Women's Club (1936 film)
| Women's Club | |
|---|---|
| French | Club de Femmes |
| Directed by | Jacques Deval |
| Produced by | Leopold Schlosberg[1] |
| Starring | Danielle Darrieux Josette Day Betty Stockfeld |
| Cinematography | Jules Kruger |
| Music by | Marius-François Gaillard[1] |
Production company | Societe Sirius Films |
Release dates |
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Running time | 105 minutes 81 minutes (US) |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
Club de Femmes (a.k.a. Girls' Club or Women's Club) is a 1936 French film directed and written by Jacques Deval. The film stars Danielle Darrieux, Josette Day, Betty Stockfeld, Ève Francis, Junie Astor Valentine Tessier and Raymond Galle.
Synopsis
The film revolves around the love lives of the residents of a girls boarding school. The Women's Club is a home for unmarried young women, one of those respectable institutions to which well-bred (and especially insecure) young ladies entrust their virtue for fear of losing it too quickly.
In this place of constant coming and going, all sorts of anonymous destinies intersect before diverging forever. From this routine sometimes emerge names, faces, and events, some more dramatic than others. This is evidenced by the unfortunate experiences of Greta, Alice, and Hélène, but also by the romantic adventure that one day befell Claire, the most beautiful of them all.
Key events in the film include a dancer who sneaks her boyfriend into the house and becomes pregnant; a student is coerced into a prostitution ring organized by the switchboard operator; and a lesbian, whose friend is raped by a client of the prostitution ring, commits murder.
Cast
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Themes and analysis
American author and filmmaker Andrea Weiss says that the lesbianism in the film is largely communicated through the events portrayed in the story, and through the "spatial relationship" between Alice and Juliette. She also argues that Alice's sexual orientation is not immediately obvious through a typical visual "tell", instead her sexuality "takes the form of female identification."[2] Leanne Dawson, a lecturer in film studies, noted that "lesbianism has long been represented on the French screen with many instances of same-sex female desire, like in Club de Femmes, in the interwar period."[3]
Film researcher Ellen Pullar said that many films that deal with the modern woman, like Club de Femmes, "show life as a modern woman as dangerous and fraught with difficulties."[4] Professor of film studies Christopher Faulkner observed that the film "exemplifies the complexities of affective identities and the challenges posed to dominant social norms in 1930s French cinema."[5]
Release
As a result of the Hays Code enacted in 1934, and its strict enforcement, the film was censored in the United States. Due to a lesbian being featured in the film, some of the dialogue between Alice and Juliette was removed. One of the lines removed was where Alice tells Juliette — "You’re so pretty ... If I were a man, Id really love you."[2] In New York, it was censored because of its sapphic overtones, and the English subtitles for the relationship between Robert and Claire were altered to indicate they were married.[6] The film was distributed in the United States by Arthur Mayer and Joseph Burstyn.[6]
Home media
The film was released on DVD in October 2000 by the British Film Institute, which was the uncut version at 105 minutes.[7]
Reception
Elaine Paterson from Time Out said that "playful, energetic, and sustaining a high level of female hysteria, the movie is certainly camp, often riotously funny, and nostalgically enjoyable, but don't expect feminist leanings just because a lesbian's around."[8] Film critic James Travers wrote "lesbianism, prostitution, child birth out of wedlock, crime of passion, cross-dressing, female nudity — there is no shortage of material in this film to tempt the censors."[9]
Judith Williamson of New Statesman wrote "girls in shorts leap around the gym; girls in their lingerie giggle in their bedrooms; girls are allowed to look at one another, touch one another, not because this is a lesbian film but because it is, in every sense, a full-bodied film. Its physicality is not voyeuristic but energetic, not seamy but positively bounding with health."[10] Time Magazine observed "it is a naive, sometimes sad, sometimes merry, typically Gallic approach to a theme similar to that of Mädchen in Uniform, Eight Girls in a Boat and other film treatments of repressed girlhood."[6]
Sight and Sound opined that "the humour — much of it revolving round the attempts of a pretty young flirt to smuggle her fiancé into the house — is pretty feeble, the narrative frequently risks stalling because director Deval pays more attention to character than story, but in its own breezy, eccentric way, this is enjoyable fare."[7] Film critic Frank Nugent reviewed the uncut version writing the uncut version presented the stories told in the film "rather frankly, but not cheaply; with sharply drawn characters, a refreshing imprudence and an all-pervading sense of naturalness." He highlighted the performances of Darrieux and Tessier as "first rate."[11]
See also
- Cinema of France
- List of French-language films
- List of feature films with lesbian characters
- List of LGBTQ-related films of the 1930s
References
- ^ a b BFI. "Club de Femmes (1936)". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 25 May 2016.
- ^ a b Weiss, Andrea (1992). "Female Pleasures and Perversions in the Silent and Early Sound Cinema". Vampires & Violets: Lesbians in the Cinema. London: Jonathan Cape. pp. 12, 17. ISBN 0-224-03575-4.
- ^ Dawson, Leanne (2 September 2015). "Queer European Cinema: Queering Cinematic Time and Space". Studies in European Cinema. 12 (3): 185–204. doi:10.1080/17411548.2015.1115696.
- ^ Pullar, Ellen (May 2012). "Arletty as Modern Woman in Un Chien Qui Rapporte". New Zealand Journal of French Studies. 33 (1): 53. ISSN 0110-7380.
- ^ Faulkner, Christopher (Fall 1994). "Affective Identities: French National Cinema and the 1930s". Canadian Journal of Film Studies. 3 (2): 3–23. doi:10.3138/cjfs.3.2.3. ISSN 0847-5911.
- ^ a b c Cinema (25 October 1937). "The New Pictures". Time. Vol. 30, no. 17. pp. 26–28. ISSN 0040-781X.
- ^ a b Leigh, Danny; Macnab, Geoffrey (October 2000). "Video: Retail Premiere". Sight and Sound. Vol. 10, no. 2. pp. 64–66. ISSN 0037-4806.
- ^ Paterson, Elaine (10 September 2012). "Club de Femmes". Time Out. Archived from the original on 9 September 2024.
- ^ Travers, James (2000). "Review of the film Club de Femmes (1936)". French Films.org. Archived from the original on 26 April 2025.
- ^ Williamson, Judith (13 May 1988). "The Scissor-Men". New Statesman. Vol. 116, no. 2981. p. 39.
- ^ Nugent, Frank S. (20 October 1937). "The Screen: Club de Femmes by Jacques Deval and the New York Censor Board Is at the 55th Street Playhouse". The New York Times. p. 27.
Further reading
- Ben, Lisa (July 1947). "Club de Femmes". Vice Versa. Vol. 1, no. 2. pp. 12–16. Archived from the original on 15 July 2025 – via Queer Music Heritage.
- Cairns, Lucille (2006). Sapphism on Screen: Lesbian Desire in French and Francophone Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-2165-1.