From Garbo to Jolie. The development of the standard of female beauty in the cinema

“If Cleopatra’s nose was shorter, the world would be different” - this phrase by Pascal reflects the huge role that female beauty has played and continues to play in our mind and in our history. With the advent of cinema, the cult of female beauty was given a new impetus: first, outstanding beauties became the property of millions, and second, the film made it possible to preserve their beauty and charm over time. And today, looking through old and not very old films, we have the opportunity to see first-hand idols with our own eyes and to trace how the ideal of female beauty has changed over time.

Beginning of the century: la femme fatale
The beginning of the century. The old prosperous world, the world of the nineteenth century is still alive, but its days are already numbered. Men are pampered and limp. Women are emancipated. They cut their hair short, smoke, use alcohol and strong expressions. It is not surprising that at the same time, the first movie star becomes the first on-screen incarnation of a vamp woman - fatal, seductive, beautiful, cold and brutal, instigating an irresistible passion in men, causing her to lose her mind and eventually leading to death.
Teda Bara had a catchy, exotic beauty. Especially amazed her eyes - large, dark, densely let down. In Hollywood, she wrote an exotic biography, which is so merged with her fatal image that over time it became almost impossible to separate the truth from fiction. The next star, Paula Negri, had the same type of beauty as Bara and inherited a fatal image from her predecessor, with one significant difference: her heroines evoked compassion. She played beautiful, strong, proud women who caused suffering to others, but also to suffer.

Between the world wars:
Northern Sphinx
The First World War not only caused an ideological crisis in Western society, but also significantly changed the criteria for female attractiveness. The men who had returned from the front dreamed of tender girlfriends, and not of fatal seductress. Eternal femininity was awakened to life, and two women, Gene Harlow and Greta Garbo, became the most perfect embodiment of her on the screen. They embodied, in fact, two sides of the same image of a woman-dream. Harlow, a platinum blonde (it was she who first brought this color into fashion), personified her carnal, sensual hypostasis. Garbo with her inspired features and mysterious smile - perfect. It is not by chance that Robert Jordan, the main character of Hemingway’s novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, sees these two actresses in a dream.
Jean Harlow died in 26 years and was soon forgotten. Her name remains in the history of cinema, but the image is erased from the audience memory. Garbo, in spite of earlier, in 36 years, the completion of a career (or just because of it) turned into one of the cultural myths of the twentieth century and the most perfect cinema symbol of its time.
So, here is a portrait of an ideal woman in the period between the two world wars: tall, thin, with wide angular shoulders and narrow hips; ashen hair, large features, thin lips, wide chin with dimple and huge eyes, with eyelashes of such length that when the upper and lower eyelashes were touching, rustling was heard as if the wings of butterflies were fluttering.

Forties: Steel Orchid
At the end of 30's, the gentle heroines of Garbo are replaced by strong women performed by Katherine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, and especially Marlene Dietrich, who is probably the most perfect embodiment of the image of a vamp woman.
Remarque, who was one of the victims of the divine Marlene, called her "steel orchid". The famous writer knew Dietrich well and got to the very point: it was this combination of angelic appearance with an iron character that allowed Marlene Dietrich to take the throne, deserted after Garbo left.
But how different she was from her predecessor! And how time has changed, to whose needs this seductive and cruel image responded. The heroine Dietrich is strong women who can subdue circumstances without losing even a single moment of royal calm. From them came a colossal force, victorious, submissive, implacable.
Marlene Dietrich was thin, with legs of extraordinary length. She had an oblong face (she removed four lateral teeth to achieve the desired shape of the face), with huge almost transparent eyes, under the high semicircles of her eyebrows. And the voice ... Since the movie gained sound, the voice has become an important component of the movie star image. Marlene had a unique - deep, low, somewhat hoarse voice, which she knew how to use like no one, with the possible exception of Marilyn Monroe.

Fifties: gentlemen prefer blondes
The film “Hilda”, which appeared on screens in 1946, was not distinguished by special artistic merit and remained in history thanks to one single scene: Rita Hayworth in a black evening dress descends the stairs, slowly squeezing long gloves up to the elbow. This scene marked the end of the vamp era. Soft femininity is back on the big screen.
Despite the fact that the fifties were the richest in the stars in the history of cinema, there can be no two opinions as to who most fully reflected the female ideal of the time. Marilyn Monroe did not possess either the classic beauty of Elizabeth Taylor or Jeanne Lollobrigida, the aristocratic grace of Grace Kelly, or the romantic charm of Audrey Hepburn, nevertheless she became the symbol of the era.
At the beginning of her career, she was compared to Gene Harlow, but the similarity between them was only external. Harlow was a hunter and Monroe a victim. The cold eyes and the carnivorous smile of the “platinum blonde” gave her a wolf in sheep's clothing. Monroe was the very warmth, softness, vulnerability. She embodied all those traits of a female character that appeal to the strengths of a man, awaken in him a protector and a protector. "I agree to live in a world ruled by men," she said, "provided that in this world I remain a woman."
The secret of Marilyn Monroe’s unprecedented sexual attractiveness is not to be found in appearance, but in a manner of keeping herself: gait, voice, smile, gaze, in a special manner peculiar only to her to look, listen, speak - in all those elusive things that are so easy to see, so difficult to explain and impossible to repeat.

To be continued

Boris KRIZHOPOLSKY, historian, journalist