The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck by Catherine Russell

Author:Catherine Russell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science / Women's Studies
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2023-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

While Doane argues that the women in these films are de-spectacularized, Stanwyck’s characters in Sorry, Wrong Number; The Other Love; and The Two Mrs. Carrolls—all three of which were costume-designed by Edith Head—are bejeweled and spangled. In The Other Love she wears glittery ski sweaters; in Sorry, Wrong Number the jewelry was so valuable that it needed to be guarded by security men who followed Stanwyck around on set.27 In The Gay Sisters and Cry Wolf she wears tailored suits but segues into elegant floor-length gowns in the first, and silk blouses and pearls in the second, and indeed all the films are informed by a class discourse. The plots of paranoid woman’s films frequently revolve around questions of inheritance. The gothic theme requires the setting of a large, labyrinthine house with secret rooms, grand staircases, evening dresses, and at least one cranky servant. These old and empty houses are typically underlit with shadowy corners, augmenting the distorted reality of abjection.28 The spectacle of class is certainly de-eroticized, but it remains tied to the women and their appearance.

Barbara Stanwyck in The Other Love (1947)

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