Oddball Films Media
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May 24, 2015
Accent on Beauty (B+W, 1930s)
A beautiful young lady demonstrates her makeup routine, while the audience gets a behind the scenes look at how makeup is made, or rather, how it was made in the early '30s. Those bottles and jars filled with the promise of loveliness are a serious business, requiring both big scary machines and delicate hands. Exotic ingredients, precise manufacturing methods and skilled technicians come together to make de luxe miracles for milady's dressing table.
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Cindy is sad, she's all alone now that her best girlfriends have all left town after graduation to study in their chosen fields (you know, secretarial and teaching of course). But Cindy doesn't have a career path, just a great hairdo. That is until Cindy meets with an older friend who's having a fabulous time in Beauty School. Suddenly, the path becomes clear, and Cindy enrolls the very next day. See what she learns to make every woman as beautiful as she can.
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"Every young girl can be beautiful." While this beauty primer begins with a broad and semi-enlightened view of beauty; pressing girls to read and be interested in the world around them, it quickly devolves into social conditioning for the non-feminist young woman, teaching her all the best ways to be attractive to the opposite sex. Learn how to make-up your face, dress yourself and how to shut-up when men are talking, because beauty isn't just skin deep, it also means silencing yourself.
Beauty Knows No Pain (Color, 1971)
In Texas, Gussie Nell Davis, who wears harlequin glasses and seems to exercise her face by smiling, talks about the values she instills in the girls who become Kilgore College Rangerettes; loveliness, poise and dependability. Beauty Knows No Pain is a documentary film about the Kilgore Rangerettes by Elliott Erwitt. In 1940, the Kilgore College Rangerettes became the first dancing drill team in the nation. They have been performing at half-time shows during college football games ever since. Beauty Knows No Pain gives an in-depth look at the young ladies who come from all over the country to compete in a two-week drill, knowing that not all of them will make the cut. At the end of the two week camp, the girls gather to see who is in, who has been chosen as an alternate, and who will go home unfulfilled. The girls meet their triumph and disappointment with shrieks and tears. An eye-opening verite view of true-blue All-American culture.