British Film Institute celebrates 'unapologetically bad leading ladies'

As Bette Davis once said: "When a man gives his opinion, he’s a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she’s a b****."

Now that theory is to be put to the test in a season of films at the British Film Institute (BFI) that celebrates "unapologetically bad leading ladies".

From Vivien Leigh in Gone With The Wind to Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl, the month-long series of films in June will look at screen anti-heroines and ask if their traits would be regarded in the same way if they were male characters.

"The BFI have committed to a programme that re-appraises and celebrates women’s contribution to film and TV: not only looking at women directors, but also at the contribution that women actors make.

"In this season we want to look at a key stereotype, where the woman protagonist is a malicious, treacherous, unreasonable control freak.

"There is a whole history of these roles in film and TV where the woman is most definitely the subject, not the object," a BFI spokesman said.

"We want to explore how the star power of the lead actor in these roles is critical and shapes the narrative, and how the audience’s response to and pleasure in the film can be highly ambivalent as a result."

The BFI will also address "how the meaning of these unlikeable characters has changed over the years".

The earliest films will feature three Hollywood greats: Barbara Stanwyck, Mae West and Joan Crawford, who "challenged the audience with unlikeable but compelling characters".

West set the template with her very first film role as Maudie Triplett in Night After Night, strolling into a club in diamonds and furs. "Goodness, what beautiful diamonds," exclaims the cloakroom girl. "Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie," West replies.

The season will move on to Vivien Leigh, whose off-screen reputation matched that of her most famous character, the Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara. Noel Coward, a friend, wrote in his diary: "She is such a darling when she is all right and such a conceited little b**** when she isn’t all right."

Some of the films see Hollywood actresses play against type. Julia Roberts, America’s sweetheart after her performance in Pretty Woman, starred in the 1997 hit My Best Friend’s Wedding, which will be shown as part of the season.

She plays a woman who becomes so jealous when her male friend announces his engagement that she secretly schemes to sabotage the wedding - on paper, the behaviour of a "b****”, yet the film manages to be a feelgood comedy.

One of the most recent films on show will be Gone Girl, the adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s psychological thriller about a seemingly perfect young wife, played by Pike, who disappears from the marital home.

The role transformed the image of Pike, who was previously viewed as a demure English rose. She has said it was "thrilling" to play "a woman who didn’t have to conform in any way ever to expected behaviour or desirable behaviour or attractive behaviour.

"So many times, when the woman is being rescued or saved, if she’s not a nurturing, maternal type then she’s in some way less of a woman - absolutely not, in my view."

Other performances singled out for appraisal will include Linda Fiorentino as a con artist in The Last Seduction and Charlize Theron as an unlikeable author in Young Adult.

The season will also feature discussion about women on the small screen, among them Alexis Carrington in Dynasty - a role that at one point made Dame Joan Collins the highest-paid woman on television - and Claire Underwood (Robin Wright), who succeeded her equally ruthless husband as president of the United States.

Other highlights of the BFI’s 2019 programme include a season devoted to Barbara Stanwyck, with screenings of more than 20 of her films including The Lady Eve and Stella Dallas, and another celebrating the films of Cary Grant, fro Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday to North by Northwest and To Catch A Thief.