–19 � 2011 IAMHIST & Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/01439685.2011.572605

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‘authorship’, which writes film history through the figure of the heroic individual.4

For example, Haidee Wasson’s work on Iris Barry positions Barry within the vanguardof cinematic modernism, the first film critic for The Spectator and Daily Mail and amajor contributor to the London Film Society. These apprenticeship activities pavedthe way for her pioneering work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.5

But the role and work of the film critic opens up a range of possibilities for filmhistory to go beyond authorship models. Film criticism is one of the most genderedpathways in film culture; it is an area of work where women have dominated andplayed a key role in the dissemination and circulation of ideas about individual filmsand cinema more generally. I’m not the first to notice the dominance of women inEnglish-language film criticism. Antonia Lant argues for an understanding of the‘gendered aspects of critical writing on film’ and her anthology reproduces highlightsfrom the first 50 years of women’s writing on cinema.6 But scholarship that is attunedto the specificities of the British national context, and that focuses exclusively on filmcriticism of the sound period, is lacking. There is a pressing need to map the field ofwomen film critics in Britain and to demonstrate and account for the ebbs and flowsof female input in the field. Such a study needs a firm grasp of periodisation. InBritain, women critics were more common and influential in some periods thanothers—the post-war years for example—and I’ll suggest why that was.

What can a study of women film critics contribute to the current debates in filmhistory? As Christine Gledhill has argued, ‘posing questions of gender changes the waywe do film history’, not least because authorship models rarely bring women’s workto light.7 I want to look at film criticism as a form of women’s work and approach it asa role for women in the ‘film industry’, understood here in its broadest sense toinclude production, distribution, exhibition and the myriad forums through whichfilm circulates in the public domain. An authorship study of one or two ‘star’ womencritics not only limits the wider conclusions that can be drawn about women’s roles asworkers in the area of criticism but does little to develop film history. Reinstatingforgotten post-war critics within existing narratives of British film history is atempting proposition but ultimately does little more than produce—as Irit Rogoffargued in a different context—‘a similar history gendered female’, an outcome I wantto avoid in favour of more ambitious aims.8 Scholars within the field of women’s filmhistoriography have been quick to interrogate the limitations of a ‘lost and found’approach to writing film history. For Lauren Rabinovitz, ‘[t]he radical politics of lost-and-found scholarship lies not in merely correcting a record that swept away women’scontributions but in refashioning film theory and historiography’.9 In the challenge torethink questions of categorisation and methodology, film historians from TomGunning to Jane Gaines, Richard Abel to Kay Armatage, Christine Gledhill and manyothers have increasingly moved away from studies of directors or ‘author-auteurs’towards what Monica Dell’Asta recently termed the ‘more or less ordinaryprofessional figures’ who make up the majority of film industry personnel employedin roles ranging from distributors, promoters, designers and costumiers, to cinemaowners and critics.10 Typically afforded little space in traditional film histories thisfocus has re-energised scholarship, requiring a paradigmatic change in methodologicalterms to accommodate ‘such apparently unheroic professional figures . . . [into the]narrative horizon’ of cinema history.11 Rather than focusing exclusively on ‘star’critics, I want to consider critics as ‘ordinary professional figures’ and criticism as a

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role for the ordinary professional woman working in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s.Some of these women were more active and autonomous than others and enjoyed ahigh public profile during their flourit period (Catherine de la Roche, E. ArnotRobertson), whilst others forged more modest careers (Freda Bruce Lockhart). In herstudy of early female stars Diana Negra questioned how they ‘operate as figuresthrough which . . . [to] reconceptualise feminist film history and historiography’.12

I want to adapt that question for this study and explore how the role of the womenfilm critic contributes to film historiography.

Histories are also national histories and within the context of the British filmindustry there is still much work to be done to understand more fully the role andposition of women as creative personnel in the sound period.13 The only text toprovide a systematic account of women’s work is Sue Harper’s Women’s in BritishCinema: mad, bad and dangerous to know, which provides an exemplary, rigorous analysisof women’s work as producers, directors, writers, costume designers, art directorsand editors between 1930 and the early 1990s.14 Harper’s understanding of thespecific structures and mechanics of the British film industry is invaluable and is alertnot only to the formal structures of unionisation (dominated by the ACT, Associationof Cine Technicians) but informal mechanisms where accepted modes of productionand management of labour worked against women’s involvement in technical roles.Harper observes that the British system ‘worked by having a ‘‘star’’ cameraman whobrought their chosen team of personnel with them, some of whom would be trainedup in due course’; a system into which it was difficult for those of an ‘awkwardgender’ to break through.15 If we are interested in how people worked in the filmindustry then we have to engage with the fact that their work was regulated in specificand gendered ways within a given national context. As I’ll demonstrate, it was acombination of freelance status and flexible labour practices that facilitated women’sentry into the field of film criticism, and in their published work, broadcast scripts,lectures and public roles, we can see valuable traces of women’s agency and how theyorganised their working day, conducted their professional careers, addressed theiraudiences and used their criticism as a space for self-promotion.

Mapping the field of women film critics in Britain: materials andmethods

Hand-searching through newspaper, film, radio and professional association archivesreveals a number of women employed as film critics. These include names thatcontinue to have cultural currency—Dilys Powell (The Sunday Times, 1939–1976),C. A. Lejeune (The Observer, 1938–1960), Penelope Houston (editor Sight and Sound,1956–1990)—to the many others that have no place in existing accounts of filmhistory. In roughly chronological order from the early 1940s onwards are: ElspethGrant (Daily Sketch), Elizabeth Coxhead (The Lady, Liverpool Daily Post), Lillian Duff(BBC, Sunday Graphic), Helen Fletcher (Sunday Graphic, Time and Tide), NorahAlexander and Joyce Jeffries (Sunday Pictorial), Molly Hobman (The ManchesterGuardian), Ruth Kessler (Jewish Chronicle), Monica Pearson (Reynolds News), HelenWilliams (The Yorkshire Post), Winifred Horrabin (The Tribune), and Elizabeth Joseph(Daily Worker). Throughout the 1950s, the ranks of women film critics were swelled

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by Peggy Peregine, Enid O’Neill, Margaret Hinxman, Elizabeth Forrest, SarahStoddart (all Picturegoer), Margaret Whitford (The Lady), Virginia Graham (TheSpectator, 1945–1955), Janet Hills (The Times Educational Supplement), E. ArnotRobertson (Penguin Film Review, Daily Mail, Good Housekeeping, BBC radio’s Woman’sHour), Catherine de la Roche (Penguin Film Review, Good Housekeeping, Picture Post, BBCradio’s Woman’s Hour), Freda Bruce Lockhart (Catholic Herald, Woman magazine), JaneStockswood (Good Housekeeping), Betty Ross (Films and Filming), Isabel Quigly (TheSpectator, 1955–1965) and Nina Hibbin (The Lady, Daily Worker, 1961–1971).16

