IMDB has a list that include Gravity, Kill Bill Vol. 1, and The Descent. Also Coraline and Kiki’s Delivery Service. Pretty heavily weighted towards 21st century films, but that could just be the memory filter at work. I think it’s notable that there aren’t any action films on the list until relatively recently, though.
I know of a long-running webcomic that would fail: Sleepless Domain. It has a plot, so not a joke-a-day type strip. On chapter 20 right now. All the main and supporting charaters are female. I counted about a dozen male characters that have dialog, but they’re mostly bit parts, and none ever talk to another male. Naturally, it’s written/drawn by a woman.
Alison Bechdel herself has weighed in to declare that it does.
The quote, if you don’t want to read the whole article: “Okay, I just added a corollary to the Bechdel test: Two men talking to each other about the female protagonist of an Alice Munro story in a screenplay structured on a Jane Austen novel = pass.”
Bechdel drawn her seminal cartoon in 1985. Consider how different the world was then. That we’re even discussing something as basic as two women talking in general conservation should be the only point.
There are dozens of shows today with women as producers, writers, and stars, and even many with all-women casts. Huge advances, sure. But looking at the highest grossing movies, i.e. most popular, most seen, and most like what Hollywood wants to make, reveals that women are usually at most mixed into a large ensemble cast, still interacting mostly with the male leads rather than one another.
Look at this post I made in the “How ‘woke’ are movies really” thead.
I’m sure that many of those movies pass the Bechdel test, but that’s not obvious from their descriptions. It takes an absolute female-starring film like Wonder Woman to be obvious. That’s why it’s still a thing.
Yes, descriptive, not prescriptive. Bechdel, as mentioned, just added a “corollary” for Fire Island precisely to shut out those who would abuse the “test” by trying to shoehorn it into cases where it would be moot.
(And I notice in the comic the movie posters in the background: all mid-80s-style action flicks featuring a single musclebound male hero dealing violence (“The Mercenary”; “The Barbarian”; “The Vigilante”). There was a mood of the time.)
Maybe Antonia’s Line? The focus was exclusively on women; the men in the movie were only extra’s to the plot with very little screentime. (similar opinion at https://bechdeltest.com) I can’t recall any interaction between men in the movie, but I haven’t seen it since it screened.
My favorite comment on the Bechdel test, which i think might have come from Alison Bechdel herself, was that pretty much every adaption of Cinderella passes.
Even there, most of the discussion centers around the Prince and the opportunities to pursue a relationship with him. Though I suppose that there’s also some about the stepsisters forcing Cinderella to do the menial household chores, which would qualify.
Of course, despite passing the test, the Rogers and Hammerstein version of Cinderella is perhaps the most anti-feminist work ever written. Which is just one more example of why the Bechdel Test isn’t the be-all and end-all of judging a movie.
I think the test (and it’s reverse) is kinda pointless on movies with basically all-male or all-female casts. Where it really shines are on movies that are supposed to be “equal”.
For a recent example, Jurassic World. I feel like much was made at the time during marketing about Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard being equal leads. But while Chris’s character has numerous scenes with just other men talking about dinosaurs and whatnot, Bryce has just two scene with other women. She has one or two lines to her assistants talking about her nephews and a phone call with her sister, again talking about her nephews.
Right on.
Where does Contact fit in terms of the test? There is only one female character with more than 3 lines, but she is the central character and the primary relationship issue in the story is not with one of the proximal males but with her dead father. And, of course, π.
Does she have a conversation with Angela Bassett’s character?
But at the risk of repeating myself, it’s not as simple as “pass the test = good, fail the test = bad.”
Description:
Dr. Arroway and Rachel discuss what the encrypted pages of text mean and how long it will take.
In another scene, one asks the other where to get a really nice dress.
In yet another scene, they talk about what the blueprints mean, what type of machine it is (with some interjection from male characters)
An all-male cast would be an automatic failure. An all-female cast that failed is, at least in part, the point of the test.