3 - Crafting Music

Summary

Jill Craigie’s 1951 documentary film To Be a Woman features thought-provoking footage of women at work, at home, and at leisure in early 1950s Britain, accompanying its call for equal pay with a multifaceted score for two percussionists by Elisabeth Lutyens. In the titles, Ethel Smyth’s iconic March of the Women is transferred into the minor key on the xylophone, and later the score mimics variety music as well as a typewriter’s clacking.² The eighteen-minute film also celebrates the important position of women in the arts. Lutyens herself appears in the film; cigarette firmly in hand, hair hanging down straight over her shoulders, and dressed in a skirt suit with a domineering silk scarf. She can be seen shifting a little uneasily in her seat, as if listening to a question during an interview, but ironically she is cut off the very moment she opens her mouth to speak.