Mapping the field consisted of working both methodically and sporadicallythrough a number of common and less obvious sources.17 Film periodicals weresearched (Penguin Film Review, Films and Filming, Sight and Sound) alongside film fanmagazines (Picturegoer, Picture Show), trade papers (Kinematograph Weekly), mainstreampublications ranging from daily newspapers (Daily Mail) to ‘quality’ publications(Picture Post), and women’s magazines across different demographic groups (GoodHousekeeping, Woman).18 The personal papers of key women critics were consulted; theDilys Powell papers held in the British Library and the Catherine de la Roche papersheld in the National Library of New Zealand. The latter were particularly illuminatingand shed new light on women’s role as public speakers and educators; material I’lldiscuss in more detail in the final section. The search extended beyond the printedword to the spoken as BBC radio was a key space for film reviewing after the war andbroadcast scripts were consulted alongside personal correspondence and adminis-trative records at the BBC’s Written Archives Caversham (BBC WAC). Furthersuggestions came from colleagues and indexes whilst personal testimony, bothautobiographical and oral history, added a valuable dimension to the project, albeithistory retold through the lens of selective memory.19

Whilst this material is a useful starting point and provides an impressionisticsurvey of women active in the field of film criticism, we need more robust data tosupport claims about criticism as a gendered route or pathway in the industry. Whatproportion of the total number of critics were women? Reliable sources for this typeof numerical data are sketchy and a number of promising leads proved to be dead-ends. The Society of Women Writers and Journalists (SWWJ) for example had noevidence in their records that critics such as Catherine de la Roche, E. ArnotRobertson or Freda Bruce Lockhart were ever members, despite their professionalprofiles fitting the Society’s constituency.20 The National Union of Journalists (NUJ)proved to be equally un-illuminating stating that its membership records from thepost-war period were no longer in existence. The most fruitful source for establishingnumerical data is the membership booklets for the Critics’ Circle. Convened in 1913with its membership restricted to music and drama critics, film critics were permittedto join in 1926 with Iris Barry one of the first to sign up. In 1940, the Circlereconfigured its structural organisation creating separate Drama, Music and FilmSections, each enjoying a degree of individual autonomy whilst retaining responsibilityto the main Council.21 The constitution of a separate Film Section is significant inbeing illustrative of the wider recognition taking place of films’ increasing publicprofile and (almost) equal status with established art forms in Britain at this time. Inthe 1940s and 1950s, the Film Section was effectively the professional association forfilm critics and its total membership grew steadily from 64 in 1945 to 90 in 1955.22

Membership was by invitation only, nominees were proposed and seconded by an

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existing member of the Section and had to have been working as a film critic for atleast two years to qualify for nomination. Membership brought the film critic anumber of benefits, not only access to important contacts and lavish entertainmentbut practical support, both financial and legal. On the occasions where theatremanagers and film studios attempted to blacklist critics for their unfavourable reviews,the Circle would intervene as a mediator in disputes.23

The Circle’s archive holds a complete run of annual membership booklets from1945 up to the 1970s. These booklets were circulated to the Circle’s members anddetail the names, addresses and professional affiliations of critics, categorising themaccording to the main art form within which they worked.24 The booklets detail thatin 1945, 70% of those designated exclusively or primarily as film critics was male with30% female. This gendered ratio of 2:1 remained consistent throughout the 1950s andthe 1960s. In fact, women’s membership relative to men’s does not tail off until themid-1970s, when their membership was down from one-third to one-fifth of totalmembers.25 By comparison, 85% of the members of the Drama Section were men, afigure which remained consistent throughout the 1950s and which suggests thatwomen found it much harder to establish careers in arts, which, in the Britishcontext, had considerably higher status than film. The data has its limitations.Professional affiliations were skewed towards the middle-brow with ‘quality’periodicals (Picture Post, Punch) and newspapers heavily represented. Whilstrepresentatives of populist publications such as the film fan magazines Picturegoer(Margaret Hinxman) and Picture Show (Maud Hughes) were members, women’smagazines such as Women, Woman’s Own and Good Housekeeping are notably under-represented despite the fact that they regularly included not only film reviews butlonger feature articles on film topics at this time. Whilst the data is not whollyrepresentative of the British picture, the Circle’s records nevertheless provide someempirical evidence regarding gender balance in this area of work.

These figures illustrate that in the 1940s and 1950s at least 30% of theprofessional workforce of film critics was female; a level of representation not foundin many other areas of the film industry and its associated professions.26 This figureeasily outstrips the 18% of the labour force within the British film industry who wereestimated to be female by a 1975 ACTT retrospective survey of its 1950s membershiprecords.27 Whilst Muir claims that the ACTT survey demonstrates that ‘womenworked in a wide variety of grades’, only a tiny minority were regularly employed inthe 1950s in the prestigious role of director (Muriel Box, Wendy Toye) and producer(Betty Box). It was common for creative personnel within the production arm of theindustry in the sound period to experience vertical and horizontal segregation alonggender lines. Ambitious production secretaries found their progress blocked by lack ofunion membership or their energies channelled into low status B-features or children’sfilms.28 Erica Masters for example had worked as an un-credited assistant director ona number of commercially successful films (The Titfield Thunderbolt and Genevieve, both1953), but found it difficult to break through to the higher echelons and realise herambitions for production. Production managers refused to employ her because of hergender; ‘they would look me up and down and say, ‘‘Well, you know, you’re awoman . . . I’d rather not because labour wouldn’t like you.’’ [. . .] they felt the labour[force] wouldn’t listen to me’.29 Horizontal segregation channelled women into theless prestigious roles of continuity ‘girl’ and led to the female-domination of

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costume/wardrobe and hairdressing, whilst they were wholly absent in technical roleslike sound production. A quick glance through the interviewees of the BECTUHistory Project illuminates how industry roles were gendered, with the majority ofwomen drawn from continuity, editing, scriptwriting/supervision, productionmanagement and costume design.30

