The Stepford Wives (1975)

Director: Bryan Forbes
Screen play: William Goldman
Based on a novel by Ira Levin, also wrote screen plays for Rosemary's Baby (1968), and The Boys from Brazil(1978)

Main Characters:
Joanna Eberhart: Katharine Ross
Bobbie Markowe: Paula Prentiss
Walter Eberhart: Peter Masterson (I)
Dale Coba ("Diz): Patraick O'Neal

Cultural Context: 1970s feminism

• Women's Liberation Movement
• Conscious-raising groups
• The feminine mystique as cultural enslavement of women
• In Stepford Wives: "the Men's Association Strikes Back"

The Stepford Plot and the Question of Gender

Film's suspense: What are the signs for the viewer that something is different in Stepford?

Plot archetype: "there is a conspiracy against my freedom, and no one sees it..."

• A 'normal' world where something is strange
• Mission; to uncover the conspiracy and expose it to the world
• Finding allies, and losing them
• A world from which there is no easy exit

Gender relations in several different scenes

1. "Why bother to ask me at all?" (4): what is the problem between Joanna and Walter?
2. Bobbie (7): what do Joanna and Bobbie have together?
3. Stepford Men's Association (8+9): what is the real purpose in this meeting?
4. "I thought we were friends" (23)
5. Perfection (25+26 + 27): What do the men of Stepford want?

Technogologies of reproduction

• Gothic horror in daylight
• Android perfection
• Special effects
  Joanna:

What feminist critique of the "real world" does this film develop?