One of the major trends in my recent movie-watching has been to watch classic films. I've broadly defined "classic" as basically anything that was made 30+ years ago, although most of the movies I would place in this category are of the black-and-white, 1940s-1950s variety.
I've been watching these films this for a couple of reasons:
--As someone who loves movies, it feels edifying and useful to have more background in the earlier days of moviecraft.
--I'm not usually in the mood for older movies, so when I'm in a headspace to tolerate them I want to take advantage.
--I'm curious to better acquaint myself with actors whose names I recognize but whose work I'm not yet familiar with.
--There are actors I know I love despite only having seen a tiny fraction of their work, and so I want to see more of their films.
I haven't exactly enjoyed all of these films in a hedonic way, and some I've been frankly pretty meh on. Nevertheless, I've continued on this path as far as I have because the movies I've watched have been successful at hitting many of these targets, and they've given me a lot to reflect on.
One particularly rich avenue of reflection concerns the treatment of messaging to women during these pivotal decades during and post-World War II, a period when many women leapt into the workforce only to be promptly ejected from it once men returned from fighting.
Two films that are striking in their similarity in their reactions to these societal developments are 1942's "Woman of the Year" and 1957's "Designing Woman", starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and Lauren Bacall and Gregory Peck, respectively.
Let's begin with some of the standout moments and themes established in "Woman of the Year", which was released before World War II was over and is the first film Hepburn and Tracy made together.
The most succinct summary I can offer for this movie is that it feels like two completely tonally different half-movies stuck together.
In the first half of the movie, Tracy's sports reporter Sam takes Hepburn's world news reporter Tess to a baseball game in what is essentially a hybrid date and instructional session, as Sam is scandalized by Tess's ignorance about America's pastime. At the time, the snarky dialogue between the other reporters present--all men, of course--as they comment on her barrage of questions about the game probably landed as deriding Tess, and by proxy any woman in the audience who doesn't understand baseball.
However, watching "Woman of the Year" today as a woman who is underwhelmed by most sports, these men instead seem to be rendered so pitiably nervous by a woman needing all the rules explained. It's as if by doing so, she is calling the seriousness with which they regard their precious game into question. By needing a primer in baseball, Tess temporarily breaks its spell and renders it silly and arbitrary. Because let's be honest for a moment: it kind of is. Isn't that the point of a game, after all?
Tellingly, Tess only wields this power for a moment, and she seems to wield it unknowingly. Once she understands the machinations of the game, it takes only a few innings for her to be transformed into a rabid fan. Instead of this evolution making her out to be a poser or a turncoat, Tess's enthusiasm is sincere, charming, and infectious--she is someone who is open-minded and embracing of new experiences, able to be swept away by the emotion of a spectacle so long as it also stimulates her mind.
During this first part of "Woman of the Year", Hepburn and Tracy’s chemistry and sincere affection is such a pleasure to watch. With their adoring gazes at each other and the tender way they say each other’s names, they seem genuinely smitten with each other. Tracy's hardened gruffness is appealingly softened, and Hepburn burns even brighter as they engage in flirty banter. She is, after all, a master of flirty banter.
One little tract of dialogue that threatened to drown me in its sweetness occurs when Sam and Tess are falling in love while being driven back to Tess's apartment in a cab:
Sam: I love you.
Tess: That’s nice. Even when I’m sober?
Sam: Even when you’re brilliant.
Cab Driver (arriving at their destination): This is it.
Sam: You’re telling me.
In this and other films, truly no one lights up a screen like Katharine Hepburn. For the first half of "Woman of the Year", she is absolutely incandescent. Playing Tess beautifully enhances so many of Hepburn's best traits as a performer. Tess is a truly remarkable woman for any era, but especially in the 1940s: She has a male secretary--like, she has a secretary who is also a man! She’s multilingual! She's witty! She knows obscure historical facts! She speaks in forums about women’s rights! She is the kind of person who would be breathtakingly fun and inspiring to know.
