Here’s a documentary about a vanished woman that is not true crime (unless crimes against feminism count). It is about trailblazing American sex researcher Shere Hite, exploring how she disappeared from the who’s who of 20th-century feminists. In 1976, Hite became famous almost overnight with the publication of her groundbreaking book The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality. Based on an anonymous survey of 3,000 women about their sex lives, it sold 48m copies. Hite’s big finding was that 70% of women didn’t orgasm from penetrative sex – breaking news in the late 1970s.
Hite had been working as a model to pay her way as a PhD student when she joined New York’s feminist movement. The tipping point came when she appeared in a sexist typewriter advert (caption: “The typewriter so smart she doesn’t have to be”). Archive footage offers a vivid picture of the energy and revolutionary spirit of 70s feminism. Director Nicole Newnham gets brilliant interviews, too: funny and intelligent, with activists, academics and psychologists who knew Hite. And then there is Hite herself, magnetic presence from the archive: fragile-looking beauty with an intellect as sharp as nails, who could debate any politician under the table. Dakota Johnson does a wonderful voiceover reading her diary entries.
