User:WomenAreGreat1977/sandbox

Legacy
Arzner's work, as both a female and lesbian filmmaker, has been an important area of film studies. Perhaps due to her leave from Hollywood in the 1940s, much of her work had been all but forgotten until the 1970s when she was rediscovered by feminist film theorists. Arzner's films inspired some of the earliest forms of feminist film critic, including Claire Johnston's 1973 seminal essay, "Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema". Arzner's films are notable for the depictions of women's relationships, with Arnzer typically reversing societal expectations of women, allowing them to find solidarity with one another. In addition to this, many of her films analyze the role traditional femininity has in women's lives, often criticizing the importance society places on it, such as in Working Girls (1931). Similarly to the reoccurring theme of female solidarity, feminist film theorists have used these criticisms as the focal point of many of their analysis.

Since the resurgence of Arzner's films, they have been studied by feminist and gay theorists alike for their depictions of gender, female sexuality, and Arzner's focus on the female relationship.