By contrast, Sam is the grumbling everyman with a presumed heart of gold. Sam's sweet little begrudging grins when he reads Tess's notes and his willingness to step into the breakneck pace of Tess's life invite the audience to see him that way, at least. However, we get little glimpses of the grim future of their relationship: When he's invited up to Tess's apartment, he rejects her invitation to stay. This is played as if it is chivalry: He wants to marry Tess, and so doesn't want to "ruin" things by advancing their sexual relationship too quickly. But given the strong implication is that Sam has had physical relationships with women in the past, this instead telegraphs that he harbors some seriously misogynistic attitudes: some women are sex objects, others are the "marrying kind", but a woman can't ever be both. Tess's assertiveness is therefore a threat to his ideas of how a woman he loves can behave, so better to shut her down than progress their relationship on even, equally enthusiastic footing.
Sam is also the bungling man who stumbles onstage at a feminist panel discussion and drops things all over the stage while Tess delivers her oratory. He then curtsies as he exits the stage with the other panelists, constantly calling attention to himself and distracting from the discourse about women's rights. In this behavior, it would be bad enough if he was mocking himself, as it would still be disruptive and self-centering. Worse, however, is the more likely truth: he is reacting to his discomfort over his mistake, possibly intensified by his discomfort with the content being discussed, by mocking the event and the women attending it.
Consistent with this patriarchal mentality, Sam also engages in some acts of racism. He mocks the Chinese language newspaper on her secretary's desk and the turban-wearing party guest in her apartment because he sure as hell can't read or converse in anything other than English. From today's perspective, he is clearly lashing out from a place of insecurity at being very much out of his depth in Tess's world. These moments make me flinch, however, being aware once again of how the contemporaneous audience of this film might have reacted and who was and still is being excluded from that audience. The audience is not being directed to laugh at Sam for acting out on his hostile insecurity, but instead to join with him in bullying people who are perceived to be the "other".
While today Sam's behavior is clearly harmful and embarrassing, it's hard to imagine that he would see it that way. Instead of recognizing how it reflects on him that he can't respectfully engage with his partner's desires, communicate with others, or participate in conversations about world affairs, his attitude conveys that anything outside of his narrow, white, American, conventionally masculine realm of interest is not worthwhile. By mocking members and symbols of other cultural groups, he keeps his boot squarely on their necks and defends his place at the top of society's pecking order. This does not bode well for a person like Tess.
Following these gloomy harbingers, "Woman of the Year" shows its true colors in its second half, where it suddenly becomes a joyless sexist slog. It all starts when Tess impulsively adopts a Greek orphan and refugee without first consulting Sam, then fails to secure childcare for him while she attends a gala in which she is being named--cue the browbeating irony--Woman of the Year. While of course it is understandable that Sam is upset that Tess made this decision without him, he responds with horrific and capricious cruelty: he refuses to attend the gala with Tess seemingly under the pretense of staying home with the boy, but instead returns the child to the orphanage. And yet somehow, Sam is cast as the person with the morally superior stance here?
From there, the movie only manages to get worse. Sam leaves Tess, and she tracks him down to the bachelor's apartment he's rented. Once there, she slips into his apartment early in the morning and attempts to cook him breakfast to win him back, of course bungling each little step of the process because she is so terminally unwomanly. She doesn't know how to brew coffee! She has no idea how to separate eggs! She puts yeast in waffle batter!! (As if Sam knows how to make waffles from scratch?? And also yeasted waffles are delicious! How dare this all of a sudden garbage movie insult yeasted waffles??) Basically all you need to do is picture an "I Love Lucy" sequence in which the show hates Lucy. It's one of the bleakest things I've seen in a while.
Once Sam wakes up and discovers her in his kitchen, the movie further humiliates Tess both by having her plead with Sam and offer to quit her job for a domestic life filled with tasks, in Tess's words, “any idiot can do." (Which also—rude?? Are we seriously trying to badger women back out of the workforce and into the kitchen while also calling them idiots?! Which is it, "Woman of the Year"???) This film needs it to be explicit that Tess is willing to sacrifice her powerful and purpose-driven career for a life she finds degrading. And then it has the audacity to have Sam lecture Tess about the false duality of being either Tess Harding (her unmarried name) or Tess Craig (her married name). “Why can’t you be Tess Harding Craig?”, he remonstrates.
