SOURCE: "'The Female of the Species': D. W. Griffith, Father of the Woman's Film," in Film Quarterly, Vol. XLVI, No. 2, Winter, 1992-93, pp. 8-20.

In the following essay, Simmon maintains that Griffith was the progenitor of the "woman's film" and probes the director's use of females in such movies as A Flash of Light and The Painted Lady.

Traditionally, D. W. Griffith is credited as "father" of a host of cinematic techniques and Hollywood patterns. If he is to be given progenitive tags at all, he deserves a more surprising one as "The Father of the Woman's Film"—and deserves too all the psychosexual conflicts such paternity entails.

"The woman's film" has always been as elusive as its evolving names, from the concise gender/genre affront of "the woman's weepie" to the academically neutered "melodrama." One might suspect that something of the elusiveness arises from its being an...