writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

In one of the photographs documenting the history of the Warsaw Dramatic Theatre, founded by
Jan Lorentowicz in 1916, the theatre star Juliusz Osterwa stands surrounded by six female students,
among whom there is Jadwiga Smosarska 10 . What is interesting here is that two of the young women
in the portrait hold cameras of a modern design in their hands – light, and suitable for daily use. One
can assume that the photographer here was one of a female students, too, whom one of the sitters
would replace, also wanting to take a shot of the situation with her own device. This fact itself, that
young women underwent a professional education in a professional institution testifies to the
changing status of women's education and their training for acting.
However, the symbols of modernity here are the cameras which the future actresses dextrously
use every day – this conclusion can be drawn on seeing how skilfully they hold the cameras in their
hands (plus the fact that they own them). The identity of the figures in the photographs can be
encapsulated in the word “new women”, pertinent to gender patterns, related to the modes of one's
functioning in the public sphere and one's participation in popular culture. A significant power,
shaping the model of 20th‐century femininity, therefore, was technological advancement, without
which investigation into the presence of women in cinema, not only "on both sides of the camera”,
as E. Ann Kaplan once labelled it (1983), but also in front of the screen itself, would not have been
possible.
The presence of technology in the lives of modern women is seen on a photograph taken after the
wedding of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, posing next to a film camera. Mary enacts the
operator here, turning the winding handle of the camera on a tripod. Douglas peeps into the lens, as
if observing the registration of the image. This composition, arranged in the shape of a heart, is
meant to commemorate their marriage solemnised in 1920, as well as emphasise the professional
character of the union. Here, the partners are both actors and producers in the independent film
production company United Artists, which they co‐founded with Charles Chaplin and David W.
Griffith in 1919.
In the early 1920s, it can be observed that in the USA, young white women had become the ideal
type of a film spectator, as they occupied almost two thirds of the seats at the cinema, which led to
“the feminisation of movie‐fan culture just as the industry’s most prestigious fare became the
feature‐length story picture, centred on a female star”. 11 Mary Pickford was one of the first
beneficiaries of the then modern change, reinforcing the popularity of her image with each
subsequent role.
Thanks to the fact that Hallett goes beyond a traditional historical and film‐oriented framework,
she manages to introduce an additional context which is a critical analysis of what the acting
profession is, one proposed by Simone de Beauvoir, who emphasised that: “Today the expressive
arts are not the only ones open to woman: many try their hand at creative art. Woman’s situation
encourages her to seek salvation in literature and in art.” 12 Being an actress allows a woman to
become “an artist, a creator who gives meaning to her life by lending meaning to the world”. 13
As suggested by de Beauvoir, one should look at the phenomenon of actresses of the early 20th
century, enacting new types of heroines and female narration, as the result of historical changes of
the former century. Industrialisation, the development of the media – especially the printing press –
and the increasing power of democratic political stances which opened up new options for activity to
women, as well as men. These resulted from the change in principles of public functioning, now
being unlimited by a social hierarchy and gender patterns. According to Hallett, it was precisely a
"‘Pickford Revolution’ – as one producer called the transformation from an industry with no stars to
one defined by them”. 14 The dynamism of the 19th century redefined female acting in America,
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