Shot/Countershot

Film Tradition and Women's Cinema

Lucy Fischer

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780691609218
  9780691047560
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400859955
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Do films made by women comprise a "counter-cinema" radically different from the dominant tradition? Feminist film critics contend that women filmmakers do present from a distinctive vision, or "countershot," and Lucy Fischer argues persuasively for this view. In rich detail this book relates the idea of a counter-cinema to theories of intertextuality and locates it in the broad context of recent feminist film, literary, and art criticism. Fischer also employs an original critical model of the dialogue between women's cinema and film tradition in the very organization of the book. Each chapter discusses a theme or genre (such as the musical, the "double," the myth of womanhood, and the figure of the actress), counterposing two or more works--from the feminist and from the dominant cinema. What emerges is a fascinating picture of a women's film tradition that not only addresses but reworks and remakes the mainstream cinema.

Fischer successfully combines two main strains of feminist criticism: the deconstructive critique of the dominant culture from a feminist standpoint and the study of a feminist counterculture. Examining films from Persona and The Lady from Shanghai to Girlfriends and Sisters, or the Balance of Happiness, the book offers fresh interpretations of individual works and can, incidentally, serve as an introduction to the field of feminist film criticism.

Originally published in 1989.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Pre/texts: An Introduction Films Discussed: Fatima and Take Off
• 2. Mythic Discourse Films Discussed: The Lady from Shanghai and Riddles of the Sphinx
• 3. The Lives of Performers: The Actress as Signifier Films Discussed: Persona and The Girls
• 4. Kiss Me Deadly: Heterosexual Romance Films Discussed: Letter from an Unknown Woman; Straight through the Heart; Recital
• 5. Shall We Dance? Woman and the Musical Films Discussed: Dames; Dance, Girl, Dance; Strange Ditties; Primitive Movers; The Eighties
• 6. Sisters: The Divided Self Films Discussed: A Stolen Life: Dark Mirror; Cobra Woman; The Bad Sister; Sisters, or The Balance of Happiness
• 7. Girl Groups: Female Friendship Films Discussed: Rich and Famous and Girlfriends
• 8. Women in Love: The Theme of Lesbianism Films Discussed: Sotto, Sotto and Lianna
• 9. Murder, She Wrote: Women Who Kill Films Discussed: Violette and A Question of Silence
• 10. The Dialogic Text: An Epilogue Films Discussed: The Man Who Envied Women
• Appendix List of Additional Films and Topics for Teaching
• Index