Dr. Metablog

Here's a colorized illustration of Ruth Chatterton as Alison Drake in the "pre code" romance Female (1933).   

 

Although she's surrounded by a bunch of official looking executives, she runs the show. Miss Drake owns and manages factory that manufactures automobiles. She's in a male preserve — it's not a cosmetic factory or something more traditionally feminine. And she loves the work and the power.

 

The film might have been called Alison Drake but no, it's Female — and therefore claims to describe not just one individual woman but an entire gender. Does it? At best, the film is mighty confused — and at worst, reactionary in the extreme.

 

In the first half of the film, Alison Drake is not only an extremely competent executive, but she's also sexually liberated. It's her habit to bring home attractive men, seduce them, and, if they get the least bit soppy, transfer them to the Montreal office. She's one happy –although heartless — "cougar." Then she meets her match in the person of young handsome (before he grew that silly little mustache) George Brent, who responds to her advances by saying, "I was hired as an engineer, not as a gigolo."  All of a sudden, Miss Drake goes all weak in the knees, falls in love, and decides to marry the man. She puts him in charge of the factory and plans to stay home in order to achieve the apotheosis of femininity by having "nine children."

 

The disappointing ending seems to be pasted on rather than organic. Many a film in the Code era set out to challenge the "tune of the time" but threw in the conventional towel because of the Hays Office. Female is disappointing because it voluntarily chooses to go all squishy when it wasn't necessary.

 

Here is Ruth Chatterton on her submissive and symbolic back.