For tomorrow’s lecture, I intend to spend some time talking about women’s colleges in the early 20th century. In years past, I’ve shown a clip from the film The Group, but my 21st century students found it cheesy (and me as well, I suppose). So all of you film mavens, can you think of a film that features a women’s college prominently - that maybe adds context to the story? A documentary would be great as well… in fact, probably better.
I’m not looking for a film just shot on a women’s college campus - Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married was filmed in part at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, but it has no bearing on the plot.
Well I can think of two, but they are somewhat different than your stated request. The Australian film Flirting with Nicole Kidman features a women’s school but that is I think a boarding schools with all grade levels. Clint Eastwood’s The Beguiled takes place in a woman’s “seminary” in the civil war.
The only one I can think of off hand is Mona Lisa Smile, but an IMDB keyword search using college, female, women’s and others comes up pretty empty. But feel free to take a look…
AFAIK Mona Lisa Smile is the only recent film set at a women’s college, but it isn’t particularly realistic even for the era being depicted. A lot of Wellesley alumnae were quite angry about the way their school was depicted in the movie. Wellesley was not a highly conservative, glorified finishing school even in the 1950s. Madeleine Albright was a student at Wellesley at about the same time as the movie was set. Modern art wouldn’t have been anything new on campus then either. At the time the film was set, Wellesley had been offering courses in modern art for about 25 years.
As a woman’s college (not Wellesley) alumna myself I wish I could recommend a good movie on the subject to you, but unfortunately I don’t know of any. The heroine of the Fred Astaire musical Daddy Long Legs (1955) does attend a women’s college, but IIRC very little of the film takes place there aside from a school dance scene.
Wellesley itself was pissed off by the movie. The school’s administration approved an early version of the script that was quite different from the final version. Can’t think of other movies set at a women’s college…
