Bechdel Test Movie List

Also known as 'Great Performances', but fans will know it as "Chess in Concert".

Amazing music, but it does not pass the test.

Starring Kerry Ellis and Idina Menzel as our two ladies who never speak to each other.

Incorrect that they never speak to each other—they sing a duet—but correct that it still fails the test: the duet's called "I Know Him So Well".

Seeing as this is a musical, because they were both on stage together, singing a duet, and lamenting over a similar problem does not mean that they actually spoke to each other. I believe the tone of this song would not have been so sentimental if this were a conversation between wife and new squeeze.

What's interesting about Chess is that, since the musical has had so many different and revisions over the years, it may or may not pass the Bechdel test depending on which version you use.

In this concert's case, since it is a lightly-modified variation on the original London script, it fails the test pretty drastically, as the only interaction between Florence and Svetlana is "I Know Him So Well", a song centered around mutual suitor Anatoly (it's even worse in later revisions, where the song is played as a meta-diegetic interaction, meaning the two women technically don't ever speak to each other).

Other versions fare better, though none are quite perfect. Broadway and certain revisions do the best, as it includes several lines of dialogue between the characters not centered around Anatoly, and which can be expanded pretty heavily should the reviser wish to do so.

There’s a West End boot from 84 where they do more explicitly meet (“Svetlana, right?”) but it goes into IKHSW pretty quickly. In its defense, most of the conversations in Chess are either about Anatoly, chess, or both.