MovieChat Forums > Desk Set (1957) Discussion > Bechdel Test? What Bechdel Test?

Bechdel Test? What Bechdel Test?


That's what I love about this movie. Say what you want about its dated misconceptions about computers, but it's the kind of film that would take a look at the Bechdel Test, giggle, and hop over that bar like it was a line of matchboxes. All the women are intelligent, all have personal lives that definitely include men but do not revolve around them, and while the characters certainly gossip, it's not in the catty, destructive style of a Clare Boothe Luce script. And this was in the 1950s!

Desk Set isn't my all-time favorite movie, but it's had a special resonance for me. I worked briefly as a fact-checker, and while I usually answered the phone with either "hello" or the name of the publication, in my mind I was saying, "Reference, Miss Watson." 😃

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100% true (and it's so good at that I never even thought of it myself, ha ha...it doesn't exactly go out of its way to make a big deal out of it). It really is kind of a treasure, isn't it.

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What I have always loved about it is that it shows a group of women who work together and all seem to like each other, and their job. I think that is fairly unusual, there were plenty of films with working women, but usually they are shown working with or for men, showing an all female group getting along together so well and liking what they do is very rare.

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