Acknowledgements * Introduction: Postmodernist Cinema and Feminist Film Criticism * Postmodernism, New Hollywood and Feminist Theory * The Early 1990s 'Postmodernist' Melodrama: Feminine Virtue in the Consumer Age * Romantic Comedy and Female Spectatorship * Costume Drama, Historiography and Women's History * Neo-Noir and Noir-Lite: Masculinity and Postmodernist Aesthetics in Recent Noir * Conclusion: Fiftiesness Revisited: The Desperate Housewives * Bibliography * Index Acknowledgements * Introduction: Postmodernist Cinema and Feminist Film Criticism * Postmodernism, New Hollywood and Feminist Theory * The Early 1990s 'Postmodernist' Melodrama: Feminine Virtue in the Consumer Age * Romantic Comedy and Female Spectatorship * Costume Drama, Historiography and Women's History * Neo-Noir and Noir-Lite: Masculinity and Postmodernist Aesthetics in Recent Noir * Conclusion: Fiftiesness Revisited: The Desperate Housewives * Bibliography * Index.