“The Scientific Girl” explores the “outbreak” of 1940’s Hollywood films featuring mentally ill heroines – Olivia de Havilland in “The Snake Pit,” for example. By tracing the treatment of hysterical women in the 1890s, our heroine, the Scientific Girl, reveals how women’s problems have been stereotyped and how the “evil-seductress effect” works. “An intelligent attempt to span generations and cinematically tie together the treatment of hysteria in women as a form of entertainment…an intriguing subject.” – Cinema Canada
