Film historian named visiting scholar

Jacobs

ilm historian Lea Jacobs will be at the University in December as the visiting scholar at the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women's Studies. Her research on the early years of cinema is considered among the most outstanding work in the field of historical film studies.

Jacobs will present a lecture, "A Sentimental Journey: Creating the Woman's Picture," at 8 p.m., Monday, December 4, at the George Eastman House's Dryden Theater. Following her lecture, the Dryden will offer a rare screening of the silent 1927 classic After Midnight. This event is free to University students with a student ID; admission is $4 for other students and $5 for the general public.

Jacobs, professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is widely known for her first book, The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film 1928-1942. Her work was praised in Sight and Sound, a film magazine in the United Kingdom, as "a fine addition to the social history of cinema and to feminist film scholarship."

Directed by Monta Bell, After Midnight is, in Jacobs's own words, "one of a series of films made in the 1920s about the 'jazz life' and modern single girls. Like many of its prototypes this film contrasts the fate of two girls, in this case sisters: Mary (Norma Shearer), thrifty, resourceful, and somewhat wary of involvement with men, and Maizie (Gwen Lee), a bit dizzy and vague, rather loose with money and eager to live the 'fast' life. The film employs startling shifts in tone--the cynicism of sophisticated comedy alternating with domestic melodrama--which, along with its use of elaborate tracking shots and even some early zooms, make it one of the most interesting of the 'jazz age' stories."

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