Five films by the director Dorothy Arzner (1897–1979) are repeated, having been canceled in August 2003 because of the citywide blackout. Arzner forged a unique niche in a field wholly dominated by men, as the sole female director in the Hollywood studio system. This retrospective celebrates the accomplishments of the trailblazing filmmaker, who arrived on the scene just before the coming of sound and stayed through the early 1940s. Entertaining products of the Hollywood mainstream, Arzner’s films are distinguished by their subtle exploration of relations among women living communally, the pressures of a male-dominated society, and the balance between career and family in women’s lives
Directed by Dorothy Arzner was conceived by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and organized for The Museum of Modern Art by Jytte Jensen, Curator, and John Migliore, intern, Department of Film and Media.
UCLA has collaborated with Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios to preserve from nitrate projection prints or acetate positives the six extant films Arzner made for Paramount. None of the original negatives have survived. Preservation of the films was made possible with generous support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Myra Reinhard Family Foundation, and Jodie Foster.