Young Woman and the Sea, the movie that chronicles the historic sporting feat of swimmer Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle, will debut on Disney+ on July 19, after being shown in U.S. cinemas on May 31.
On August 6, 1926, Trudy Ederle, a 21-year-old girl from New York, was the first woman to swim across the 21 miles-34 kilometers English Channel, from France to England, braving the freezing water, a swarm of jellyfish, stormy waves, and currents that caused her to lose her orientation in the dark. Her record time of 14 hours and 34 minutes was two hours ahead of Argentina’s Enrique Tiraboschi’s 16 hours and 33 minutes, and it remained unbeaten until 1950.
We interviewed the protagonist Daisy Ridley, 28, famous for playing Rey in the new Star Wars trilogy, Norwegian director Joaquim Rønning and producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
Bruckheimer explains, “Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson was looking for a few films to show his daughters, and he couldn’t find anything, so in a used bookstore he discovered this 2009 essay by Glenn Stout How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World.”
Young Woman and the Sea (c) Elena Nenkova-Disney
In the film, we see described the life of women in New York City in the early 20th century. Trudy’s mother, an immigrant from Germany, had read in the newspapers of a tragedy in 1904, a steamboat caught fire and more than 1,000 people died, mainly women and children, who could have saved themselves by jumping into the water, but did not do so because they could not swim. One evening at dinner, she challenges her husband, a butcher, insisting that her two daughters, Trudy and her older sister Meg, take swimming lessons.
Daisy Ridley says of the difference between the two sisters: “Trudy is free to do what her heart dictates, to become a swimming champion, despite the difficulties to overcome; while Meg represents the fate of women of that time, she is forced to marry a husband chosen by her parents and to work in her father’s butcher shop, she has no other options and her story breaks our heart. It was wonderful for me to interpret the loving relationship between Meg and Trudy, I know very well what that means, since I have sisters.”
Rønning argues, “Meg and Trudy were both excellent swimmers, but Meg can’t free herself and has to bow to the rules of the day. But if it weren’t for the support of her sister and her family, Trudy would never have been able to complete the Channel crossing.”
It comes naturally to compare the record of Gertrude Ederle with that of Diana Nyad, played by Annette Bening in the film Nyad, who at age 64 swam the distance between Cuba and Florida, 110 miles-177 kilometers in 53 hours. But we were in 2013, in a society with much more modern values. To understand the difference, just think that at the Paris Olympics of 1924 participated 135 women out of 3,089 athletes, 5%, and only in sports such as swimming and tennis. At that world competition, Trudy Ederle won a gold medal and two bronze medals. This year, 100 years later, more than 5,000 women, 50%, will participate in the Olympics, again in Paris.
It was precisely Trudy Ederle’s victory that gave the courage to American girls to try their hand at sports, after winning the right to vote in 1920.
Ridley agrees, “I’m thrilled to be part of a film that tells the story of Trudy to today’s audience, and I couldn’t believe that the majority, myself included, didn’t know about Trudy. There has been a lot of progress in the last hundred years, but there is still a lot to do, and especially in the last two years there has been a lot of talk about women’s participation in sport, so it was wonderful for me to get into this conversation and show what the situation of women in those days was like.”
The director concludes: “This seismic event changed women’s sport forever, and the answer we wanted to find was the question of why Trudy did it, representing the historical period, the culture and social norms of those times, putting everything into perspective and understanding what had given her the strength to try this really crazy feat.”