Link: Program Details for Pattern for Smartness.
ok, maybe not THE funniest film i've ever seen--that would be "blazing saddles"--but definitely the funniest film about sewing that i've ever seen, and how often do you get to say that?
while doing some research for the opera i'm currently costuming, i've been looking thru some footage stored at the internet archives. i stumbled upon this short from 1948, touting the virtues of home sewing and how simplicity patterns can make it "an embarrassingly simple thing".
this film is 18 minutes long, i watched it in streaming video rather than download it, but i laughed so hard and so long that it would have been worth the wait to have it on my computer.
highlights include:
1--two embarrassingly bad adult actors bravely trying to portray clean-cut, average american teenagers, betty and johnny, but who only manage to make us hope they didn't quit their day jobs to make this film.
2--a giant 8-foot simplicity pattern that slides into view, from behind which emerge the characters on the pattern envelope, who then proceed to walk us thru the embarrassingly simple process of sewing a dress.
3--an embarrassingly awkward sequence in which is described the process for making a pattern, eloquently expressed in rhyming couplet.
and then, wonder of wonders, what follows is an excellent demonstration of the sewing process as i learned it: pin fitting the pattern, basting and trying on, adjusting for fit, lots of hand work. it is probably why seamstresses in the past had more success with their sewing than seamstresses today. the kicker is the narrator's comment that you can't just whip out a dress like that, but you can do it in a weekend. :) a man after my own heart.
don't miss the bottom of the program details page, where you can see the search words that this film is filed under: SEXISM GENDER ROLES WOMAN WOMEN SEWING
if you watch this film and don't laugh out loud at least once, i'll give you your money back. :)