In contrast to production roles, post-war film criticism doesn’t readily fit thisframework of vertical and horizontal segregation. It was both an area where womencould reasonably expect to find employment and a profession that wasn’t whollyassociated with low cultural status. Film critics had some measure of standing amongstthe more established critical communities, and women critics could rise through theranks and exercise influence. Dilys Powell, Freda Bruce Lockhart and Elspeth Grantfor example were all Chairs of the Film Section of The Critics Circle in 1946, 1953and 1954, respectively. There are a number of paradoxical strands that cluster aroundthe role of film critic at this time and which require very specific historical nuancing.On the one hand, we have to account for factors that did position film criticism as alow status occupation and facilitated women’s entry into its employ, specifically thehistorical low status of film as an art form and the lack of union or professionalregulation governing critics. On the other hand, the Second World War had greatlyenhanced the profile of film in Britain with even the government recognising its‘cultural, artistic and historical value’, and the post-war period witnessed aprogramme of ‘cultural uplift’.31 There was a rapid increase in the number of filmsocieties and demands were made on a newly reconfigured British Film Institute toprovide lectures, summer schools and educational materials to meet the new appetitefor film appreciation. From 1946/7 onwards, film criticism began to have increasedcultural cachet, its critics were in high demand and many of its most experiencedproponents were women. Film criticism at this time was both accessible to womenand culturally prestigious. In the next two sections, I’ll discuss the components of‘accessibility’, how women’s high profile as critics attracted negative attention andtheir declining influence in the profession.

No job security and ‘flexible’ working—where do I sign up?

For commentators like Antonia Lant, women’s preponderance as critics is readilyexplained as ‘[w]riting about film (initially, if not perpetually) had low status,requiring little or no training’, with women actively recruited because ‘editorsthought their sex should cover a medium whose scale of female audience waslegendary’.32 In the British context, Laura Marcus argues, with recourse to RachaelLow, that it was during the 1920s that people began taking film seriously.33 But DilysPowell claimed that, as late as 1939, she got the job at The Sunday Times, ‘simplybecause I was there . . . I succeeded somebody who really didn’t know the differencebetween a film and a sponge’, and the Editor who appointed her didn’t see this as aproblem.34 In the ‘quality’ press at least, film continued to occupy a lower statusrelative to the established arts, meaning its criticism remained a suitable job forwomen.

But it was not only the low status of film writing which made it accessible forwomen. Film critics also had to navigate the perils which bedevilled many journalists,

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especially those with ‘freelance’ status namely casual hiring practices, short-termcontracts and one-off commissions—all examples of ‘flexible’ working patterns.Critics like Dilys Powell and C. A. Lejeune were unusual in enjoying long-term tenurewith prestige publications but for the vast majority there was little or no job securityand this itinerant status would have worked in women’s favour and facilitated theirentry into this field of work. Certainly flexible working patterns were consistent withideologies of gender, which positioned women’s work as secondary to her domesticrole, ideologies that were re-emphasised in the post-war years through Beveridge’ssocial welfare policies. Flexible working couldn’t easily be reconciled to the dominantimage of the male breadwinner but it could be made to fit the economic model of themiddle-class woman’s ‘dual role’.35 A good example of quite how flexible workingpatterns could be for film critics is evidenced by the BBC’s treatment of them.A regular employer of critics for its numerous film programmes the BBC instigated arotation policy with critics signed up for between four and 12-week runs at any onetime, with the likelihood of repeat contracts dictated by editorial policy and listenerreports.36 BBC memos illustrate that film critics had to work extremely hard to securerepeat bookings and remain constantly amenable to editorial demands concerningscript content and style of delivery. Catherine de la Roche for example managed tomake semi-regular appearances as a film reviewer on both Woman’s Hour (1948–1953)and The Critics (1948–1957) but had to cope with one editor who considered her ‘notvery good but better than [Roger] Manvell’ and another who instructed her to ‘paymore attention to the social aspects of cinema instead of rhapsodising over its technicalmarvels’.37 Previously harmonious working relationships could end abruptly with therecruitment of a new editor. Freda Bruce Lockhart was swiftly dropped in the early1960s when Philip French took over as Producer for The Critics and declared her out-of-step with the programme’s new style, a decision that effectively ended herbroadcast career.38 Radio broadcasting was potentially lucrative with critics earning onaverage one guinea per minute of broadcast time, but it was an unpredictable sourceof income from a mercurial employer.39

Flexible employment practices may have been consistent with ideologies ofgender but women could often be resilient and adaptable, fitting casual employmentaround the everyday reality of their lives. Trade film screenings for the press wereorganised during the day, typically Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday with onemorning and one afternoon screening. Critics could write their copy on Thursday anddeliver it for weekend publication by Friday.40 Broadcasting patterns were similarlyconducive with recordings taking place in the early afternoon. What has been missingfrom existing accounts of the gendered economy of criticism is a recognition of howthe working day of the film critic readily fitted around children. The job of a filmcritic offered a structured routine existence compatible with women’s traditional rolesof childcare and household management, unlike for example directing, producing orart direction that demanded long periods of concentrated input and sometimeslocation work that took women away from home. C. A. Lejeune, Isabel Quigly and E.Arnot Robertson were all mothers to young children for at least some of the time theywere working as film critics and whilst their middle-class backgrounds ensured theycould purchase domestic help, criticism nevertheless could be reconciled to thedemands of motherhood. Although married, Dilys Powell and Catherine de la Rochewere child-free and were more readily able to extend their professional careers into

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lucrative areas such as public lectures or reporting on prestige events such asinternational film festivals. Both were regulars on the festival circuit in the late 1940sand 1950s, unlike the Spectator’s film critic Isabel Quigly, who turned downopportunities because her children were young.

‘Witticisms not criticisms’

As I have demonstrated, there were a number of historical, ideological and practicalreasons why film criticism was an accessible career for women at this time. But as thestatus of film was increasing in both artistic and wider cultural circles, the highvisibility of women raised anxieties for some who seemed to be uncomfortable withthe opportunity criticism afforded women to play a role as cultural commentators.A good example of this anxiety is evidenced in the libel suit E. Arnot Robertsonbrought against MGM when the studio tried to ban her from their press screeningsbecause of her unfavourable review of their film The Green Years (1946), dismissed byher as ‘pseudo-Scottish whimsy’. Robertson initially won, but then lost to MGM’sappeal with the case trailing through the English law courts between 1946 and 1950,and attracting publicity in the trade papers and quality press. Whilst the case needs tobe understood within the context of an existing prickly relationship between the filmindustry and film critics, the terms of the debate were nevertheless given a specificallygendered inflection and demonstrate a misogynistic concern with how women shouldconduct themselves in public.

