Little thing you might find interesting:
My parents and I just watched a Hitchcock movie, The Lady Vanishes, from 1938. The plot features a young girl, Iris, who is due to return home to be married, boarding a train with an old lady after said old lady helps her recover from a mild head injury. After falling asleep on the train, iris wakes up to find that the lady is gone and no person on the train has seen her. She proceeds to investigate the train thoroughly, protesting that no, she definitely saw the lady (Ms. Froy), and she doesn't think it's an injury-induced hallucination because she met Ms. Froy the previous night at a hotel, even though all exterior evidence points to "Ms. Froy was a figment of her imagination". I won't spoil any further than that, though.
The reason I'm mentioning it is because, after the movie had ended and my parents and I were discussing our thoughts about the movie, I pointed out something that I've noticed about many movies from that era: strong, independent female leads. Iris finds out what happened with the help of the male lead, and she ends up getting together with said lead, but there are no romantic overtones until the last couple minutes, and Iris does not need to rely on him for anything: she helps him knock a man unconscious and trap him, and in an excellent display of strength, when another man is holding her and several other passengers hostage so that they can't fix the present problem, she stands up and points out that the gun he has picked up only has one bullet, and that if he shoots her, then the other passengers will be free to do as they wish to him since he won't have a weapon.
Ms. Froy is also not who she appears to be, and is in fact a very powerful and influential woman despite her age and frail appearance. She is not sexualized and does not need to commit any acts of badassery to prove this - the fact that the plot revolves around her disappearance is enough! A female character on the side of the antagonists is actually not in favor of the antagonists' plans and helps Iris and the male lead to achieve their goals. The movie definitely passes the Beschdel test, too.
And it has four out of five stars.
My parents, interestingly, totally agreed with my analysis of it, and other period movies, as depicting strong, independent female characters that are basically the complete opposite of what modern anti-feminists may think when they think of women in the 30s and 40s - meanwhile, in many ways, modern female protagonists are those stereotypes. I always go into movies from that era with a slight side-eye, but I really shouldn't considering the few I have seen seem to be more progressive in the way of feminism (though of course not race relations or LGBT issues, at least for American movies) than even modern movies.
My parents and I just watched a Hitchcock movie, The Lady Vanishes, from 1938. The plot features a young girl, Iris, who is due to return home to be married, boarding a train with an old lady after said old lady helps her recover from a mild head injury. After falling asleep on the train, iris wakes up to find that the lady is gone and no person on the train has seen her. She proceeds to investigate the train thoroughly, protesting that no, she definitely saw the lady (Ms. Froy), and she doesn't think it's an injury-induced hallucination because she met Ms. Froy the previous night at a hotel, even though all exterior evidence points to "Ms. Froy was a figment of her imagination". I won't spoil any further than that, though.
The reason I'm mentioning it is because, after the movie had ended and my parents and I were discussing our thoughts about the movie, I pointed out something that I've noticed about many movies from that era: strong, independent female leads. Iris finds out what happened with the help of the male lead, and she ends up getting together with said lead, but there are no romantic overtones until the last couple minutes, and Iris does not need to rely on him for anything: she helps him knock a man unconscious and trap him, and in an excellent display of strength, when another man is holding her and several other passengers hostage so that they can't fix the present problem, she stands up and points out that the gun he has picked up only has one bullet, and that if he shoots her, then the other passengers will be free to do as they wish to him since he won't have a weapon.
Ms. Froy is also not who she appears to be, and is in fact a very powerful and influential woman despite her age and frail appearance. She is not sexualized and does not need to commit any acts of badassery to prove this - the fact that the plot revolves around her disappearance is enough! A female character on the side of the antagonists is actually not in favor of the antagonists' plans and helps Iris and the male lead to achieve their goals. The movie definitely passes the Beschdel test, too.
And it has four out of five stars.
My parents, interestingly, totally agreed with my analysis of it, and other period movies, as depicting strong, independent female characters that are basically the complete opposite of what modern anti-feminists may think when they think of women in the 30s and 40s - meanwhile, in many ways, modern female protagonists are those stereotypes. I always go into movies from that era with a slight side-eye, but I really shouldn't considering the few I have seen seem to be more progressive in the way of feminism (though of course not race relations or LGBT issues, at least for American movies) than even modern movies.
