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Sly Wit
Posts about Feminism written by Sly Wit
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Sly Wit
For those taking up my Century+ Challenge, or who just want to explore the first decade of cinema history, I thought it might be helpful to talk about resources you might turn to in your quest to view early silent films.

The essential films for the period from 1895 to 1909 are generally quite short, ranging from 1 minute to 15 minutes. While I imagine most could be found on YouTube, personally, I hate to watch videos on YouTube. For starters, I try to avoid using Google products whenever possible. Also, it can be a pain to look for dozens of very short films there and the quality of these free versions sometimes leaves a lot to be desired.

Luckily, a number of these films have been collected into various boxed sets for purchase, but also may be available to borrow at your local library or streaming on Kanopy. Note: Kanopy also has a number of standalone silents from the 1910s and 1920s that I haven’t be able to find elsewhere so it will likely come in handy for February and March viewing as well. If you can access Kanopy through your local library or a university account, I highly recommend it. And it’s free! [For more on streaming services, see I Wake Up Streaming.]

General Collections

The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011)

For an overview of film history it is hard to beat The Story of Film, a 15-hour documentary by Mark Cousins, which covers a century of cinema in fifteen episodes. The narration style will not be to everyone’s taste, but I appreciate his effort to look at cinema in a broad, inclusive way while also covering key industry developments and major figures. The first episode is the one that most immediately concerns us; it covers the years 1895–1918. The entire DVD set may be available at your local library, but episodes are also available streaming on Hulu and on Kanopy.

The Movies Begin: A Treasury of Early Cinema, 1894–1914 (Kino International)

This anthology is perhaps the best set to get if you want a general overview of the various types of films made in the early silent period. It is organized vaguely thematically in five volumes on 5 DVDs of varying lengths from about 60 minutes to 100 minutes.

Volume 1 (Disc 1): The Great Train Robbery and Other Primary Works includes films by Edwin S. Porter, Thomas A. Edison, Auguste and Louis Lumière, Georges Méliès, and Ferdinand Zecca. Two films on this disc are absolutely essential viewing, namely A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès and The Great Train Robbery by Edwin S. Porter. However, these films pop up in a number of collections and are generally easy to find; so, if you watch only one DVD in this set, I’d opt for Volume 2. Beyond the two essentials, other interesting films in this volume are The Kiss (Edison), Transformation by Hats, Comic View (Lumière), The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog (Porter), and The Golden Beetle (Pathé). For those interested in glimpses of U.S. cities, there is footage of trains going over the Brooklyn Bridge as well as images of the fires and destruction in the aftermath of San Francisco earthquake. There are also some “blue” movies from American Mutoscope & Biograph, which were essentially mechanized burlesque peep shows.

Volume 2 (Disc 2): The European Pioneers features formative works by the Lumière brothers and key British pioneers, among others. As I note above, if you watch only one DVD in this set, make it this one. This volume has a better selection of Lumière films—including the classics L’Arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat (The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat), L’Arroseur arrosé (Tables Turned on the Gardener), Repas de bébé (Feeding the Baby), and Sortie d’usine (Workers Leaving the Factory)—as well as the work of R.W. Paul (A Chess Dispute, Extraordinary Cab Accident), G.A. Smith (Mary Jane’s Mishap; or, Don’t Fool with the Paraffin, Sick Kitten) and James Williamson (The Big Swallow, Fire!, Stop Thief!). A word of warning: the brief audio commentary is somewhat frustrating since it is not a separate track and is very hard to hear once the music of the film starts.

Volume 3 (Disc 3): Experimentation and Discovery includes a number of important Pathé Frères films including Aladin ou la lampe merveilleuse (Aladin, or the Wonderful Lamp), Ali Baba et les quarantes voleurs (Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves), Le Cheval emballé (The Runaway Horse), (L’Histoire d’un crime) (History of a Crime), Le Médecin du château (A Narrow Escape), and Par le trou de la serrure (Peeping Tom). These Pathé films represent important benchmarks in the development of film as a narrative form.

Volume 4 (Disc 4): The Magic of Méliès has fifteen fantastic works including La Sirène (The Mermaid), L’Éclipse du soleil en pleine lune (The Eclipse), Le Voyage à travers l’impossible (The Impossible Voyage), and the documentary Georges Méliès: Cinema Magician. Personally I’m not a huge fan of Méliès overall, but these aren’t even my favorite films of his, so I wouldn’t recommend this volume. Rather, if you like his stuff, get your hands on the Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema or Méliès: Fairy Tales in Color collections listed below.

