A Tale of Two Women in Two Countries: Suzanne Chantal and Paola Ojetti’s Professional Careers in the Film Press (1930s-mid 1940s)

This essay compares the professional experiences of Suzanne Chantal and Paola Ojetti in 1930s France andin 1930s and early-1940s Italy, respectively. Beyond their very different political, national, and cultural con-texts, these women both occupied central positions within some of the most influential film periodicals ofthe era: Suzanne Chantal forCinémondeand Paola Ojetti forFilm. This study is mainly based on sourceswhich enable us to take a closer look at their activities, their working conditions, and their feelings regard-ing the treatment they received while working for these periodicals. Sources include Suzanne Chantal’smemoirs and her personal diaries from the late 1930s, kept by her family, and Paola Ojetti’s extensive work-ing correspondence, preserved in the Fondo Mino Doletti of the Biblioteca Renzo Renzi at the Cineteca diBologna, as well as other correspondence documents preserved in Italian archives. This paper explores theworking trajectories and social positioning made by these two largely forgotten but powerfully significantfigures in order to establish themselves in a predominantly male professional and cultural environment,while at the same time questioning the limits of their integration. By shedding light on microhistory andquestioning gender issues, this article turns its attention primarily to working practices, women’s paths, andsocial networks of film press and film criticism history.