Robertson, a prolific writer and radio broadcaster, had moved into the role offilm critic after publishing a number of successful novels in the 1930s featuring strong-willed and sexually candid heroines. As an astute commentator on gender and sexualpolitics, one of the features of Robertson’s style of criticism was to engage withpopular film and its depictions of sentimental love and domestic femininities through acloak of ironic detachment. This enabled her to stand aloof from forms of‘romance’—typically despised by middle-class commentators—whilst simultaneouslyengaging her audiences in its many pleasures. Whilst male critics like RichardWinnington (News Chronicle) were equally dismissive of popular romance andexpressions of excessive emotionality, they lacked the cultural competences needed todeliver the kind of dual reading and audience address that made Robertson so popularwith radio audiences.41

MGM’s initial defence was constructed around a challenge to Robertson’sprofessionalism as a critic claiming that ‘she gave way to flippancy and self-exhibitionism instead of concentrating on her duties as a critic’.42 Witnesses for thedefence team variously accused her of using a ‘charming but extremely cynical laugh’to make her point, of producing only ‘witticims and not criticisms’ in her work, andof using the forum of criticism to showcase her ‘own humour and brightness’.43 It wasthe cause celebre of criticism in the late 1940s with the Critics’ Circle raising funds forRobertson’s failed counter-appeal. The charge of ‘self-exhibitionism’ and ‘brightness’suggests that Robertson’s real crime lay in having a good opinion of herself and herintellect, and in seeking to promote herself as a professional critic. As more attentionbegan to be paid to film criticism, it’s evident that some were resentful that womenheld the role, and those secure in particularly prestigious positions were especially

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vulnerable to attack. By the early 1960s, Dilys Powell’s position was attractingnegative publicity with her detractors addressing her Editor directly, demanding,‘Can’t a man be found to do the films for The Sunday Times?’44 As Powell herself notedafter an exchange with the editors of Oxford Opinion, ‘now the whole matter of filmcriticism has become a subject for public discussion’.45 The spotlight on film criticismdidn’t augur well for the old guard of female film critics and as the 1960s progressed,women’s visibility and status as critics declined, relative to their earlier position. Thedemise of popular film-making and its replacement as a leisure pursuit by newactivities such as television and music directly led to the closure of fan magazines likePicturegoer and Picture Show, who had been consistent employers of women writers.The decade witnessed new debates about ‘the auteur’ and mise-en-scene criticism,debates, which were distinctly muscular in tone, whilst the male critics whopropounded them found time to be openly derisive of the previous generation singlingout women like C. A. Lejeune for ridicule.46 Furthermore, high profile women criticswere lost to the British profession; both Janet Hills and E. Arnot Robertson diedprematurely, in 1954 and 1961 respectively, and by 1958, Catherine de la Roche hademigrated to New Zealand. Under these circumstances, it became more difficult fornew women to enter the profession and by the mid-1970s their numbers at theCritics’ Circle had dropped to one-fifth of total membership.47 This shift fromaccessibility to exclusion is a familiar narrative for film historians looking at patternsof women’s work in the period of early cinema, where unionisation, monopolypractices and ‘professionalization’ marginalised women.48 As film criticism becameless tenable as an occupation, ambitious women journalists adapted to the new sceneand carved out a professional niche for themselves in the new and initially low statusforum of television criticism. Looking back on the start of her early career in the mid-1960s, Nancy Banks-Smith recently commented, ‘criticism was considered a nicelittle job for a woman, so, for a while, most of us were’.49 The transition from film totelevision criticism is highly suggestive and indicative of more general trends inwomen’s work. Women’s success and then decline as film critics sheds light on bothworking practices and the shifting cultural value of the arts, which is gendered. In thisnext section, I want to continue this focus on women’s work with a specific emphasison how we bring that work into being in film history. Through a brief case study ofCatherine de la Roche, I’ll connect a ‘lost and found’ approach to scholarship withquestions of film historiography.

Catherine de la Roche: missing but not lost

Catherine de le Roche was born in the Ukraine in 1907 and educated in Britain in the1920s. Gifted in languages—she spoke Russian, English, German and French—sheworked as a reader and researcher in the British film industry between 1934 and1939, first in the scenario department of Ealing studios, then with London FilmProductions where she worked with the Hungarian scriptwriter Lajos Biro at DenhamStudios.50 Her knowledge of languages was an asset during war-time and in 1940 shejoined the Political Warfare Executive where her roles included analysing propagandathemes in captured German newspapers and broadcasting counter-propaganda toGermany.51 In 1943, she was transferred to the Ministry of Information (MoI) where

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she worked as a Films Officer with the Soviet Relations Division and wrote reviewsand essays on films and film-making for British Ally, a MoI publication that was widelydistributed through British service channels. Capitalising on her war-timeconnections, which included influential figures like Jack Beddington (the MoI’sHead of Film), she carved out a successful freelance career as a film critic in Britainbetween 1945 and 1958. Writing across low-, middle-brow and elite culture, herreviews and critical essays were published in Good Housekeeping (1945–1947), PenguinFilm Review (1946–1949), Sight and Sound (1946–1953), Picturegoer (1947–1949),Sequence (1948–199), Picture Post (1950–1956) and Films and Filming (1954–1956).52 Arecognised expert on Soviet cinema, she co-wrote a monograph entitled Soviet Cinema(1948) with the film director Thorold Dickinson, published on Rene Clair (1958, aspart of the BFI’s Index series), and produced one of the first serious criticalengagements with the work of Minnelli in her auteur study Vincent Minnelli (1959).She was a regular broadcaster with BBC radio and supplemented these activities withwork in the field of education, both for the BFI’s post-war ‘film appreciation’ summerschools and as a public speaker at Women’s Institutes. Her critical voice extendedbeyond Britain to the US where she enjoyed some limited success publishing in Films inReview (1953) and Film Culture (1959), but she enjoyed a second and very successfulcareer in New Zealand between 1959 and 1981 where she was a highly respected filmjournalist, broadcaster and educator. In 1988, she published her 230-pageautobiography, Performance, which provided a factual account of her career with nodiscussion of her private life and little sense of any of the professional struggles shefaced, although these do emerge in some of her personal correspondence held in theBBC WAC.53 She died in New Zealand in 1997 at the age of 89 and that country’sNational Library acquired her personal papers, which amounted to 12 boxes ofmaterial including lecture notes, research notes, radio scripts, manuscripts andcorrespondence.54

My reason for writing this list is twofold; to demonstrate both that she made acontribution to British film culture and that she was an ordinary professional figure.On the critical spectrum, she was towards the elite end, a professional critic whowrote only on film, a contemporary of high-profile critics such as Roger Manvell andDilys Powell. For most of the time she was in step with the critical majority, herpostulations on the art of cinema are consistent with other ‘Quality’ critics of the day,as was her disdain for popular genre cinema.55 On other occasions, she stood apartfrom her peers, notably on the topic of ‘women’s cinema’, although her feministprinciples were in keeping with women of her generation and class.56 Her writing andbroadcast style was characterised by careful scholarly rigour and a cinematic eyeattuned to mise-en-scene, particularly set design and editing. What distinguished herfrom her male peers was the range of her cultural reach. As a regular at the Cannesfilm festival for example, she was skilled at reviewing the event for Sight and Sound butcould also adapt her commentary for Women’s Hour to include a discussion of the latesttrends in women’s fashions on display at the festival.57 This broader range of culturalcompetencies, relative to her male peers, is likely to have fostered her success as aprofessional critic, extending the audiences she could address and the topics on whichshe could convincingly speak with authority.

