The title of Delphine Seyrig’s Sois
belle et tais-toi! establishes its core purpose – to present a
cross-section of the experiences of female actors and thereby to bring out the industry’s
male-dominated complacency. The whimsical selection of interviewees (22 in all)
places Oscar-winning giants (Jane Fonda, Ellen Burstyn, Shirley MacLaine –
although MacLaine’s footage appears to have been obtained from another source,
and sits rather uncomfortably in this context) with others who had few film
credits at the time, or since, a diversity in security and opportunity that arguably
outweighs the points of commonality. With an average overall time allocation of
just over 5 minutes each (some get more, some much less), it’s inevitable too that
the emphasis is mostly on the anecdotal and impressionistic, which (along with
the extremely unadorned photography and title design) is the source of much of
the film’s eccentric charm, and its objective limitations. For example, several
speakers cite the likes of Newman and Redford and McQueen as examples of careers
and opportunities generally denied to women, but then it’s also true that the
vast majority of male actors were no less excluded from such rarified heights. Still,
it remains rather poignant to see several of them racking their brains when trying
to remember if they ever spent any meaningful non-adversarial screen time with
another woman. There’s plenty more there too for in-the-know viewers, such as
Fonda’s sadly hilarious account of Fred Zinnemann’s neurotic approach to making
Julia, or Juliet Berto critiquing Rivette’s Celine and Julie go Boating
(the notion of female directors is cited only briefly). The last word goes to Burstyn,
widening the scope somewhat by positing that the momentum belongs to women and
that the future of the planet depends on it, on its own terms a harmlessly
overreaching piece of rhetoric which comes across here as a final touch of whimsicality.
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