“Nasty women,” young and old, continue to spread chaos, this time beyond the domestic sphere. Rambunctious Lea fights off the unwanted attentions of her male co-workers at a bank in Lea in ufficio, and then becomes a hurricane of pure mayhem at a roller skating rink in Lea sui pattini. Locked in her room by her parents, and determined to go out skating, she dons makeshift roller skates, sliding and falling athletically around the bedroom and then out a window. Once at the roller rink, she runs into, over, and under every skater in her path. Finally thrown out of the rink, she’s dragged down the street by a car.
Like Lea, the British comedy team Tilly and Sally (Alma Taylor and Chrissie White) can’t seem to help sending people and furniture flying at the slightest provocation. Dubbed “a duplication of disruptive femininity” by film historian Adrian Garvey, the often identically dressed Tilly and Sally appeared in around 20 comedies for the Hepworth Company between 1911 and 1912. When two midshipmen arrive at a party at the girls’ home in Tilly’s Party, Tilly and Sally grab the men’s bicycles and ram into the guests, knocking everyone down. Their angry father orders them to their music lessons, but instead they wreak havoc in the kitchen, and when their father comes to investigate they flee into the party downstairs, where they send upper-class women, chairs, and silk screens flying. The girls escape on the handlebars of the sailors’ bicycles and speed through town with the family in hot pursuit. They manage to slide onto their tutor’s piano bench just in time, adopting looks of perfect innocence.
Cunégonde learns her lesson in Cunégonde trop curieuse. A neighbor in her apartment building cuts a hole in the middle of Cunégonde’s shutters, so when she sticks her head out to find out what’s going on, the shutters close on her, trapping her head outside. Local boys throw vegetables at the inviting target and a man pastes a poster over the shutters, framing her head with the promise of “Beauté Visage.” Finally, a passerby climbs up and frees her. “Cured of her curiosity,” the next time she hears a noise she continues reading her book. In Cunégonde femme cochère, we find Cunégonde appropriating her husband’s jacket and top hat and driving his carriage for the day. She makes the mistake of carelessly whipping a magician she comes across, who wreaks his revenge by making her carriage and horse shape-shift as she tries to pick up customers. Cunégonde picks up a well-dressed woman, but she metamorphoses into a bear and crawls onto the driver’s seat. When the bear turns into the magician, Cunégonde is finally ready to apologize for her bad behavior.
Pétronille (Sarah Duhamel) is back once more, in Onésime et la Toilette de Mlle. Badinois, this time borrowing her lady employer’s fashionable hat and suit for a romantic dinner with her sweetheart, Onésime. Never mind that the hat droops so low that Pétronille can’t really see and the skirt is so long she can hardly walk! But the real trouble starts once Pétronille arrives at Onésime’s house, thanks to a burning candle, a gigantic pot of water, and four unexpected bags of coal. In a whirlwind of furniture, people, and belongings, Onésime’s father chases the errant couple out of the house, through an outdoor café, and then through a hat shop, before the couple leap off a bridge to safety. Pétronille returns the ruined clothes to their boxes, hoping her employer won’t notice (but, surprise – she does!).
In Everybody’s Doing It (1913), “Vitagraph Girl” Florence Turner plays a mischievous girl determined to convert a “confirmed old bachelor” who scoffs at the romantic couples all around him. Voted America’s most popular motion picture actress in 1912 (receiving more than twice as many votes as Pickford), Turner moved to England shortly after this film was released and set up her own production company. A gifted facial contortionist, she wrote, directed, and produced the inimitable Daisy Doodad’s Dial in 1914 to show off her remarkable skills.
Our final film skips forward to the mid-1920s, proving that women retained the power to utterly upend the public sphere (especially when they banded together in groups!). In She’s a Prince, Alice Ardell, a comedienne who made masculine-styled clothing part of her stock-in-trade, plays an initiate to “Fi Delta Pie, a Flapper’s secret society.” The initiation provides an opportunity for a succession of disorienting rituals, masquerades, and mistaken identities.

