Prominent Feminist Film Critic and Author Speaks at Virginia Wesleyan
Molly Haskell, author of the classic From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, kicks off the “Frankly, My Dear” 1939 Film Festival, celebrating the 70th anniversary of 1939 cinema, 11 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 19.
Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Va. – Virginia Wesleyan College presents Molly Haskell, one of America’s leading film critics and author of the classic From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, on Thursday, Nov. 19, in the Boyd Dining Center on the campus of Virginia Wesleyan. This event kicks off the College’s three-day “Frankly, My Dear” 1939 Film Festival, celebrating the 70th anniversary of 1939 cinema.
At 11 a.m., Haskell joins Professor of Communications Dr. Kathy Merlock Jackson’s class, Movies of 1939. Haskell will speak about women in film and explore the compelling questions raised in her latest critical work, Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited. This is the first book to deal simultaneously with the book and movie versions of Gone with the Wind, and the uncanny symbiosis of Margaret Mitchell, David Selznick and Vivien Leigh. She will also lead an informal question/answer session on the film at 1:45 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 20.
Both events featuring Molly Haskell will be held in the Boyd Dining Center and are free and open to the public.
“The year 1939 is generally regarded as the best in American film,” said Jackson, coordinator of the event. “This festival gives my students the opportunity to see these cinematic masterpieces on the big screen and study the era that produced them.”
Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies, praises Haskell’s book. “Beautifully written and fascinating to digest,” he writes, “Molly Haskell’s Frankly, My Dear towers above any other book that’s yet been written about Gone with the Wind. It has the kind of insights into the Wind phenomenon that only a writer of Molly Haskell’s stature, wisdom and clarity could give us. It is quite the perfect toast to both the book and to the film version of Wind on the latter’s 70th birthday.”
A native of Richmond, Va., Haskell graduated from Sweet Briar College, with further studies at the University of London and the Sorbonne. Her first job in New York City was at the French Film Office, writing and editing publications on French films. Since then she has written and lectured widely on film and women’s roles in them, and is the author of three previous books, including the classic From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies. Haskell has taught at Columbia, Barnard, and Sarah Lawrence, served as film critic for New York magazine and Vogue, and written for many publications, including the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Town & Country, and The Nation. Haskell has just received, with her husband Andrew Sarris, the 2008 William K. Everson Award for Film History, from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.
During Virginia Wesleyan’s “Frankly, My Dear” 1939 Film Festival, students will have the opportunity to discuss the political and social aspects of films from 1939. Creating awareness for 1939 as a banner year in film, the festival also includes games and a costume contest, as well as cartoons and newsreels to simulate the experience of going to the movies in an earlier time. A wrap-up party concludes the festival on Saturday, Nov. 21, with local band Halcyon Blue performing an original song inspired by The Wizard of Oz.
For more information, contact Dr. Kathy Merlock Jackson at 757.455.3308 or kmjackson@vwu.edu.
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