Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood

Before 1929, women on screen had come in two varieties - sweet ingénue or vamp. Then two stars came along: Greta Garbo, who turned the femme fatale into a woman whose capacity for love and sacrifice made all other human emotions pale; and Norma Shearer, who succeeded in taking the ingénue to a place she'd never been: the bedroom. In their wake came a deluge of other complicated women - Marlene Dietrich, Jean Harlow, and Mae West, to name a few. Then, in July 1934, the draconian Production Code became the law in Hollywood and these modern women of the screen were banished, not to be seen again until the code was repealed three decades later. A thorough survey and tribute, Complicated Women reveals how this was the true Golden Age of women's films.