To which I say: Well will you let her?? Sam has spent the second half of the movie belittling everything Tess is about and trying to twist her into something she isn't through passive aggression, criticism, and ultimately abandonment, only to pull the crazy-making move of then belittling her for thinking she needed to discard everything she's about. Just to further confuse things, Sam concludes the film by “launching” Tess's assistant out the back of his apartment.
This movie thereby comprises a massive "The Little Mermaid" (1989) violation, where the main character isn't the hero of her own movie. Actually, "Woman of the Year" is worse than that, since Tess is actually portrayed as the villain, the selfishly independent shrew who must be mercilessly tamed. What started as romance and ended as a sinister allegory of sexist emotional abuse and the subjugation of women.
Much to my chagrin, the second classic movie I’ve watched recently revealed that little changed in society's messaging to men and women about their rightful roles in the 15 year span between these two films. "Designing Woman" is also a movie in which the woman's audacity in having a whole-ass life with friends, a busy job, and interests interferes with the domestic bliss to which the man who suddenly falls into her life feels abruptly entitled.
This time, Lauren Bacall's Marilla is a fashion designer, while Gregory Peck's Mike is, you guessed it, a sports reporter. While Tess's life was cosmopolitan and rich because of her career in reporting international events, Marilla's is even glitzier because of her professional and personal connections to the worlds of art and fashion. Her friends are beatnik weirdos and intellectuals, including men whose engagement in dance and seemingly effete mannerisms code them as possibly--perish the thought--gay. This opens up yet another group of people for Mike, this film's "everyman" stand-in, to target with his contempt and ridicule.
We also get to add some fatphobia to this charming elixir: Marilla also admits early in the film that being in love stokes her appetite. Cue the occasional gag where Mike swats her hand away from tasty treats after she's mentioned gaining a few pounds.
Instead of putting her lack of culinary skills on display, Marilla's humiliation takes the form of having to work alongside Mike's past romantic partner, Dolores Gray's Lori, while he refuses to tell Marilla the truth about his history with Lori.
These differences are largely superficial, and in many cases enhance the deeper themes established in "Woman of the Year" rather than obscuring or detracting from them. "Designing Woman" adds to the legacy of "Woman of the Year" by finding more types of people to oppress and new ways to render its leading lady ridiculous and impotent at the hands of her male partner.
Crucially, both films drive their female leads to offer up their careers as sacrifice to keep men in their lives. Now, even if Tess or Marilla continue working, it's not of their own volition, but instead through the magnanimity of their husbands. These women's giant, beautifully decorated New York apartments, earned through their successful and busy careers and peopled with the interesting, vibrant cast of characters who heretofore populated their lives have become unwitting territory for petty, insecure, domineering men to invade, claim, and destroy. By each movie's conclusion, the shrew is tamed, her kingdom is conquered, and the king is returned to his rightful place of power. And it's crushing.
These films completely subjugate women's agency and interests, all to satisfy to the pathetic and self-serving whims and insecurities of the men who happened to flit into their lives and lock them down into poorly-conceived marriages. Instead of condemning Sam and Mike for their cruelty, bigotry, and weakness of character and confidence, these movies expect their remarkable leading women to apologize for being remarkable, to make themselves small so the small men in their lives can feel big. Without realizing it whatsoever, these movies are actually an extremely embarrassing indictment of the kind of man who can only feel good about themselves by wielding stifling control over another adult human being.
Perhaps more importantly, as a woman on the precipice of returning to a job she loves, which requires departing from a (temporary) role as a more classic stay-at-home mother, these movies and their messages are particularly irksome because they completely obscure women's experience of their passions for both work and domestic life (or valid lack thereof). Instead of being torn down, Tess and Marilla should have remained aspirational figures for the women and men in their audiences. Tess and Marilla are at their most appealing not when they are groveling for the affections of men who are frankly beneath them, but instead when they are in their elements--when they are treated as equals and with respect, and where they are competent, commanding, focused, driven, and creative--especially, as Sam briefly recognized and tragically forgot, when they are brilliant.
I gave "Woman of the Year" a 2 and "Designing Woman" a 3.
{Heart}
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