Girl Power

There need to be more movies about rambunctious old ladies. In fact—there just need to be more rambunctious old ladies. Note, I wrote Ladies. We don’t need more rampaging elderly men; we have enough of them on our daily news scoop of insanity. No, it’s old ladies we now need; the rambunctiousier, the better. Because they get the good things done. The old ladies I’m referring to are the spirited trio in the 1958 British film Alive and Kicking. (You’ve never heard of it? Don’t worry, it’s viewable for free on YouTube here). Sybil Thorndike, Estelle Winwood, and Kathleen Harrison decide to run away from their old-age home and, after several adventures, land on a speck of Irish rock called Inishfada (a real place), where they end up creating an island-wide cottage industry of selling hand-knitted wool sweaters. And they do it—along with all the island women—by themselves. The men help, by shearing the sheep, but it’s the ladies who run the business: They give the orders, spin the yarn,…