Prisoners of Gender: Women in the Films of J. Lee Thompson

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When the director J. Lee Thompson died in 2002, his obituaries gave little indication that he might ever conceivably be regarded as a 'woman's director' - unsurprisingly given his expertise in macho films such as 1961's The Guns of Navarone and Cape Fear. However, during the first 10 years of his directorial career in Britain, Thompson made a number of striking films which examined a rich variety of female experience. These range from the women's prison films The Weak and the Wicked (1954) and Yield to the Night (1956), both starring Diana Dors, to the tale of domestic disaster Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957), from the war film that finds room for a central female character, Ice Cold in Alex (1958) and the depiction of 1930s slum life No Trees in the Street (1959), to an optimistic farewell to Britain before departing for Hollywood (as well as Hayley Mills' ebullient debut film) Tiger Bay (1959). Melanie Williams makes a case for the significance of these films to British cinema in terms of their unusual representations of femininity, with female protagonists who are 'prisoners of gender' struggling to get free.