Be Pretty and Shut Up

Director: Delphine Seyrig

1981 / 112min / DCP

In Hollywood and Paris, Seyrig sits down to talk to some of the most famous actresses in the world—including Juliet Berto, Ellen Burstyn, Jane Fonda, Shirley MacLaine, Jill Clayburgh, Louise Fletcher, Maria Schneider, Barbara Steele, Viva, Anne Wiazemsky, and more—about their experiences in the film industry, discussing the dearth of good roles for women, the struggle for respect and the alienation they experience from their own images, and the lack of films depicting warm, comradely relations between female characters. “Offers a radical view of the cinema that’s voiced by its participants and matched by her audaciously pure method and reserved style… Grant[s] the actors intimate spans of time in which to develop their ideas and express them freely.” —The New Yorker

Digital restoration by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (National Library of France).

DCP courtesy of Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir