Postmodern Chick Flicks The Return of the Woman's Film

Women's films are more popular now than at any time following the classical era. Postmodern Chick Flicks considers the reasons for the renewed popularity of female-orientated genres and examines the new film cycles this has produced. Focusing on melodrama, romantic comedy, costume drama and female-led noirs , the book looks at the revival of these forms and the way in which they blend classical and contemporary themes and formal devices.

ROBERTA GARRETT is a Senior Lecturer in Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of East London.

Acknowledgements * Introduction: Postmodernist Cinema and Feminist Film Criticism * Postmodernism, New Hollywood and Feminist Theory * The Early 1990s 'Postmodernist' Melodrama: Feminine Virtue in the Consumer Age * Romantic Comedy and Female Spectatorship * Costume Drama, Historiography and Women's History * Neo-Noir and Noir-Lite: Masculinity and Postmodernist Aesthetics in Recent Noir * Conclusion: Fiftiesness Revisited: The Desperate Housewives * Bibliography * Index Acknowledgements * Introduction: Postmodernist Cinema and Feminist Film Criticism * Postmodernism, New Hollywood and Feminist Theory * The Early 1990s 'Postmodernist' Melodrama: Feminine Virtue in the Consumer Age * Romantic Comedy and Female Spectatorship * Costume Drama, Historiography and Women's History * Neo-Noir and Noir-Lite: Masculinity and Postmodernist Aesthetics in Recent Noir * Conclusion: Fiftiesness Revisited: The Desperate Housewives * Bibliography * Index