Volume 5 (Disc 5): Comedy, Spectacle, and New Horizons presents cinematic milestones by Winsor McCay, Max Linder, and Alice Guy-Blaché. However, most of these films are from the 1910s and not of particular interest. One exception is Max Linder’s Vive la vie de garçon (Troubles of a Grass Widower), which I added to my list of essential films once I saw it because it serves as a great example of Linder’s comic style and a perfect companion piece to Alice Guy-Blaché’s The Consequences of Feminism, an essential film in the Gaumont collection below.

Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers (Kino Lorber)

A six-disc set that mostly covers the 1910s, including Alice Guy-Blaché’s work in the United States. Key films include Alice Guy-Blaché’s Falling Leaves (1912) and The Ocean Waif (1916), Lois Weber’s Suspense (1913) and Where Are My Children? (1916), and Mabel Normand’s Caught in a Cabaret (1914). Some of the films in this collection can be found on Netflix.

Early Women Filmmakers: An International Anthology (Flicker Alley)

Another six-disc set, but one that covers a larger time frame than the set above, with twenty-five films spanning the years 1902–1943. Key films include Alice Guy-Blaché’s Falling Leaves (1912) and Making an American Citizen (1912), Lois Weber’s Suspense (1913) and The Blot (1921), Mabel Normand’s Mabel’s Strange Predicament (1914), Germaine Dulac’s La Cigarette (1919) and La Souriante Mme. Beudet (The Similing Madame Beudet) (1922), three of Lotte Reiniger’s animated films, and Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943).

French Early Silents

The Lumière Brothers’ First Films (Kino Video)

This is a collection of films that I bought back in my grad school days. I believe it is out of print now and rather expensive, but you may be able to find it at the library. Although you can see the most well-known films in the Movies Begin collection above, or in the collection of twenty Lumière films (Lumière’s First Picture Shows) on Kanopy, this contains eighty-five Lumière films from the years 1895–1897. If you have any interest in photography, I highly recommend seeking this collection out. Coming from a photography background, the Lumière films are all about composition within the frame and some of their most stunning films in this regard are little known, films like Lancement d’un navire (1896), Quai de l’Archevêché (1896), and Laveuses sur la rivière (1897).

Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema 1896–1913 (Flicker Alley)

There are a number of sets that feature the work of Georges Méliès. The most complete is Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema 1896–1913, a five disc set with over 150 films. I borrowed this from my local library. Personally, I find his work very repetitive so I don’t necessarily recommend completism with this set. Focus on the essential films, or stop and check something out when a title takes your fancy. [Side note: I’ve heard many mispronunciations of this name in the past year. The best way to approximate it in English is MELL-YES.]

Disc 1 = 60 films (1896–1901)

My favorite films on this disc are Un homme de tête (The four troublesome heads) (1898), L’Affaire Dreyfus (The Dreyfus Affair) (9 parts) (1899), Cendrillon (Cinderella) (1899), Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) (1900), and Barbe-bleue (Bluebeard) (1901).

Disc 2 = 48 films (1902–1904)

Favorite films on this disc are Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902), Le Voyage de Gulliver à Lilliput et chez les géants (Gulliver’s Travels among the Lilliputians and the Giants) (1902), Le Mélomane (The Melomaniac) (1903), and Le Bourreau turc (The terrible Turkish Executioner) (1904).

Disc 3 = 25 films (1904–1906)

Key films on this disc are Le Voyage à travers l’impossible (The Impossible Voyage) (1904), Les Cartes vivantes (The Living Playing Cards) (1905), and Le Diable noir (The Black Imp) (1905).

Disc 4 = 30 films (1907–1908)

Key films on this disc are Le Tunnel sous la manche ou Le Cauchemar franco-anglais (Tunneling the English Channel) (1907) and L’Éclipse du soleil en pleine lune (The Eclipse) (1907).

Disc 5 = 10 films (1908–1913)

Key films on this disc are Le locataire diabolique (The Diabolic Tenant) (1909), Les hallucinations du Baron de Münchausen (Baron Munchausen’s Dream) (1911), À la conquête du pôle (The Conquest of the Pole) (1912), and Cendrillon, ou, La pantoufle merveilleuse (Cinderella) (1912).

Méliès: Fairy Tales in Color (1899–1909) (Blackhawk Films/Flicker Alley)

If you want to get a taste of Méliès at his most glorious, get your hands on this set of newly restored Méliès works in color, including A Trip to the Moon, which was originally released in both black & white and hand-tinted color versions. This set also includes Joan of Arc, Robinson Crusoe, The Impossible Voyage, The Diabolic Tenant, and The Witch. These films have been newly scored and feature English narration based on Méliès’s original narration scripts.

