Essay #3

Whore or Crazed: Women In 1950's Film

When placing films in context to the specific, respective time periods in which they are produced and investigating the role of women as seen in these films; it is crucial to make comparisons. Splendor in the Grass, The Attack of The 50 Foot Woman, and Rear Window are three distinctly different films that produce multiple observations about the role of women as well as yielding common themes in the role of women as seen through the lens of the 1950’s and early 1960’s. In order to better understand these themes and make comparisons we must first summarize each of the respective films with emphasis on the two distinct types of women in them.
Splendor in the Grass (1961) is the story of young woman named Deanie Loomis and her teenage boyfriend Bud Stamper, the son of a wealthy family. It is based in the late 1920’s just before The Great Crash, though this doesn’t serve as the primary theme. Deanie is sexually attracted and motivated but is torn between her desires and the council of her mother who cautions that “…women don’t enjoy those sorts of things…” This serves to be the theme of what transpires as Deanie and Bud, by virtue of sexual interests and family expectation, break-up. Bud makes love with the school “flapper,” and Deanie descends into what is later regarded as an unhealthy mental state. Her sexual boundaries and securities are compromised by her falling out with Bud. We see in this piece more so than in the others a distinction between the sexually promiscuous and the insecure.
Attack of The 50 Foot Woman (1958) is a science fiction piece that explores the role of women as a result of a man’s infidelity. The film opens with our main character driving through the Californian desert and coming upon a large space craft whose inhabitant is a 30-foot man. Nancy Archer is a rich heiress to a large sum of money who has been married, divorced, and then re-married to her husband Harry Archer. Harry by no means is interested in much more than Nancy’s wealth and the whole town is coming to know of a rather public relationship he has developed with Honey Parker. Nancy suspects this but finds some comfort in the denial of such a relationship according to her husband. She goes out with her husband to find this monster promising to go to the “crazy house” if there is nothing to be found. They do come upon this being and Harry runs from his wife and goes back to town to get honey and leave. His plans are changed when the sheriff asks them to stay in town for a while as Nancy has come down with illness after being found. She begins to grow larger and the doctors are baffled by this phenomenal growth. She goes on a rampage to find her cheating husband and in the end kills Honey, Harry, and herself leaving a wake destruction in her path.
Rear Window (1954) is an exploration of voyeurism but has deep female implications as well. Lisa is a career driven and successful woman. Her partner L.B. Jeffries is also career driven but due to injury has been confined to his apartment and purposed to watch his neighbors studiously. Jeffries isn’t nearly as motivated in the relationship as Lisa seems to be. Jeffries argues that it wouldn’t be the life for her to be with him on his work for the magazine and that it would kill him to stay in the city. Their relationship is legitimately broken until suspicion of murder across the way in one apartment fuels first his, then her interests and pulls them together. She loves him and that she can be with him to take part in solving this mystery is comforting.
In each of these films we see women who have specific freedoms and use those freedoms in polar opposite ways. We have the sexually promiscuous, whom everybody knows as such. Then we have the career driven, sophisticated, often crazily depicted woman. The sexually promiscuous seem to be “living life.” They are femme fatales, seductive and charming, and they are not without pain or heartache but they are able to somehow “match” it. Then the serious woman who in many ways longs to have elements of promiscuity and excitement in their relationships but these are turned off by forces beyond their control. Juanita and Jennie (Splendor…), Honey (Attack…), and the ballerina or her aged counterpart Miss Lonelyhearts (Rear…), are all these sort of adventurous, beautiful, and “loose” women. It’s not that they are without vastly different levels of flirtatiousness, promiscuity or excitement in their lives; it is that they all have or are “living” it. Deanie (Splendor…), Nancy (Attack…), and Lisa (Rear…), are all in broken relationships and their passions are not being met in some way or another. Deanie is admitted to a mental ward to treat a condition brought on by her broken relationship; Nancy isn’t being satisfied sexually or emotionally by her husband and is heartbroken to the point of massive vengeance against him and his lover; Lisa and Jeffries are in a disconnected relationship, not just because of injury, but also lifestyles and this disconnect is only connected by their vested interest in the murderous life of a man across the way.
Just as we had learned about a sexual revolution in the 1920’s, there was also another sexual revolution among the youth of the 1950’s and early who with rock and roll, cult film heroes, and broadening boundaries were re-discovering themselves. This change was also being seen in the films. These two distinct types of women were emerging as the norm, with one morally being the better and the other adventurously being the better. Now, there is any number of different styles of women with any number of emotional outcomes to their respective lifestyles. The women of 1950’s film had significant freedoms but were all resolved to act in specific roles and their sexual, career, and lifestyles were a result of their decisions. These three films don’t show us what their lives were like thirty years from the times depicted in the films, with the exception of Miss Lonelyhearts. Miss Lonelyhearts is the closest we come to seeing a potential change of life in an aged version of a woman who once knew some sort of happy life. She is shown to be a woman of drunkenness, failed relationship, and suicidal yearnings. The two distinct women of the 1950’s film are free, confused and placed into the framework societies from one extreme of lifestyle to another with no particular place somewhere in the middle.