Be Pretty and Shut Up!

In 1976 Delphine Seyrig told Leila Weinraub of the New York Times, “I have a heavy past, having been an actress. . . . It was a way of seducing, of proving to myself that I could be accepted. But actresses are a commercial product. They represent the whole male‐female problem seen with a microscope. They are agents of the male optic.” Seyrig proved her thesis with Be Pretty and Shut Up!, a video dossier compiling firsthand accounts of twenty-four French and American actresses—including Jane Fonda, Maria Schneider, Shirley MacLaine, Jill Clayburgh, and Juliet Berto—on the frustrations and limitations of their métier, still sadly relevant today.