Gaumont Treasures, 1897–1913 (Kino International)

For the work of early pioneer Alice Guy, the first head of production at Gaumont, turn to this three-disc collection, which features her work on the first disc. (Disc 2 covers the work of Louis Feuillade and Disc 3 that of Léonce Perret.) Favorite early Guy films included here are Mrs. Bob Walter, Danse serpentine (Serpentine Dance by Mme. Bob Walter) (1897), Chapellerie et charcuterie automatiques (Automated Hat-Maker and Sausage-Grinder) (1900), Les Fredaines de Pierette (Pierrette’s Escapades) (1900), La Fée aux choux (The Cabbage-Patch Fairy) (1900) (a remake of an earlier lost film), Saharet, Boléro (Saharet Performs the Bolero) (1905), the 35-minute La Naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ (The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ) (1906), Une femme collante (A Sticky Woman) (1906), Une histoire roulante (A Story Well Spun) (1906), Le Matelas épeliptique (The Drunken Mattress) (1906), Les Résultats du féminisme (The Consequences of Feminism) (1906), and Sur la barricade (On the Barricade) (1907). For Guy’s later work, after she moved to the United States with her husband Herbert Blaché, see the Pioneers set above.

American Early Silents

Treasures from American Film Archives: 50 Preserved Films (NFPF)

This set is an anthology of films from American film archives. There are fifty films on 4 discs including silent features, avant-garde works, documentaries and newsreels, cartoons and experimental animation, home movies and travel films, training films from the 1920s and political ads from the 1930s. The most important disc for our purposes is the first one, which includes selected early films from the Edison Company, the western feature Hell’s Hinges (1916), and the horror short The Fall of the House of Usher (1928).

More Treasures from American Film Archives, 1894–1931: 50 Films (NFPF)

This set is a second anthology of films from American film archives. There are fifty films on 3 discs including rare silent features, avant-garde shorts, documentaries and newsreels, cartoons and animation, and ethnographic footage. There are also six previews for lost features and serials. Personally, I thought this collection was far more interesting than the previous one. Highlights include the Dickson experimental sound film, The Country Doctor, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Thomas Ince’s The Invaders, Gretchen the Greenhorn, From Leadville to Aspen, The “Teddy” Bears, Gus Visser and his singing duck, Rip Van Winkle, The Life of an American Fireman, Falling Leaves, and Lady Windermere’s Fan.

Lost & Found: American treasures from the New Zealand Film Archive (NFPF)

This collection is presented on 1 disc and includes lost works not seen in decades and a variety of industrial films, news stories, cartoons, travelogues, serial episodes, previews, and comedies. Highlights include the short films Lyman H. Howe’s Famous Ride on a Runaway Train (1921) and Mabel Normand’s Won in a Cupboard (1914), a 60-minute feature by John Ford entitled Upstream (1927), and The White Shadow (1923), an uncredited Alfred Hitchcock film.

Edison: The Invention of the Movies (Kino Video)

For more Edison films than you may know what to do with, this collection, put out by Kino International, contains all 140 complete films produced by the Edison Company between 1889 and 1918 on 4 discs. All films have been restored and re-mastered with new musical scores. Highlights include the Edison kinetoscopic record of a sneeze, the Dickson experimental sound film, the John C. Rice-May Irwin kiss, and Edwin S. Porter’s The Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery.

Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film, 1894-1941 (Image)

A mammoth seven-disc collection that contains 155 avant-garde films of American filmmakers working in the United States and abroad. A scattershot collection that includes a lot of documentary and experimental footage. Each disc is broken up into multiple playlists for viewing on Kanopy.

Disc 1. The mechanized eye: experiments in technique and form

Disc 2. The devil’s plaything: American surrealism

Disc 3. Light rhythms: music and abstraction

Disc 4. Inverted narratives: new directions in storytelling

Disc 5. Picturing a metropolis: New York City unveiled

Disc 6. The amateur as auteur: discovering paradise in pictures

Disc 7. Viva la dance: the beginnings of cine-dance

Griffith Masterworks (Kino Video)

A seven DVD set that includes four feature films (The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Broken Blossoms, and Orphans of the Storm) as well as twenty-three of Griffith’s Biograph shorts, made from 1909 to 1913. The shorts can also be found on Kanopy in two volumes under the heading D.W. Griffith: Years of Discovery 1909–1913 from Flicker Alley.

