How long does it take to read Complicated Women?
Mick LaSalle
Complicated Women by Mick LaSalle takes about 5 hours 22 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 22 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2000. 293 pages, about 80,575 words.
11 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 57 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 22 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 21 minutes |
The page count is the median across 3 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
For five short years, between 1929 and 1934, women in American cinema were modern! They took lovers, had babies out of wedlock, got rid of cheating husbands, enjoyed their sexuality, led unapologetic careers, and, in general, acted the way many think women only acted after 1968. Before then, women on screen had come in two varieties--good or bad--sweet ingenue or vamp. Then two stars came along to blast away these common stereotypes. Garbo turned the femme fatale into a woman whose capacity for love and sacrifice made all other human emotions seem pale. Meanwhile, Norma Shearer succeeded in taking the ingenue to a place she'd never been: the bedroom. Garbo and Shearer took the stereotypes and made them complicated. In the wake of these complicated women came others, a deluge of indelible stars--Constance Bennett, Ruth Chatterton, Mae Clarke, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Kay Francis, Ann Harding, Jean Harlow, Miriam Hopkins, Dorothy Mackaill, Barbara Stanywyck, Mae West, and Loretta Young all came into their own during the pre-Code era. These women pushed the limits and shaped their images along modern lines. Then, in July 1934, the draconian Production Code became the law in Hollywood and these modern women of the screen were banished, not to be seen again until the code was repealed three decades later. Mick LaSalle, the film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, takes readers on a tour of pre-Code films and reveals how this was the true golden age of women's films and how the movies of the pre-Code are still worth watching. The bold, pioneering, and complicated women of the pre-Code era are about to take their place in the pantheon of film history, and America is about to reclaim a rich legacy.
Subjects: Women in motion pictures, Frau, Film, Motion pictures, united states, Motion pictures, history
