This is a very slightly fleshed-out transcript of an introduction I gave to The New York Hat at the Kennington Bioscope as part of an evening dedicated to women in silent film.
It’s quite old, and very short, but The New York Hat (DW Griffith, 1912) is one of my favourite films, and I’d really like to explain why. As with Shoes (Lois Weber, 1916), this film looks at the lives of women and their finances through the lens of consumerism, but the ramifications run deeper than the shop window.
The first reason that I love The New York Hat is that it is an early woman’s picture and I mean that in a fully feminist sense. Today we talk a lot about the Bechdel Test, which is basically a test to ascertain whether the women in a film are fully realised characters and not just appendages to the blokes. To pass the Bechdel Test, two named female characters have to have a conversation with each other about something that isn’t a man. Sounds simple. In the field, films that pass this test are rarer than hen’s teeth. It’s really hard to map the Bechdel test back on to silent films in the first place, and so many modern films fail it that you have to assume that older ones will struggle.
However, The New York Hat passes not just the letter but the spirit of the Bechdel test with flying colours, because its narrative is driven entirely by what women want, by what women understand about the world and the values that women have. We have the mother who wants the best for her daughter, the “bits of finery” that she craves, and the daughter who wants to grow up. Then we have some more women, the gossips, who create a conflict for her.
We have two male characters: the father is a no-good man who doesn’t really understand or care about women, and the minister who is a very good man, but also fails to understand women and their world.
Loos often recalled it was the first film that she ever wrote, as a film fan back in California. She sent this story off to the Biograph company and she was delighted when they sent back a cheque and said they were going to make it. As she told and retold this story she embellished it. To be honest, it was the second script she had accepted by Biograph. And she was so fond of knocking years off her age that at some point you will you find her saying that she was 12 years old when she wrote the story, which is not true. She was in her early 20s – which is still very impressive. And it is interesting that she chose to represent herself that way when this story has so much to do with the importance of being seen as a young woman, rather than a little girl.

The New York Hat is a deceptive film, which appears to be about fashion and gossip and intrigue, but is actually about a young woman making her first independent steps in the world. Like the hat itself, there is more to it than meets the eye.
I love this movie. It’s nice to see you discuss a specific film in so much depth.
Thanks! I realised that I do this quite rarely
Reblogged this on ithankyouarthur.
Terrific post about this neglected film. One in which DWG redeems his rather crass earlier excursion into women’s hats, with THOSE AWFUL HATS, where the women sporting giant headgear are scooped up out of the cinema by a crane-grab. And indeed his other fashion film, THE GIBSON GiRL, which has a stylish young woman pursued by a grotesque band of male admirers. But you’re right: THE NEW YORK HAT is indeed a glimpse into the future – of cinema.