The legendary director George Cukor (1899-1883) was always described, against and despite his wish, as a woman’s director.
In order to assess the prevalence of a “female sensibility” in his rich body of work–51 features in half a century, it would be interesting to raise two questions:
- How many of his 51 films were written or co-written by female scribes, such as Anita Loose, Isobel Lennart, and Sonya Levien?
- How many of his 51 films center on a female protagonist, or group of females, such as 1939 The Women, one of his most popular pictures?
In his best movies, such as The Women or Philadelphia Story, Cukor stage his actors to move and blend intuitively, almost musically, like instruments of one orchestra.
Cukor understood and knew how to show women’s temperament (he called it “temperature”), their interactions of mind-body-soul.
Cukor understood that as a visual art form, movies can give viewers what no other forms of art (photography) and literature (print) can: glorious faces that project feelings and move gracefully.