The point here is to not over-state the case and make claims for her as a forgotten‘star’ critic but, that she was exactly of her time: an ordinary professional woman

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earning a living as a well-respected and widely published film critic. I find myself insympathy with Kay Armatage who, in her work on the Canadian director NellShipman, had to shift from her initial assumption that Shipman, as a female director inthe 1920s, was ‘unique . . . an outstanding historical figure’ to a recognition that herachievements were much more modest and indeed comparable to her many peers.58

Armatage is insightful enough to realise that ‘[i]t is the study of the work of theseordinary women that will reveal the most for our understanding of the history of thefilm industry and women’s position within it’.59 Catherine de la Roche is not anunsung feminist heroine, a lone trail-blazer in a male-dominated profession, which isprecisely her attraction for film history. What she offers is the opportunity to thinkabout how women worked in a particular profession, the roles they took on, thegendered cultural competencies they possessed and exploited, the money they earnedand the demands on their time, and how we can accommodate this work within the‘narrative horizon’ of cinema history.

In many respects, she is hardly ‘lost’ to film history, as the material is widelydispersed but readily available. Her personal papers have been well curated and inaddition to these the BBC WAC holds much interesting material including not onlybroadcast scripts but some personal correspondence outlining her detailed suggestionsfor film topics the broadcaster might commission.60 As with any freelance career, herwritten material is scattered across a range of publications, but it is traceable withsufficient time and effort. On the other hand, however, she is largely ‘missing’ fromexisting accounts of British film history, mentioned only by scholars who quote hercritical responses to the films of her time.61 She’s missing because the dominant waysin which we write film histories can’t accommodate her when her career andcontribution doesn’t fit existing frameworks. Whilst she was prolific as a writer, shedidn’t produce a key text or have tenure with one publication, which means thataccounts that prioritise the heroic individual, the ‘author-auteur’, have no placefor her.

In a similar manner, histories of institutions such as the BFI are likewisestructured around the careers of a few decision-making heroic individuals; a ‘great-man’ approach to history, which elides the work of men and women in secondaryroles. Through an analysis of official documentation including annual, committee andinternal reports, Denis Forman (Director), Stanley Reed (Film Appreciation Officer),Roger Manvell, John Huntley and Tony Hodgkinson (all lecturers) emerge—in therecent accounts given by Terry Bolas and Christophe Dupin—as the main agents in theBFI’s post-war film education programme.62 And yet we know that de la Rochedelivered over 100 lectures to both regional film societies and Women’s Institutes andGuilds in the 10-year period between 1946 and 1956, contracted, along with manyother freelance critics, on a case-by-case basis.63 How can we accommodate thisactivity in our film histories? There’s also evidence to suggest that on occasion BFI staffout-sourced their lectures. Ernest Lindgren, then curator of the BFI’s National FilmArchive, recruited de la Roche to deputise for his lecture on ‘The Art of the Film’delivered to the Norwich City College and Art School on 25 October 1950.64

Not only does this shed light on the informal reality of working practicesin this area—practices that aren’t captured through official records of policydecisions—but it reminds us that women’s work can be hard to see when archivesare curated in ways that prioritise individual endeavour, typically male.

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Derrida’s observation that ‘archivization produces as much as it records events’ isespecially pertinent here.65

Furthermore, the demand for film education was not exclusively delivered underthe auspices of the BFI. Women’s groups and networks such as the Women’s Instituteand Women’s Guilds took the initiative and adopted a grassroots approach to theorganisation and delivery of film lectures. Speakers were signed up through personalrecommendation and word-of-mouth, and those who were reliable and popular wouldhave their details circulated to ‘sister branches’ through monthly newsletters.Catherine de la Roche was a regular on this circuit, speaking to women’s groups ontopics that ranged from contemporary European films to ‘women’s cinema’.66 Thebooking was considerably less well paid than a BFI-organised film society event.Women’s groups paid roughly £3 plus expenses in the mid-1950s, whilst the fee,including expenses, for a BFI event was over £21.67 The fee dictated how far she’dtravel. Lower fees were only viable if the location was within easy travelling distanceof her home base in South West London, whilst higher fees were worth travellingfurther afield. As lectures took place in the evenings or Saturdays, they would havebeen difficult to undertake for women critics with domestic responsibilities. Whatemerges from this is a picture of women’s work, its ebbs and flows, how womencritics organised their working day and planned routine activities to maximise theirincome. These lectures are evidence not only of the critic’s work but of how women’snetworks engaged with film and how it entered their lives. It is useful to balance thisaccount against the well-documented decline in women’s cinema attendance in the1950s.68 Women may have stopped going to the cinema but the lectures suggest thatan appetite for the discussion of film remained and was being met through forumsinstigated, organised and delivered by women themselves.

In sum, what can a study of women film critics contribute to film history? Theseare figures that show a different history; a history of how women in a sector of thefilm industry organised their working day, negotiated working practices, addressedtheir audiences and promoted themselves in public forums. They show a different wayof doing film history, illustrating the possibilities for researching, interpreting andwriting about ordinary figures through whose professional lives a nation’s film cultureis constituted. Primary source material is available and although I used Catherine de laRoche for a case study, other examples will no doubt lie in the files of the BBC andelsewhere. These ordinary figures (often women but not exclusively) demand of us adifferent way of thinking and approaching film history that looks beyond heroicindividuals. Eschewing a lost and found approach, which produces only ‘a similarhistory gendered female’, it is through these figures that we can enrich ourunderstanding of the processes and practices of cinema and write a long-overdue,inclusive history.