Finally, if you want to see some comic shorts, I recommend Chaplin’s Mutual Comedies (1916–1917) from Blackhawk Films/Flicker Alley, which includes The Immigrant, The Rink, and One A.M., among others, and Kino Lorber’s Buster Keaton: The Shorts Collection 1917–1923 or The Art of Buster Keaton, which includes eleven features and twenty-one shorts.

[ETA: I have since found and watched a number of works in the Chaplin at Keystone collection, which includes films directed by both Mabel Normand and Mack Sennett. I highly recommend that collection if you want to see Chaplin’s earliest film work and first appearance of The Tramp on screen.]

For the next post in this Century+ series, click below:

A Century+ of Cinema: The Early Silents, 1895–1909

Well, that should tide you over for some time, or at least until a week from today, when I summarize the years 1895–1909 and see who managed to complete my Century+ January challenge.

375.

That’s how many feature films I watched in 2019, either at home or in the theater. Though, truth be told, it was mostly at home. [Side note: I really want to get out to the theater more in 2020.] I also saw 98 shorts, all at home, most of which were early silent films that I watched in preparation for my Century+ project.

For this reason, I decided to once again break my year-end film wrap-up into two parts. This post will focus on films released prior to 2019 and the next will feature 2019 releases. Since that still leaves 334 films to talk about here, I will not be going into any great detail, but, never fear, many of these films are sure to pop up again in Century+ posts throughout the year.

First, some stats on my 2019 viewing (both new and old films):

Films watched in the theater: 11%

Films watched on DVD: 48%

Films watched via streaming: 41%

Most used streaming service: Criterion Channel (51 films)

Films released in the 1890s: 15 (all shorts)

Films released in the 1900s: 48 (all shorts)

Films released in the 1910s: 10 (+ 26 shorts)

Films released in the 1920s: 32 (+ 8 shorts)

Films released in the 1930s: 57

Films released in the 1940s: 57

Films released in the 1950s: 42

Films released in the 1960s: 14

Films released in the 1970s: 14

Films released in the 1980s: 20

Films released in the 1990s: 17

Films released in the 2000s: 15

Films released in the 2010s: 97

Most popular genre: film noir (52 films)

Most watched director: Ernst Lubitsch (8 films)

Runners-up: George Cukor (7 films), Buster Keaton (6 films)

Films directed by women: 52 (14%)

So, with all that, what did I like the most? What would I recommend?

Read on, MacDuff…

Streaming Services

Although DVDs from the San Francisco Public Library and the Mechanics Institute Library together remained my best source for older films, after launching in April, the Criterion Channel quickly became my go-to streaming source for the classics. Next in popularity was Kanopy (29 films), which is a free streaming service that grants membership via public libraries and universities with ten credits* per month that can be used on feature films, documentaries, and educational programming. Their collection is a mixed bag of old and new films but often they have something I just can’t get anywhere else. Just below Kanopy was Netflix (25 films), and then MUBI (18 films). I was a bit surprised to see MUBI below Netflix in these stats but I quickly realized that was due to the fact that I did a full James Bond rewatch primarily on Netflix, so I think that ranking is a 2019 aberration.

There has been a lot talk on Twitter about streaming services and how the costs add up to where the customer is getting screwed, but, frankly, I still pay far less for these services than I did for cable, where I had almost no channels I really wanted. When I first cut the cord in 2012, my monthly cable bill was $75. Adding the channels I really wanted at the time—HBO, TCM, TV5, and the Fox Soccer Channel (for the Premier League)—would have increased that bill to roughly $125/month. And that did not include internet service.

Compare that to what I pay now on a monthly basis (I have yearly subscriptions to Criterion and MUBI, which make them a bit cheaper):

HBO Now ($14.99)

Netflix Basic ($8.99)

Hulu Base Plan ($5.99)

Criterion Channel ($7.50)

MUBI ($8.00)

Kanopy ($0.00)

Amazon/Apple TV (per movie)

So the total cost is about $45–$50 per month depending on whether I watch something on Amazon or Apple TV. And, in fact, it is really about $30–$35 per month since the HBO subscription is paid for by the Math Greek and I would probably drop it if that weren’t the case since I rarely watch it myself. Nor do I really watch Hulu so I could probably let that one go as well. I just don’t watch TV shows anymore.

One thing that has simplified all this streaming is buying a Roku. I really only bought it so that I could stream the Criterion Channel, which wasn’t available as an app on my (older) Smart TV or Blu-Ray player, but I absolutely love it and can’t believe I lived without it for so long. It has a number of free channels (albeit with ads), which sometimes have older films not available on other streaming services, and it is fantastic for road trips, where you can just hook it up to your hotel TV and watch whatever you might watch at home.

