Sylvia Scarlett (George Cukor, 1935) is a queer cult classic that playfully explores disguise, desire and mistaken identity. Starring Katharine Hepburn, the film follows a young woman who cross-dresses as ‘Sylvester’, transforming acts of deception and sexual misrecognition into forms of self-invention.

Through opacity, performance and concealment, Sylvia Scarlett anticipates cinema’s fascination with the ‘bed trick’ – one of the oldest narrative devices in myth, literature and film, in which characters go to bed with one person and wake up with another. The film uses disguise and ambiguity to unsettle fixed ideas of gender and attraction, revealing desire as fluid, contingent and shaped by illusion.

This screening forms part of a wider film programme exploring the 'bed trick' – one of the oldest narrative devices in myth, literature and cinema – in which characters go to bed with one person and wake up with another. Across three films and a book launch, the programme examines how cinema uses disguise, secrecy and revelation to probe desire, fantasy and the entanglement of sex and lies.

Discover the programme

Curated by Izabella Scott, in collaboration with film curator Emily Wright.