This essay explores Jean Benoît-Lévy and Marie Epstein's box-office success La Maternelle and their lesser-known Maternité in the context of interwar debates over women's roles in society. Reflecting natalist-familialist conceptions of motherhood and femininity, the films magnified three pervasive cultural icons in French social and political discourse: the monstrous, childless "modern woman," the exalted mother, and the "single woman" who fell somewhere in the middle. As both products and vehicles of these tropes, La Maternelle and Maternité not only illustrate how popular cinema disseminated and justified certain value-laden assumptions about female identity in the late 1920s and early 1930s; they also reveal the limitations of French feminism and socially-engaged, progressive art of the period.
Search Results
You are looking at 1 - 2 of 2 items for :
- "Jean-Benoit Levy" x
- Refine by Access: All content x
- Refine by Content Type: All x
The Good, the Bad, and the Childless
The Politics of Female Identity in Maternité (1929) and La Maternelle (1933)
Cheryl A. Koos
In Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2009
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 3–20 (18 total)
Educational Film Studies
A Burgeoning Field of Research
Anne Bruch
Film Library of Vocational Education: An Archeology of Industrial Film in France between the Wars . Although the author, Valérie Vignaux, examines the central film library of vocational education and the assignment of Jean Benoit-Lévy (1888–1959), one
In Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2016
- Article Type:
- Discussion
- Pages:
- 120–129 (10 total)