Laura Horak, Maggie Hennefeld

LEA IN UFFICIO (Lea Finds a Job in a Bank)  (IT 1911)
regia/dir: ?. cast: Lea Giunchi (Lea). prod: Cines. uscita/rel: 03.11.1911. copia/copy: 35mm, 113 m. (orig. 169 m.), 5′ (18 fps); did./titles: ITA. fonte/source: Cineteca di Bologna.

LEA SUI PATTINI (Lea op Rolschaatsen/Lea Skating) (IT 1911)
regia/dir: ?. cast: Lea Giunchi (Lea). prod: Cines. uscita/rel: 21.04.1911. copia/copy: 35mm, 105 m. (orig. 142 m.), 5′ (18 fps); did./titles: NLD. fonte/source: EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam. Preservazione in b&n del 1991 da un duplicato negativo/Preserved in b&w in 1991 at Haghefilm through a duplicate negative.

TILLY’S PARTY (GB 1911)
regia/dir, scen: Lewin Fitzhamon. cast: Alma Taylor (Tilly), Chrissie White (Sally), Harry Buss, Hay Plumb. prod: Hepworth Mfg. Co. copia/copy: 35mm, 440 ft., 7′ (16 fps); did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: BFI National Archive, London.

CUNÉGONDE TROP CURIEUSE (Cunegonde is nieuwsgierig) (FR 1912)
regia/dir: ?. cast: ? (Cunégonde). prod: Lux. uscita/rel: 12.04.1912. copia/copy: 35mm, 131 m. (orig. 179 m.), 7′ (16 fps); did./titles: NLD. fonte/source: EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam. Desmet Collection.

CUNÉGONDE FEMME COCHÈRE (Cunegonde als huurkoetsier) (FR 1913)
regia/dir: ?. cast: ? (Cunégonde). prod: Lux. copia/copy: 35mm, 138 m., 6’40ꞌꞌ (18 fps); did./titles: NLD. fonte/source: EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam. Desmet Collection. Preservazione in b&n del 1991 da un duplicato negativo/Preserved in b&w in 1991 at Haghefilm through a duplicate negative.

ONÉSIME ET LA TOILETTE DE MADEMOISELLE BADINOIS (La Toilette de Mlle. Badinois / Onésime et la toilette) (Onesime en het toilet van mej. Badinois) (FR 1912)
regia/dir: Jean Durand. photog: Paul Castanet. scg/des: Robert Jules Garnier. cast: Ernest Bourbon (Onésime), Berthe Dagmar (Mlle. Badinois), Sarah Duhamel (Pétronille, la domestica/the maid), Mlle. Davrières (fattorina/the delivery girl), Gaston Modot. prod: Gaumont. uscita/rel: 01.11.1912. copia/copy: 35mm, 151 m. (orig. 154 m.), 8′ (16 fps); did./titles: NDL. fonte/source: EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam. Desmet Collection.

EVERYBODY’S DOING IT (US 1913)
regia/dir: Larry [Laurence] Trimble. cast: Florence Turner (Grace Williams), Kate Price, Norma Talmadge (stenografa/stenographer). L. Rogers Lytton (Albert Thompson), Hughie Mack. prod: Vitagraph. dist: General Film Company. uscita/rel: 25.01.1913. copia/copy: 35mm, 386 ft., 6′ (16 fps); did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: Library of Congress Packard Center for Audio-Visual Conservation, Culpeper, VA.

SHE’S A PRINCE (US 1926)
regia/dir: Marcel Perez. cast: Alice Ardell, Billy Franey, Billy Engle, Dorothy Vernon. prod: Joe Rock, Blue Ribbon Comedies / Standard Cinema Corporation. dist: Film Booking Offices of America (FBO). uscita/rel: 02.05.1926; Blue Ribbon Comedy no. 9. copia/copy: DCP, 20′; did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: Library of Congress Packard Center for Audio-Visual Conservation, Culpeper, VA.