In any case, if you are a cinephile, I can’t recommend the Criterion Channel enough. If you’re wondering, they show far more than the films they have released on DVD. My favorite thing about them is the themed collections they put together. For example, “Caught on Tape” includes films like Blow Out, Caché, The Conversation, Diva, A Face in the Crowd, Klute, and The Lives of Others. Other recent collections include The Art of the Heist, Blue Christmas, Glorious Food, MGM Musicals, and 70s Sci-Fi. They also put together great collections featuring specific directors (Cukor, Hitchcock, Wyler) or stars (Bette Davis, Alec Guinness) and put female filmmakers front and center on their homepage. My only quibble with them is that they are so upfront about what is expiring at the end of the month (unlike say Netflix or Hulu) that I find myself streaming massive numbers of films at the end of each month before certain films or my Kanopy credits expire.

Here are the top fifteen films I watched on Criterion this year:

Gaslight (1944)

Girlfriends (1978)

The Kid (1921)

Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)

Hopscotch (1980)

Jubal (1956)

White Heat (1949)

L’assassin habite au 21 (The Murderer Lives at Number 21) (1942)

Top Hat (1935)

A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

The Gay Divorcée (1934)

What Price Hollywood? (1932)

Craig’s Wife (1936)

My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)

52 Films By Women

By the skin of my teeth (I saw Greta Gerwig’s Little Women on December 29), I managed to meet my yearly goal of watching #52FilmsByWomen. In fact, films by women make up half of my top ten for 2019. But I saw many great older films as well, some of which were new to me and some of which weren’t.

Here are my top fifteen of those films:

Winter’s Bone (2010)

The Tale (2018)

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

Obvious Child (2014)

Stories We Tell (2013)

Girlfriends (1978)

Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018)

Caramel (2008)

White Material (2009)

The Bride Wore Red (1937)

Two Days in Paris (2007)

Enough Said (2013)

Blockers (2018)

Skate Kitchen (2018)

You’re very inflexible.

—Who, me?

—I don’t like you when you’re inflexible.

—I don’t like it when you exaggerate to make sure I’ll listen to you.

—Well, I can’t stand it when you don’t listen to me.

—I don’t like it when you’re loud.

—Well, I don’t like you when you’re not loud. I don’t know why I like you.

—Because you can tell me why you don’t like me.

—I like me when I don’t need you.

—I don’t want you to need me. I want you to want me.

—There’s no truth like bullshit.

—Very good, Susan. 2 points.

—Thank you.

—Susan to Eric in Girlfriends

Silent Films

When I wasn’t watching films specifically directed by women, I was catching up on silent films in preparation for my Century+ project—37 features and 97 shorts to be exact. A few of these were even directed by women (specifically, 3 features and 13 shorts).

Here are my top fifteen of those films:

Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925)

The Patsy (1928)

The Kid (1921)

It (1927)

Die Puppe (The Doll) (1919)

City Lights (1931)

Tol’able David (1921)

Our Hospitality (1923)

Traffic in Souls (1913)

Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh) (1924)

Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928)

Gretchen the Greenhorn (1916)

Show People (1928)

La Cigarette (The Cigarette) (1919)

Film Noir

Between taking in four double features as part of Noir City at the Castro Theatre in January and creating fifteen double features for my own #Noirvember celebration at home in November, it was not surprising to see film noir turn up as my most watched genre.

Here are my top fifteen of those films:

Gaslight (1944)

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

Pickup on South Street (1953)

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Lured (1947)

Private Hell 36 (1954)

The Burglar (1957)

White Heat (1949)

The Big Combo (1955)

Tension (1949)

Split Second (1953)

The Big Clock (1948)

They Live By Night (1948)

Dark Passage (1947)

The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950)

Best Noir City Double Feature: Pushover (1954) and Private Hell 36 (1954)

Though somewhat underwhelmed by my first outing to Noir City 17, nevertheless, I persisted, and the night I saw Pushover and Private Hell 36 I came back home positively glowing with excitement. I liked both these films a lot. I had high expectations for Pushover, a voyeuristic tale of a police stakeout and investigation, starring Fred MacMurray and Kim Novak in her first starring role, but the real surprise was Private Hell 36, which I had never heard of before. I should have known this tale of two dirty cops would be good—it was directed by Don Siegel (The Big Steal, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Lineup, Dirty Harry, and Escape from Alcatraz).

The Name Is Bond, James Bond

As noted above, one reason I watched so much Netflix this year is that I noticed in early March that most of the Bond films were available there. When I realized soon after that the films would be leaving April 1, I decided to pack in as many as I could. I then filled in the gaps with library DVDs and managed to watch the entire franchise. For most of these films, that actually meant a rewatch, but there were a few stragglers I hadn’t yet seen. I scored these films in the usual way but also developed a secondary ranking system with categories such as Allies, Bond Girls, Credit Sequence & Theme Song, Devices & Escapes, and Nemesis.