Acknowledgements

This research was enabled by a grant awarded from the Arts and Humanities ResearchCouncil under its Research Leave Scheme (2008/9) and I gratefully acknowledge theirsupport of the project. I am also grateful to the staff at the British Film Institute, theBBC Written Archives, Caversham, The Jerwood Library of Performing Arts,

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Greenwich, the National Library of New Zealand, The Critics’ Circle and the Societyof Women Writers and Journalists for their assistance with my research.

Notes

1 Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, second edn (Oxford, 2003), 493.2 Commentators typically draw a distinction between ‘criticism’ and ‘reviews’.

Shorter review pieces are written for audiences that have yet to see the film whilstlonger pieces of criticism typically come out after the viewing event and may reflectnot only on a specific film but on its place in a director’s oeuvre or film culturemore widely. See Meaghan Morris, The Pirate’s Fiancee: feminism, reading,postmodernism (London, 1988), 117–118. Most critics write both criticism andreviews and for the purposes of this article, I’ll use ‘criticism’ as a generic categoryto cover all commentary about film taking place in the public domain.

3 A classic example of scholarly advances in ‘discursive surround’ is Barbara Klinger’sMelodrama and Meaning: history, culture and the films of Douglas Sirk (Bloomington,Indiana, 1994). For recent developments in audience studies using oral history, seeAnnette Kuhn, An Everyday Magic: cinema and cultural memory (London, 2002).

4 Adopting this model of authorship for histories of film critics is supported throughthe continued circulation of anthologies of their criticism and reviews, particularlycritics like Anderson but also Jean-Luc Goddard and Francois Truffaut, as their latersuccess as directors (and the dominance of the auteur theory in film studies) hasensured a continued market for their criticism.

5 Haidee Wasson, The woman film critic: newspapers, cinema and Iris Barry, FilmHistory, 18 (2006), 154–162.

6 Antonia Lant (ed. with Ingrid Periz), Red Velvet Seat: women’s writing on the first fiftyyears of cinema (New York, 2006), 379. Following Lant, Laura Marcus discusses thewriting of women film critics in the 1920s and the role played by Iris Barry andC. A. Lejeune in the early years of British film criticism, see Laura Marcus, TheTenth Muse, Writing about Cinema in the Modernist Period (Oxford, 2007), 275–318.

7 Christine Gledhill, Trans-nationalising Women’s Film History: Report on Women’sFilm History Network—UK/Ireland, Workshop 2, available at http://wfh.wikidot.com/

8 Irit Rogoff cited in Kay Armatage, The Girl from God’s Country: Nell Shipman and thesilent cinema (Toronto, Canada, 2003), 13.

9 Lauren Rabinovitz, The future of feminism and film history, Camera Obscura, 61: 21(1) (2006), 61.

10 For a discussion of methodology see Jennifer M. Bean, Introduction: Towards afeminist historiography of early cinema, in: Jennifer M. Bean and Diane Negra (eds)A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema (Durham, NC), 1–26. For a discussion ofresearching film industry personnel see Monica Dell’Asta, On Frieda Klug, PearlWhite and Other Traveling Women Film Pioneers, workshop paper delivered at Workshop2 for the Women’s Film History Network—UK/Ireland, and available at http://wfh.wikidot.com/

11 Dell’Asta, On Frieda Klug.12 Diana Negra, Introduction: Female stardom and early film history, Camera Obscura

48: 16 (3) (2001), 1.

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13 Women’s activity in the silent period is better understood, with activity clusteringaround the Women and Silent British Cinema website (http://womenandsilent-britishcinema.wordpress.com/) and the ‘Women’ strands at the annual BritishSilent Film Festival. The work currently being undertaken by the Women’s FilmHistory Network—UK/Ireland is encouraging and promises to make a significantcontribution to knowledge beyond the period of early cinema.

14 Sue Harper, Women in British Cinema: mad, bad and dangerous to know (London, 2000).15 Harper, Women in British Cinema, 5.16 This is an indicative list and by no means comprehensive. It includes the names of

women who wrote film criticism/reviews for one or more publications on a semi-regular basis (Elizabeth Forrest for example), to those whose criticism I have yet toread (Ruth Kessler for example) but were listed as registered members of theCritics’ Circle. Other women writers who made a significant contribution to filmhistory at this time include Rachel Low, whose first three volumes of her seven-volume History of British Film, 1896–1939 (London) were published between 1948and 1950. As the project focuses on the post-war period, it excludes women criticsfrom the inter-war years including Maud Hughes (The Picture Show), Iris Barry, ElsieCohen and Marjorie Williams who both wrote for Kinematograph Weekly in 1914–1919 and 1926, respectively (with Cohen working her way up to Associate Editor),Evelyn Bagge (News of the World, 1932), Edna Barnes (Daily Sketch, 1935), and C. A.Lejeune’s career, which started with The Manchester Guardian in 1926. The Womenand Silent British Cinema website is a useful resource for researching these women.

17 In this respect, I acknowledge Lant’s approach to compiling her anthology of filmcriticism which she described as ‘a tale of systematicity and randomness’, Red VelvetSeat, 27. For my study, copies of publications like Films and Filming were checked atirregular intervals between 1950 and 1958, whilst an entire run of Picture Post from1950–1958 was searched.

18 Material of this type is readily available in the paper archives in Britain; in thelibrary and Special Collections of the British Film Institute (hereafter BFI) and in thenewspaper archive at the British Library, Caversham (hereafter BLC).

19 Particularly noteworthy publications were Lant, Red Velvet Seat; John Ellis, Art,culture and quality, terms for a cinema in the forties and seventies, Screen 19(3)(1978), 9–49; James Chapman and Christine Geraghty (eds), British film cultureand criticism, Journal of Popular British Cinema 4 (2001). The ‘General Introduction’to Lant’s anthology was particularly useful for thinking about materials andmethods, as were discussions with Sue Harper. The C A Lejeune Film Reader(Manchester, 1991) includes some small personal commentary on her career whilstCatherine de la Roche’s autobiography Performance (New Zealand, 1988) is acomprehensive overview of her career as a film critic from the 1920s to the 1980s.Isabel Quigly reflects on her career in Being a film reviewer in the 1950s, in IanMacKillop and Neil Sinyard (eds) British Cinema of the 1950s: a celebration(Manchester, 2003) and elaborated on this in an interview with myself in September2009. Some tantalising suggestions could never be traced. In correspondence withthe BBC Talks Department, Catherine de la Roche advised them to check herprofessional credentials through reference to her curriculum vita held by the‘British Margarine Company’ (BBC WAC, Catherine Cameron File 1, 1941–1949,letter from de la Roche to Bell, 19 February 1948). The company was instituted by

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the British government to promote consumer uptake of margarine, but why theyshould hold the CV of a film critic, and whether she had done any work for them,remains unknown.

