The Woman Film Critic: Newspapers, Cinema and Iris Barry

Through the example of Iris Barry's film criticism, the author underlines the significant role that women played in articulating serious film culture. Barry's writing, argues Wasson, comprises a method by which to understand the ways in which gender has figured historically in questions of identifying and valuing a range of women's work and forms of cultural production that exist outside of filmmaking per se, yet nonetheless shape ideas undergirding the meaning and significance of specific films, and of cinema in general.