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Holding My Own in No Man’s Land (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

The retirement of Paulene Kael from full-time film criticism not only removed the most influential voice in America from the field but also left a significant gap in the area of discussion of the cinema from the perspective of feminine experience. Molly Haskell, whose groundbreaking FROM REVERENCE TO RAPE: THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN IN THE MOVIES (1974) was one of the first serious studies of film in terms of the manner in which women were depicted throughout film history, has addressed this situation with what she calls “ruminations” on the “images of people and characters who have had an influence on our lives.” Drawn from the essays and reviews she wrote for several prominent national journals since the early 1970’s, Haskell challenges both doctrinaire academic/feminist readings and conventional masculine positions in a linked series of expanded essays which indicate her love for and deep insight into film as an artistic construct and as an important cultural expression of American life.

Haskell’s introduction in HOLDING MY OWN IN NO MAN’S LAND: WOMEN AND MEN AND FILM AND FEMINISTS is a striking declaration of her “movie love” (to use one of Kael’s titles), setting the tone and direction of the volume. Speaking with a kind of genial defiance, Haskell enthusiastically accepts as a credo what one critic described as a defect, her stance as “an uncritical celebrator of heterosexual romance,” but asserts as a corollary her fondness for “the heroic or contrary images of women that go against the grain of oppression.” Attacking film theorists who she calls “the descendants of the bluestockings,” Haskell asserts and then demonstrates with numerous convincing examples that interesting films are much too subtle and sophisticated to be analyzed from a simplistic matriarchy/patriarchy dichotomy.

Dividing the book into sections designated “Dames” and “Guys,” Haskell offers opinions and ideas about actresses like Meryl Streep, Mae West, Liv Ullmann and Shirley MacLaine that are shaped as a cogent precise of their acting lives; as well as engaging, emotionally implicated interviews with Lina Wertmuller and Doris Day (especially) that expertly convey the skill and personality of the subject. The material on the “guys” is not quite as effective, but her interview/assessment of John Wayne is a concise portrait equal to several book-length studies, heart-felt and moving.

Not all of the separate sections are up to the level of Haskell’s best work, and her over-arching premise is not always applicable, leading to some bland or commonplace considerations. Nonetheless, her exuberant personal involvement is a welcome antidote to the desiccated jargon of many academic critics, and her knowledge of film lore and film culture combined with an open, graceful style makes the book an enduring complement to those films and filmmakers that Haskell admires.