20 Founded in 1894 as a society for professional women writers, membership of theSWWJ was open to ‘women engaged as professional workers in literature,journalism and related spheres’ (see their website at http://www.swwj.co.uk/levels.htm). Some women film critics almost certainly were members;Monica Ewer, a successful novelist, scriptwriter and occasional film anddrama critic for the Daily and Sunday Herald was Chairman of the Society in thelate 1950s, but the Society’s archival holdings are incomplete with a great dealof material either burned, flood-damaged or destroyed during the Second WorldWar (personal correspondence between the author and SWWJ member,Sylvia Kent).

21 See Peter Cargin, A Brief History of the Circle (2009) at the Circle’s website,http://criticscircle.org.uk/history/. The Circle’s archive is held within the Manderand Mitchenson Theatre Collection at the Jerwood Library of Performing Arts,Greenwich (hereafter JLPA). The archive has been poorly curated and the materialheld contains many gaps; correspondence and letters pertaining to the 1950s periodfor example are especially sparse.

22 By 1976, membership numbers stood at over 100 and it was the largest of theCircle’s three divisions.

23 The Circle was active in raising funds to support the slander and libel actionbrought by the film critic E. Arnot Robertson against MGM in 1948. It alsointervened in the 1969 spat between The Spectator’s drama critic Hilary Spurling andLindsay Anderson, then artistic director at the Royal Court Theatre, who attemptedto ban Spurling from the theatre because he objected to her reviews of his work.Details of this and other cases are held not only in the Archives’ personalcorrespondence but are more readily accessible through The Critics Circular’, theassociation’s quarterly publication, copies of which are held in the British Library.Less public but no less interesting are the Circle’s support of retired critics throughits benevolent fund. Elspeth Grant and Freda Bruce Lockhart had forged successfulcareers as film critics but by the end of their professional lives their financialsituations was sufficiently unstable that both women approached The Circle’sbenevolent fund for a loan (later translated into a ‘non-repayable grant’). Lockhartreceived £50 in 1968 (for ‘essential repairs’ to her house), Grant £75 in 1971 (tocover ‘rent arrears’), an equivalent value of approximately £700 in 2010 (JLPA,letter from Lockhart to Betts, October 1971; letter from Grant to Betts, July1975). The payments stand as a reminder of the precarious position of freelanceworkers, without access to professional pensions.

24 ‘Bal’., Ballet critic; ‘B’., Broadcasting critic; ‘D’., Drama critic; ‘F’., Film critic;‘M’., Music critic.

25 JLPA, The Critics’ Circle membership booklets for 1945, 1950, 1955, 1960, 1965,1970 and 1975.

26 In the USA, representation was even higher with one 1943 survey estimating that75% of the 100þ fan magazine writers of the day were female (Lant, Red VelvetSeat, 380). This data needs to be interpreted with care, however, as writingfor fan magazines was notably different to writing for ‘quality’ newspapers or

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trade journals. Few women writers wrote for Variety for example (Lant, Red VelvetSeat, 775), a situation duplicated in Britain where Elsie Cohen and MarjoryWilliams were notable exceptions to Kinematograph Weekly’s stable of resident malecritics in the inter-war period.

27 Anne Ross Muir, A Women’s Guide to Jobs in Film and Television (London, 1987), 2. TheACTT (Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians) was thetrade union for the British film industry. The ACT (Association of Cine-Technicians)was created in June 1933 and became ACTT in 1956, after the introduction ofcommercial television (http://www.bectu.org.uk/about/bectu-history).

28 Harper, Women in British Cinema, 158.29 Masters, BECTU interview no. 362, transcription held at the BFI. Her career

progressed no further than production manager on children’s films in the 1960s and1970s.

30 The ACTT became BECTU, the Media and Entertainment Union in 1991. TheBECTU History project is a series of oral history recordings made withpractitioners from theatre, film, radio and television. See http://www.bectu.or-g.uk/home for further details.

31 Christophe Dupin, The postwar transformation of the British Film Institute and itsimpact on the development of a national film culture in Britain, Screen, 47(4)(2006), 446.

32 Lant, Red Velvet Seat, 380–381.33 Marcus, The Tenth Muse, 237.34 Christopher Cook (ed.), The Dilys Powell Film Reader (Oxford, 1991), ix.35 Britain’s post-war welfare state was predicated on the ‘traditional model’ of the

family with a male breadwinner and female homemaker, with women receiving alower rate of benefit to men. Despite the ideological rhetoric of domesticity womencontinued to work outside the home, which gave rise to much discussion aboutwomen’s ‘dual role’. See Elizabeth Wilson, Only Halfway to Paradise: women in postwarBritain 1945–1968 (London, 1980) for a full discussion.

36 Melanie Selfe, conference paper delivered at the Screen Studies Conference, Universityof Glasgow, July 2010. I’m grateful to Dr Selfe for a full transcript of her paper.

37 Respectively, BBC WAC, Catherine Cameron File 2 1950–1962, memo from Keento Quigly (editor of Woman’s Hour), 14 July 1952; de la Roche, Performance, 46.

38 BBC WAC 04/HT/PNF, letter from French to Lockhart, 12 March 1963. Frenchclaimed that his changes to The Critics involved ‘a general hardening of its characterand the introduction of many new critics’ and that he did not consider she ‘wouldfit in with the nature of the programme as it is now emerging’. This ‘generalhardening’ was part of the wider shift towards a more masculine film culture in the1960s, which was less hospitable to women as critics.

39 The film section of Woman’s Hour, entitled ‘At the Cinema’, lasted for approximatelyfive minutes earning the critic a fee of roughly £5. Factoring in script research,writing and revision time, plus travel into Central London for the broadcast, areasonable estimate is £5 for one day’s work. This was generous compared to otherwomen’s wages in the film industry, although of course the freelance critic couldn’tguarantee this income for every day. The editor Noreen Ackland for exampleearned £8 per week in 1946 for a 10-hour day, five days per week, and Julie Harrisearned a comparable amount as a costume assistant at Gainsborough (respectively,

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BFI BECTU interview number 327; BFI BECTU interview number 487). Thecontinuity girl was the poorest paid. Elaine Schreyeck, working at Ealing studios,started on £2 per week in 1942, rising to £6 by 1946, a wage she supplemented bydoing freelance secretarial work for the comic Tommy Trinder (BFI BECTUinterview number 38).

