Alicia Malone

Girls on Film by Alicia Malone is an engaging and informative look at the history of women in film told using Malone's own life story as a framing device. So this is part memoir and part (mostly) film history.

I listened to the audiobook and the narrator, Brigid Lohrey, did a wonderful job of making me feel like I was listening to a conversation where all of this information was being offered.

I found the ways in which Malone weaved her growing up watching movies, the usual issues of growing up, and the story of women in film into a coherent narrative to be very effective. While I see this referred to as a collection of essays I think that can be misleading. Even connected collections often lack any overarching narrative even though they are on the same topic. This flows as a single narrative with chapters that can be read as standalone essays, or at least that is the way I prefer to talk about it.

One of the key advantages of this format is that we see on both a personal level and an industry-wide level what the treatment of women in (and around) film means. How film can be an often poor substitute for education, how having a lack of diversity in the product itself as well as those who discuss and promote the product can distort viewer's perceptions of the world around them.

I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in film and film history. It is entertaining as well as informative and offers some nice analyses of a few films. I have gone back and revisited a few because of this book.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (meer)

If you enjoy Alicia Malone's introductions on TCM, you should check this book out. I saw Malone talk about this on the last TCM Cruise, and I could listen to her go on and on about the topic.

The best part of this book are the profiles of little known women who, despite the forces of sexism arrayed against them, made important contributions to or marks on film history. Each profile left me wanting to know more: not of the stories I already know that are well-covered in books and documentaries of their own (Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, Ida Lupino), but those I'm not familiar with, like Dorothy Arzner who invented the boom mic when she saw how the stationary microphone limited Clara Bow's ability to move as she needed.

There aren't long, sustained theses in this book, but the short profiles and interstitial essays are good for quick dips into the topic.… (meer)