Pan’s Labyrinth ( El laberinto del fauno)
I would think that a female writer would be more likely to write a script that passes. But female writers are the minority, with this cite I found saying in 2009 they had 25% of the writing jobs. But even if a script is written that passes, the resulting movie could fail if at some point a character is changed from female to male, or some conversations between women is taken out for whatever reason.
I’d think it would also increase the numbers of movies that pass if there were more female directors. According to this page, the percentage of films that are directed by women has been between 7% and 9% for a while.
Would ***Glengarry Glen Ross ***have been any better with female characters (there are no female characters in the play; in the movie, there’s just the hostess at the Chinese restaurant)? I don’t see how.
Mentioned on the website: apparently the closest Peggy gets to such a conversation is when she reassures her way past that gun-toting woman standing guard at the innocuous storefront that couldn’t possibly be the entrance to a secret government lab.
I don’t know if anyone is saying that all movies must pass the test. I’m certainly not. Not every movie needs to have female characters, and in some movies they would definitely be out of place. The issue isn’t really with any one specific movie, the issue is the relative lack of active female characters in movies overall compared to the number of active male characters in movies.
Ahh, The Double Life of Veronique passes the test! Cool.
All About Eve was my first thought, but I see I got scooped in post #2.
It’s fresh on my mind since I just saw it: The Help.
Boogie Nights
Leaving Normal, with Meg Tilly (Jennifer’s more talented older sister) and Christine Lahti. They do a fair amount of talking about men, but also a LOT of talking about other things, as well.
And it has the added bonus of actually being one of my favorite movies.
I am a woman and a feminist, and yet not one of the movies on my top 10 list passes the test. I see that someone mentioned Persuasion upthread, but I couldn’t think of a scene in which they weren’t talking about men. Maybe I’ll watch it again to see if I can find one.
The last movie I saw was Albert Nobbs – does it count if two women are having a conversation that isn’t about a man if one of the women is disguised as a man during the conversation?
If it doesn’t, would Tootsie somehow qualify?
Just checked this list and Yay! Die Hard does pass because Holly and Ginny talk about Ginny going to the party while Holly finishes up her work.
**Girl Interrupted
On Golden Pond**
I just added 1947’s The Ghost and Mrs. Muir to the list on the linked page - I’ll see if it passes muster. It should - in spite of being one of my favorite soppy romances with two gents wooing, the film opens with a scene between Lucy and her dead husband’s bullying sister and whiny, manipulative mother, and while dead hubby is mentioned, the scene is nothing to do with him. Another scene later with the same three women when they visit Lucy at Gull Cottage and attempt to convince her to return. I’m certain there is more than one scene with Lucy and Martha that has nothing to do with romance with anyone living or dead.
I don’t agree with **Ellis **about the larger issue, but I think he makes a reasonable point: pull any random person off the street, ask them to name their favorite movie, and there’s a REALLY good chance that the movie will be about war, politics, crime/law enforcement, or (maybe) sports, all of which are heavily male-dominated fields in real life. Now, one could make a reasonable case that these topics make up such a big chunk of Hollywood’s “serious” movies in part because of male bias, but still: this fact will tend to overstate (somewhat) the percentage of movies that fail the test. And, of course, you *could *make a movie about any of these topics with a high proportion of fleshed-out female characters, but doing so is kinda like, say, making a movie about '50s America in which almost no one is a smoker: totally plausible, but statistically unlikely.
Anyway, as for my favorite films … the Godfather movies fail hard, as does Miller’s Crossing. Maybe my favorite film that passes is The Royal Tenenbaums (Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelica Houston have at least one conversation about Paltrow’s being depressed).
You’re really not getting this. If an individual movie fails the Bechdel test, that doesn’t mean the movie is bad, or needs to have women added to it to make it better. The point of the test is to illustrate a general bias in films as a media, not to take any individual film to task for not upholding feminist ideals.
Gosford Park certainly passes with flying colors. I think Educating Rita does, but I wouldn’t swear to it. Much Ado About Nothing might, but since Branagh cut the one major girl-talk scene, I wouldn’t swear to that one either. Twelfth Night squeaks by on an amusing technicality, since there are several moments when Olivia thinks she is having a conversation about or with a man, but she isn’t 
Of my other favorite movies, I’m pretty sure The Graduate does not pass and absolutely 100% sure The Shawshank Redemption doesn’t. The linked site says Shakespeare in Love is a pass, but I would never have figured this out on my own.
The test doesn’t exactly say that women in film are rarely given substance. It says they rarely talk to each other about something other than men. They can still be given substance through other means.
Nobody would say Marge Gunderson (Fargo) is without substance. Or Sarah Connor. Or Celine (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset). Nor would anyone say Angelina Jolie was not a major character in many of her roles (Salt, Tomb Raider, Hackers, The Tourist, Wanted…). Yet I think all of these films fail the test.
Basically, it brings up a specific blind spot that movies have. Men often talk to other men about a variety of issues, but it is more rare for women to talk to other women about anything but men.
Exactly, Eternal Sunshine has two of what I would consider well developed female characters. Of the main characters, 4 are male, 2 are female, and in fact at least one of the males (Elijah Wood) was really more of a catalyst/force of nature, he didn’t really have too much characterization or development.
The thing is, despite being very well developed, Clementine is at almost all moments miles away from Mary, most of the scenes with Clem taking place in Joel’s head. The memory erasing procedure is specifically targeting her, so it’s little surprise very few people show up in the memories for Clem and Mary to really interact.
In fact, I wouldn’t even really call it a 4/2 m/f ratio, since at any time in a given scene it’s USUALLY one male and one female involved (except during the interview and the very beginning of the procedure), actually pretty balanced in terms of screen time of males vs females. In fact, due to lack of female characters, but almost equal screen time, they probably get more cumulative characterization than any of the males except Joel.
The test is silly, and doesn’t really mean much. I’ll admit that since so MANY movies fail to pass it does shed some light on male centrism in hollywood etc, but I think there are plenty of corner cases where it doesn’t mean much either.