Lewin Fitzhamon | Tilly the Tomboy Visits the Poor / 1910

girls gone wild

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lewin Fitzhamon (director) Tilly the Tomboy Visits the Poor / 1910 

British film Tilly the Tomboy Visits the Poor may not truly be an LGBTQ film at all, since nothing sexual is even hinted at in this work, which evidently was one of 20 films produced by British film pioneer Cecil Hepworth between 1910 and 1915. Although it’s quite clear that Tilly (Alma Taylor) and her friend Sally (Chrissie White) are not the typical models of feminine behavior of the day, one might describe them as simply having an enormous demonic energy in the manner of the troublesome Zazie in Zazie dans le métro in Raymond Queneau’s fiction and the film directed by Louis Malle in 1959. In fact, Malle’s film has several queer issues involved with her adventures. But in this case they are just girls out for a wild time, future feminists perhaps who won’t be ruled by the patriarchal society in which they exist.

 

     Yet, director Lewin Fitzhamon’s title suggests another possibility, that these girls simply have a hormonal imbalance, and accordingly, given their “tomboy” status, act more like boys than girls, hinting at their future break with society as a whole as sexually identified lesbians.

       And in many respects Tilly is another version of Al Christie’s Rowdy Ann of nine years later. But Ann is old enough that her rejection of all male admirers truly means something, and her wild ways are based on a strong moral code which she enacts like a punishing god in a manner that generally is inappropriate to the situations.

       Tilly and Sally are determined only to do bad, or at least botch up those in society who attempt to help it properly function. They begin the six-minute piece by nastily torturing the poor sick bed-ridden woman to whom they have evidently been sent to read books and comfort. 

       Seconds later they tie together two working men, one with a long ladder and the other with several baskets piled atop his head, the girls tying a rope to the ladder at one end, and to the basket carrier on the other, resulting in everything coming down in a crash. Once they recognize that they have both been subject to the girls’ stunt, the men on the chase after the two naughty girls, who on route, completely vandalize a bakery and all its cookies and cakes causing a volcano of flour to erupt in the faces of everyone involved. The bakers join the delivery men on the chase as the girls steal a small delivery truck, mostly filled with new laundered clothes which they merrily toss out on route, angering not only the laundry driver but several of the women who were waiting on their fresh linens and clothes. All join in the race to capture the villains.

       That these girls obviously know what is truly expected of them, despite their chaos they have wrought, is obvious when, almost captured, to hurry back to the poor woman’s room, pick up their books and, when the others arrive, appear to be beautifully performing their charitable duties.

        Whether these girls might later develop more traditional feminine ways and wiles is truly doubtful, and even if they eventually find young men to permanently bedevil in matrimony, there is truly something queer about their behavior.

 

Los Angeles, February 2, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2022).