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| Delphine Seyrig: Sois belle et tais-toi ! / Be Pretty and Shut Up (FR 1981). The cinematographer Carole Roussopoulos at the 1-inch Portapak video camera. Delphine Seyrig directs. Photo: © Tournage de Sois belle et tais-toi ! / Familles Seyrig et Roussopoulos / Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir / Version restaurée par la Bibliothèque nationale de France. |
FR 1976 (année du production) / 1981 (sortie en France). D: Delphine Seyrig. F., M.: Carole Roussopoulos. Int.: Juliet Berto, Ellen Burstyn, Jill Clayburgh, Patti D’Arbanville, Marie Dubois, Louise Fletcher, Jane Fonda, Shirley MacLaine, Maidie Norman, Maria Schneider, Barbara Steele, Anne Wiazemsky. Prod.: Delphine Seyrig per Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir. DCP. Bn. 112 min
Also featuring: Delia Salvi, Cindy Williams, Rita Renoir, Jenny Agutter, Luce Guilbeaut, Rose De Gregorio, Viva, Candy Clark, Millie Perkins, Mallory Millett-Jones, Susan Tyrrell.
Sortie en France: 4 March 1981
From Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir.
In French with English subtitles and e-subtitles in Italian by Norma Guevara
Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, 2024: Delphine Seyrig, Just Another Sorceress
Introduction curated by Il Cinema Ritrovato Young - three women and a translator.
Viewed at Cinema Lumière - Sala Scorsese, 23 June 2024.
Émilie Cauquy (Bologna Catalogue 2024): " Actress and feminist activist, Delphine Seyrig was also a filmmaker, and has made, either working alone or with a team, several socially-conscious films including Sois belle et tais-toi!, in which, with the aid of her self-contained Portapak video camera, she interviews 23 actresses about being women in cinema: their roles and their relationships with producers, directors and the technical crew. In 1976, a rather negative picture emerged of a profession limited to stereotypical and alienating roles; echoes of this can still remain today. What does fiction do to women? Seyrig and Roussopoulos led the way in pointing to moulding and acquiescence to a particular sexist gaze that was also ageist and racist. To explore the scope of possibilities in 1975 – despite having just made three films by female directors (Akerman, Duras and Kermadec) herself – Seyrig stepped aside and invited a diverse range of actresses, some (including Jane Fonda) more well-known than others and across the age range (Maria Schneider at 20, Maidie Norman at 70). The questionnaire was a precursor of the 1985 Bechdel test that aimed to measure the representation and absence of women in fiction. Shot in 1-inch format, Sois belle et tais-toi! was a pioneering piece of video work, celebrating the birth of a medium that was democratic, user-friendly, affordable, in a “pure player” media format (indispensable nowadays on social media platforms): no filter, raw material, a perfect tool to unleash the flow of raw conversation and precipitate a change in outlook. In the words of Ellen Burstyn: “I would not want to be a man because today we have vitality on our side. The gift we share is that things matter to us, we worry about each other, we care for one another, we make things better. Now it’s the planet that we need to care for and make better. I don’t believe that this kind of care could come from the guys who put us in the position we’re in right now. As women, we possess a code of survival that needs to flourish and become stronger than anything else. Without this there will be no planet.” Today, we call this ecofeminism. " Émilie Cauquy (Bologna Catalogue 2024)
AA: Delphine Seyrig's Sois belle et tais-toi! was my favourite film of this year's Il Cinema Ritrovato.
It was a favourite of mine already last year. I saw it during its re-release in France in February 2023. Because of the do-it-yourself character of the mini-budget production the overdubbed voice track was hard to understand half of the time, and I was left hoping to see a subtitled version one day. Today my wish came true.
The following notes are supplementary to my blog remarks of 23 February 2023.
The introduction was given by three women from Il Cinema Ritrovato Young. I wish I could credit them by name. They stated that "cinema is a true male fantasy". Sois belle et tais-toi! is "a cornerstone in the debate on the role of women in the cinema". "It is not only a documentary but also an act, fundamental in the history of the cinema".