Here are my top fifteen of those films:

Goldfinger (1964)

From Russia with Love (1963)

Skyfall (2012)

Casino Royale (2006)

You Only Live Twice (1967)

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

Thunderball (1965)

Moonraker (1979)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Dr. No (1962)

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Goldeneye (1995)

Octopussy (1983)

A View to a Kill (1985)

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

The Best of the Rest

And that is pretty much it for my major projects of the year. But the films in these top fifteen lists aren’t the only pre-2019 movies worth watching. If you are looking for something beyond the films above, here are some other ideas and recommendations.

Best of the Unseen 2018: Manbiki Kazoku (Shoplifters). In my year-end round-up last year, I listed the eighteen 2018 films I was most looking forward to catching up on in 2019. Shoplifters ended up blowing me away and vaulting to the top of my final 2018 list.

Best Surprise of 2018 (tie): Bad Times at the El Royale and Searching. Neither of these films were on my radar, but when I finally saw them, I thoroughly enjoyed both and definitely recommend them if you are looking for an entertaining thriller.

Best New-to-Me Film: Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933). One of my biggest film history gaps is musicals. When I decided to start filling those gaps, I first turned to the few on Edgar Wright’s 1000 favorites list, figuring that he would have the best of the best on there. Once I watched (and loved) 42nd Street (1933), I quickly turned to the others on his list. My favorite of those was Gold Diggers of 1933.

Most Surprising New-to-Me Film: Five Easy Pieces (1970). This was one I avoided for the longest time simply based on the scene that everyone has seen from it, you know the one, which never really seemed interesting or funny to me. But that scene is so not the rest of this movie! I had no clue about the surprising direction in which this story was headed. Really a fascinating character study with a great performance by Nicholson and so many subtle little touches of humanity.

Most Surprising New-to-Me Film (runner-up): The Bridges of Madison County (1995). I watched this on my return from a road trip through Iowa, where I had actually visited the literal bridges. I didn’t have high hopes for what I thought was going to be a schmaltzy romance but instead I discovered a film that was remarkably moving and some of Eastwood’s best work.

Best on Rewatch: The Thin Man (1934). What can I say? This is a film I inevitably include on any favorites-of-all-time list but I hadn’t actually watched it in some time. I rewatched it this past December as part of an eventual Christmas film project and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it.

Best “Holiday” Discovery: It Happened on 5th Avenue (1947). I discovered this title when I was putting together the spreadsheet for my review of classic Christmas films. I absolutely adored this tale of a homeless man who spends every winter squatting a 5th Avenue mansion while the owners winter in West Virginia.

Best Math Greek Selection (tie): Buffalo ’66 (1998) and Collateral (2004). Some of the films I watched this year that I might never have seen without the Math Greek’s coaxing include Persona (1966), Bugsy Malone (1976), Lost Highway (1997), and The New World (2005), among others, but my favorites of the films that fall under this description are Collateral and Buffalo ’66, the former of which I always meant to see and the latter of which I almost certainly never would have chosen myself.

Best Foreign-Language Film: Les Gardiennes (The Guardians) (2018). A gorgeous film by Xavier Beauvois about women on a French farm holding down the home front during World War I. Its slow-moving, painterly qualities would make an interesting pairing with 1917.

And, finally…

Top Five Films I Just Can’t Recommend

The World Is Not Enough (1999)

Tank Girl (1995)

A Fool There Was (1915)

Casino Royale (1967)

So Dark the Night (1948)

One from pretty much every category above, these were my lowest-ranked films of the year.

How many films did you watch at home this year? What was your greatest discovery? What was your favorite rewatch? What are your favorite streaming services? What do you find yourself subscribed to but never watch? Let me know in the comments.

*I have since learned that my sister in the Boston area only gets eight credits per month so I guess the number of credits granted varies depending on the library or university system. Note, however, that sometimes films are listed as double features or playlists that use only one credit. Still, even eight credits per month means two free films a week so that is not bad.

In this third and final installment on female entrepreneurs, we look at three women from three different continents who had an enormous impact on the world of modern clothing and fashion.

Rose Bertin (1747–1813)

For this first entry, we are going all the way back to the “let them eat cake” days of Marie Antoinette. Marie-Jeanne Rose Bertin was dressmaker to the queen and is credited with the birth of haute couture—not just by creating Marie Antoinette’s gowns, which established France as the center of the fashion industry, but because she was savvy enough to understand how quickly fashions might change and how to profit from that.

