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Mick
LaSalle's glorious and scholarly paean is a rich and satisfying love
letter to the goddesses who ruled pre-code Hollywood. Writing in an
intimate, familiar tone, the author (who is also the film critic for
the San Francisco Chronicle) explains the who, what, where, why and
how these women ruled the cinema roost before the gates of self-imposed
propriety came crashing down in mid-1934. Complicated Women tells
you just how these strong, determined women came to be: Shearer, Garbo,
and Crawford, along with their contemporaries and antecedents, are
presented in an intelligent and provocative way, thankfully minus the
cheap and lurid suppositions characteristic of so many earlier film
writers. A Free Soul favorite!
NORMA WATCH:
For starters, Norma is featured on the cover. The text devotes much
space to this groundbreaking actress, a delight for Shearer fans...
and filled with revelations for those too quick to dismiss her in the
past.
FROM THE BOOK:
"In
1994, I was at the Norma Shearer Tribute held at the Roxie Cinema in San
Francisco... I noticed that many individual men came every night...
basking in the image of this pretty woman from sixty-five years before.
Make no mistake, this was love. Shearer's appeal, an arrow launched in the
bygone era of the Hoover administration, was striking home at a time and
place no one could ever have anticipated." |