The actresses confess that they would be rather be doing something else than acting, but in a patriarchal society, options are limited.
Jane Fonda tells in French about her road to stardom in the 1950s. There were still the Hollywood professionals who had shaped Garbo and Lombard to stardom. After their make-up and lighting sessions "I did not recognize myself". They suggested her to have her jaw broken by a dentist, to hollow her features. She was asked to wear false seins, breast prostheses, for ten years. Height was a problem, because a woman was not allowed to be taller than a man. Only tv western stars were tall enough.
Shirley MacLaine comments that during the Hays Code there could be bedroom scenes with a man and a woman only if at least one foot of the characters was on the ground. Therefore there had to be other than bedroom scenes for women. After the Code, bedroom scenes were permitted. Now women never got out of the bedroom.
In female roles, never was it possible to reveal one's deeper self, the core of myself, moi-même. You can feel that.
In Hollywood, men are in control. Certain kinds of men for whom woman is a sex object or housewife. It is a vicious circle. Because of this situation, only these kinds of roles are written for the screen.
They don't like women. They don't like mature women's bodies.
There is a trend of something close to homosexuality. There are always two men.
After 35, you've had it. Boring roles, no more ingenues, just tired housewives.
There's the illusion that women are weaker and cannot do heavy lifting with camera equipment. In reality, they don't want women in charge.
Eleanor and Frank Perry had a great collaborative career, they made David and Lisa, The Swimmer, Last Summer and Diary of a Mad Housewife together. He got the glory, and Eleanor was pushed to the sidelines. He has not done anything great since. She was raising the kids, in effect having two jobs.
Jane Fonda reflects upon the rarity of roles where women are protagonists and just friends, films such as Julia [with Jane Fonda as Lillian Hellman and Vanessa Redgrave as Julia], a story of "une amitié profonde", including physical warmth. That unsettled the producers who then wanted to emphasize Hellman's marriage with Hammett. GB tabloids invented the headline "Reds in Bed", but it was not a Lesbian story.
I repeat the final words of the movie, by Ellen Burstyn, already quoted by Émilie Cauquy above: " “I would not want to be a man because today we have vitality on our side. The gift we share is that things matter to us, we worry about each other, we care for one another, we make things better. Now it’s the planet that we need to care for and make better. I don’t believe that this kind of care could come from the guys who put us in the position we’re in right now. As women, we possess a code of survival that needs to flourish and become stronger than anything else. Without this there will be no planet.”
This is a restored digital transfer of the movie originally recorded on 1" Portapak videotape. The visual quality is terrible, but thanks to the subtitles, it is possible to make sense of the fascinating discourse compilation.
...
I have been thinking about Sois belle et tais-toi ! more than anything I saw in Bologna this year. The buddy movie trend lamented by the actresses in the 1970s deteriorated into a juvenile superhero megabudget trend. These kinds of stories were made in the 1930s on low budgets for children, for Saturday matinee serial consumption. Intelligent fare is made for television, streaming and art cinemas. Grown-up A budget theatrical movies are missing.
While acknowledging the complexity and range of identity, I also subscribe to the central significance of the male - female difference. The discrimination of the female experience harms not only women but everybody. We cannot know one without fully knowing the other.
The stories we tell do not need to be love stories or family stories. There is a vast range of possibilities. Inspired by La Bête, Bertrand Bonello's daring yet not quite successful experiment, I read the Henry James short story which inspired it, "The Beast in the Jungle" (1903). In Bonello's movie, Léa Seydoux, and in Benoît Jacquot's adaptation, Delphine Seyrig play Catherine Bartram, one of the most fascinating characters in literature.
The subject of the story is dialogue. We are mysteries to each other and ourselves, and only when we meet a significant other (who does not have to be a love partner) we may get closer to the mystery. Catherine Bartram is the one with a profound insight in a world of surfaces. Such characters are too rare in mainstream world cinema, and the reason is the juvenile male bias. There is no lack of great actresses who can play those special parts, with men or without.
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