Bertin came from a stable, if not wealthy, family in the north of France. Both her father and mother worked outside the home so that they could provide an education for Bertin and her brother. Her father died when she was still fairly young, but the family was able to stay afloat through her mother’s work. Bertin moved to Paris at the age of sixteen and with her intelligence and affability was quickly able to become apprenticed to a royal milliner (who later became her business partner).

Most important to Bertin’s success were the relationships she established with various members of the nobility. The first she met was the Princesse de Conti, when Bertin mistook her for a servant while making a dress delivery and started chatting to pass the time. Apparently, the princess took to her instantly and soon recommended Bertin to design the trousseau for a friend’s upcoming wedding. This was not just any wedding: it was the wedding of the wealthiest heiress in France to the Duc de Chartres, cousin of Louis XVI. This wedding commission not only brought Bertin royal favor but also a tremendous amount of business, prompting her employer to make her a partner. Soon after, the Duchesse de Chartres became an official patron to the dressmaker and, in 1770, bankrolled Bertin’s own establishment on the Rue Saint-Honoré.

The duchess was also instrumental in establishing Bertin’s contact with the future queen, lobbying the ladies-in-waiting at Versailles to have Bertin make the outfit that the young Marie Antoinette would change into at the border upon her entrance to the country. In 1772, Bertin was officially introduced to the dauphine and was awarded a royal order to dress her that amounted to roughly $4000 in 1772 dollars (out of a clothing budget of $24,000). But Marie Antoinette was soon spending much more than that on her clothes, with much of it going to Bertin. We’re talking millions in today’s dollars.

Bertin would present her designs to the queen twice a week and they spent numerous hours discussing clothing details. This relationship was key to Bertin’s business model. Seeing how quickly the queen would become bored when everyone started dressing as she did, and how important dressing in the latest styles was to life at Versailles, Bertin learned to cycle her new designs down to the rest of the court as quickly as possible, which would kick off new conversations with the queen, and so lead to nearly continuous orders. Bertin also created many fashion dolls, called pandores, which the queen would give as gifts. These essentially served as fashion magazines do today.

Even in prison during the early years of the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette availed herself of Bertin’s services (albeit on a much smaller scale) including a mourning outfit for her husband’s execution. Soon, however, Bertin wisely moved her business to London, serving many of the émigrées who had also fled France. Bertin returned to France in 1795 and continued to dress the well-to-do, including Joséphine de Beauharnais, the wife of Napoléon, but, in the wake of the Revolution, Bertin had gone out of fashion. She eventually transferred her business to her nephews and retired.

Il n’y a de nouveau que ce qui est oublié.

There is nothing new except that which has been forgotten.

—Rose Bertin, 1785

Annette Kellerman (1887–1975)

Annette Kellerman was born in New South Wales, Australia, the daughter of two musicians. Due to the need to wear steel braces on her legs as a child, her parents enrolled her in swimming classes at a very young age in order to help strengthen her legs. By the age of fifteen she was swimming competitively. In 1902, she won multiple championships, breaking records as she went, including a world record for swimming one mile. After moving to Melbourne, she gave swimming and diving exhibitions and also performed as a mermaid and in the theater. (Later, Kellerman would help popularize the sport of synchronized swimming with a performance of the first water ballet in a glass tank at the New York Hippodrome.)

In search of more lucrative opportunities to compete and perform, Kellerman and her father moved to England. In 1905, Kellerman was one of the first women to attempt to swim the English Channel—three times—although she was unsuccessful. Still, these attempts (and her training swims), which were sponsored by the Daily Mirror, won her much notoriety. As a swimmer, Kellerman was best known for championing the one-piece bathing suit (instead of the usual pantaloons and dresses), a cause for which she was arrested in 1907 near Boston, Massachusetts. Of course, she had had to create her own makeshift suits for some time in order to be competitive in the water and she eventually designed her own line of swimwear, the first modern swimwear for women. For many years, “Kellerman” was a generic name for any one-piece swimsuit.

Ever the performer, Kellerman ended up in Hollywood, where she was the first actress to appear nude in a major studio production, A Daughter of the Gods (now considered a “lost film”). Many of her films had aquatic themes and she performed her own stunts in them. The only known surviving feature film of Kellerman’s is Venus of the South Seas (1924), which was restored by the Library of Congress in 2004. Kellerman herself was later portrayed on screen by that other famous bathing beauty—Esther Williams—in Million Dollar Mermaid (1952). Kellerman remained in California for much of her life, owning a health food store in Long Beach (she was a lifelong vegetarian). She also wrote numerous books on health, natural beauty, and fitness, including How to Swim in 1918 and Physical Beauty: How to Keep It in 1919.