40 Powell, The Dilys Powell Film Reader, xi; Quigly, Being a film reviewer in the1950s, 215.

41 For a fuller discussion of the dual address of Robertson’s style of film criticism, seeMelanie Bell, ‘Quality’, cinema and the ‘superior woman’ persona: understandingwomen’s film criticism in post-war Britain, Women’s History Review, 19(5) (2010),703–709.

42 To-Day’s Cinema, 18 July 1947, 18.43 The Cinema, 16 July, 1947.44 Powell, The Dilys Powell Film Reader, 422, article dated January 1961.45 Ibid. Oxford Opinion was Oxford University’s undergraduate magazine, with the

editor of its film section Ian Cameron declaring in his first editorial in 1959 ‘Filmcriticism in Britain is dead. Perhaps it was never alive . . .’, cited in Charles Barr, IanCameron obituary, The Guardian, 14 March 2010.

46 In the pages of his influential film journal Sequence Lindsay Anderson includedsketches of C. A. Lejeune, which he derisively entitled ‘Chestnuts’, a sarcasticreference to the 1948 anthology of her reviews entitled Chestnuts in her Lap. I’mgrateful to Melanie Selfe for this observation.

47 JLPA, The Critics’ Circle, membership booklet, 1975. Although the numbers ofwomen critics were consistent throughout the 1960s a shift in demographics wastaking place. The pool of women film critics included a number of the old guardlike Freda Bruce Lockhart and Elspeth Grant who were effectively retired and hadno cultural clout, whilst the pool of men was swelled with an intake of new criticssuch as Philip French who held high-profile posts at The Times and the BBC. Theconsistent figures mask the fact that a shift in gendered power dynamics wasunderway.

48 Bean, Introduction: Toward a feminist historiography of early cinema, 2.49 Banks-Smith was initially a reporter for the Daily Herald and Daily Express between

1955 and 1965, then television reviewer for The Sun before joining The Guardian in1969 for whom she still writes. See Our Nancy, The Guardian, 4 February 2010, 4–8.

50 De la Roche, Performance, 16–17.51 Ibid., 25–26.52 I have discussed aspects of this work, particularly the Good Housekeeping articles, in

Melanie Bell, Feminism and women’s film criticism in post-war Britain, 1945–59,Feminist Media Studies 11(4) (2011).

53 She was married twice, first to Leo Van de Velde, second to the Scottishpoet Norman Cameron, who died in 1953, Catherine de la Roche obituary,The Evening Post (New Zealand) 15 May 1997, 9. Material at the BFI, BBC WACand the National Library of New Zealand (hereafter NLNZ) is held under hermarried name of ‘Catherine Cameron’, although she never published underthis name.

54 The material is held in the Alexander Turnbull Library at the NLNZ with therecords searchable via the library’s ‘TAPUHI’ database.

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55 See John Ellis, Art, Culture and Quality for a discussion of film criticism and how theterms of the ‘Quality’ debate were framed around discourses of ‘restraint’ and‘sincerity’.

56 On the topic of ‘women’s cinema’ see de la Roche’s articles ‘The Mask of Realism’,Penguin Film Review 7 (September 1948), 35–43, ‘That ‘‘Feminine Angle’’’, PenguinFilm Review, 8 (January 1949), 25–34 and my discussion of these and radiobroadcasts on the topic in Melanie Bell, Femininity in the Frame: women and 1950sBritish popular cinema (London, 2010).

57 Catherine de la Roche, ‘Cannes’, Sight and Sound, January 1950, 24–25; ‘A Festivalof Film People’, Woman’s Hour, 24 April 1951. Microfiche broadcast script held atBBC WAC. De la Roche reported that ‘the vogue for pencil skirts and pleated skirtscontinues, but the jackets are longer, tightly waisted and often widely flared at thehips’.

58 Armatage, The Girl from God’s Country, 25–26.59 Ibid., 26.60 Freelancers would send in speculative scripts in the hope these would be

commissioned and generate income for them. One of de la Roche’s proposals wasfor a programme on ‘women and film’, and I’ve discussed this and other proposalsin more detail in Femininity in the Frame: women and 1950s British popular cinema(London, 2010).

61 She is mentioned in passing in Robert Murphy, Realism and Tinsel: cinema and societyin Britain, 1939–1949 (London, 1992), 99–101, and with rather moreconsideration in Antonia Lant, Blackout, Reinventing Women for Wartime BritishCinema (Princetown, NJ, 1991), 162–167.

62 Dupin, The postwar transformation of the British Film Institute, 443–451; TerryBolas, Screen Education (Bristol, UK, 2009), 37–66.

63 De la Roche, Performance, 76. She delivered lectures in Norwich, Cardiff, Hull,Newcastle and many other cities in England and Wales. Details of these and othersare held at NLNZ 97-224-01/20.

64 NLNZ 97-224-01/20, letter from Lindgren to de la Roche, 23 October 1950.65 Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever, A Freudian Impression (Chicago, 1995), 17.66 NLNZ 97-224-09/10, Catherine de la Roche lecture script ‘Women’s Cinema’,

dated 1948. BBC WAC, Catherine Cameron File 1, 1941–1949, letter from de laRoche to editor, ‘Mainly for Women’, 5 March 1949 detailing her recenteducational activities with women’s groups.

67 NLNZ 97-224-01/20, letter from Dorothy Russell, Secretary, Bucks Federation ofWomen’s Institutes, to Catherine de la Roche, 13 June 1956. NLNZ 97-224-01/20, letter from Rosamonde Pribram, Secretary, Tyneside Film Society, Newcastleto Catherine de la Roche, 2 November 1956. Again, relative to the work ofother women in the film industry, the BFI lectures were well-paid although therewas no guarantee of a repeat booking. By comparison, the costume designer JulieHarris, who by the mid-1950s was extremely experienced in her profession, wasearning at this point twenty-five pounds per week (BFI BECTU interviewnumber 487).

68 Sue Harper and Vincent Porter, British Cinema of the 1950s: the decline of deference(Oxford, 2003), 244. De la Roche makes a similar point in letters to the BBCstating that her lectures to women’s organisations have demonstrated to her that‘women are interested in the subject [of women’s cinema] and like hearing about

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foreign pictures, even if they can’t view them’. BBC WAC Catherine Cameron File1, 1941–1949, letter from de la Roche to Elisabeth Rowley, Talks Department,23 March 1949, suggesting a talk about the Italian actress Anna Magnani.

Melanie Bell is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Newcastle. She is the author of

Femininity in the Frame: women and 1950s British popular cinema (I. B. Tauris, 2010) and

co-editor (with Melanie Williams) of British Women’s Cinema (Routledge, 2010).

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