'The Smiling Of Madame Beudet'

This film is notable because it is considered the first feminist film. Certainly, it had to be a film directed by one of the first female directors, Germaine Dulac.

Dulac was a military brat eventually winding up in Paris living with her grandmother before the turn of the 20th century. She grew up as an artist, but eventually turned to journalism and criticism writing for the feminist publication La Française, where she later became a theater critic.

Dulac was visiting Italy before World War I when a friend of her was scheduled to be in a moving picture. Here, she learned the ins and outs of the artform and industry. She returned to France as a filmmaker and hit the ground running.

The Smiling of Madame Beudet was released in 1922 or 1923. It is just 54 minutes long. It is about a husband, who threatens to shot himself in the head to his wife. Pissed, the wife puts bullets in the chambers ready for the next time he thinks he is faking the end of his life. Unfortunately, things go all screwy.

With the unveiling of talkies, Dulac's took a bad turn and she spent the rest of her life doing movie newsreels. Dulac died in Paris in 1942. Such an important figure and not one "feminist" espousing The Feminine Mystique in a college classroom today knows her name.