Mary Phelps Jacob (1891–1970)

Mary Phelps Jacob, nicknamed Polly as a girl and later also known as Caresse Crosby, was the first person to receive a patent for the modern bra. But that event is almost a footnote to the rest of her life, which was absolutely incredible.

Jacob was born into a New York society family that dated back to the earliest colonial days in New England. On her father’s side, her family tree included both Robert Fulton, developer of the steamboat, and William Bradford, the first governor of Plymouth Colony. Compared to many of her friends, her family was not rich, but they lived incredibly well. Polly attended Miss Chapin’s School in New York and then Rosemary Hall, a boarding school in Connecticut. It was this lifestyle that led to her invention when, in 1910, at the age of 19, she was preparing to attend one of many debutante balls and realized her corset poked out from under her sheer, plunging gown. She decided to stitch together a makeshift undergarment of handkerchiefs and ribbon and wore that instead. Immediately, her friends all wanted one. When she finally received a request from a stranger, she knew this might be a viable business. Jacob filed for and was granted a patent for a “backless brassiere” in 1914. Although versions of brassieres had existed previously, what was unique about Jacob’s version was that it was easily adapted to women of different sizes and could withstand a variety of movements. Most importantly, it was comfortable. Amirite, ladies?

Soon after filing for her patent, Jacob married Dick Peabody, a wealthy Bostonian blue-blood. He went off to war and then eventually became a professional drunkard, so Polly decided to open her own business and founded the Fashion Form Brassiere Company in Boston in 1920. Also in 1920, Polly met Harry Crosby and proceeded to have a very public fling with him, scandalizing society. She divorced two years later and married Harry, just about the time she began manufacturing her wireless bra. Sadly, Harry had nothing but disdain for industry and persuaded Polly to close the business. She later sold the patent to the Warner Brothers Corset Company for $1500 (approximately $22,000 in today’s dollars). Warner went on to earn more than $15 million from the patent over the next few decades.

I can’t say the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.

Immediately after their marriage, the couple moved to Europe where they became members of the so-called Lost Generation, living off of Harry’s generous trust fund (among other connections, J.P. Morgan was Harry’s godfather). The couple embraced a glamorous and reckless lifestyle, with an open marriage and frequent drug use. In 1924, Harry urged Polly to change her name, suggesting Clytoris, but settling for Caresse. (Dodged a bullet there, Polly.) In 1925, the couple opened a publishing house named after their pet whippet, Narcisse Noir (pictured below). Later, they rechristened the business Black Sun Press, publishing exquisitely crafted books by the likes of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, and Ezra Pound.

In 1929, Harry died as part of either a double suicide or murder-suicide with one of his mistresses. And, yes, Harry was the one suspected of murder. Nevertheless, Caresse continued to run Black Sun Press until 1936, although she went back to using her birth name of Mary and was subsequently known as Mary Caresse Crosby. In 1937, she returned to the States and married the much-younger Selbert Young. She also ghost-wrote pornography for Henry Miller on the side, because why not. After divorcing Young in 1941, Crosby moved to Washington, DC and opened a modern art gallery, because why not. She eventually moved to Greece, where she purchased a castle north of Rome and turned it into an artists’ colony. I mean, damn.

To read more about these incredible women:

Émile Langlade, Rose Bertin: The Creator of Fashion at the Court of Marie Antoinette (1908)

Caroline Weber, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution (2006)

Emily Gibson with Barbara Firth, The Original Million Dollar Mermaid: The Annette Kellerman Story (2005)

Caresse Crosby, The Passionate Years (1953)

Linda Hamalian, The Cramoisy Queen: A Life of Caresse Crosby (2005)

Podcast and television episodes:

Stuff You Missed in History Class: Rose Bertin

Stuff You Missed in History Class: Annette Kellerman

History Chicks: Four Inventors

Drunk History: Inventing the Bra

For previous posts in this Women 101 series, click below:

From Abigail Adams to Zenobia

Birds of the Air

Wasps and Witches

Soldiers and Spies in the Civil War

Soldiers and Spies in World War II

Adventurers and Explorers

Strange Bedfellows

A Mind at (House)Work

Looking Good; Feeling Good

And once again I seem to have reached the end of Women’s History Month without writing about Zenobia. I guess you’ll just have to tune in next year—same month, same place—when I will absolutely, positively, look at warrior queens. So help me, Lakshmibai.