The
woman's film is a
film genre which includes women-centered narratives, female protagonists and is designed to appeal to a female audience. Woman's films usually portray "women's concerns" such as problems revolving around domestic life, the family, motherhood, self-sacrifice, and
romance. These films were produced from the
silent era through the 1950s and early 1960s, but were most popular in the 1930s and 1940s, reaching their zenith during
World War II. Although
Hollywood continued to make films characterized by some of the elements of the traditional woman's film in the second half of the 20th century, the term itself disappeared in the 1960s. The work of directors
George Cukor,
Douglas Sirk,
Max Ophüls, and
Josef von Sternberg has been associated with the woman's film genre.
Joan Crawford,
Bette Davis, and
Barbara Stanwyck were some of the genre's most prolific
stars.