The Women

Directed by: George Cukor - 2 hours, 13 minutes - 1939 - USA - B&W/Color - DVD - 1.33:1
Starring: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Ruth Hussey

The Women stars Norma Shearer as Mary Haines, a sweet and loyal wife who discovers via nail salon gossip that her husband has been cheating on her. Though her mother tells her to ignore the infidelity and remain quiet, Mary confronts her homewrecker and becomes the favorite scandal of the society papers. Her ‘friends’ who helped orchestrate the confrontation go back and forth between sympathetic advice and delight at the whole mess. Mary decides to leave her disloyal husband and hops a train to Reno for a divorce, where she settles in at a ranch of jilted women to ride out the 6­-week residency requirement.

The film’s tagline, prominently stamped on the poster, was “It’s all about the men!” So, The Women may not look very progressive today, but the story -­ adapted from Clare Booth Luce’s play by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin ­ raised post-Production-­Code eyebrows in the ‘30s with the notion that a woman could take a divorce into her own hands. This story of high society women sniping and gossiping at each other is on any list of the Cattiest Films of All Time, usually at the top. There isn’t a single man onscreen (even the animals are all female), though men are usually the topic of conversation. Though shot primarily in black and white, a highlight (or lowlight) of the film is a ten-­minute Technicolor fashion show, put on for the women when they’re shopping. The show features the work of Adrian, MGM’s lead costume designer from the late ‘20s through the late ‘40s, whose work included Camille (1936), The Philadelphia Story (1940), and The Wizard of Oz (1939). Cukor hated the sequence, and it’s often omitted in modern screenings, but the studio insisted on its inclusion. 

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