The Women (1939)

Directed by

George Cukor

Genre

drama film, comedy film, comedy drama, LGBTQ-related film, female buddy film

Country

United States

Runtime

2h 10m

Rated

NR

Rating

7.2 of 10 from 181 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This is a comedy drama about a group of wealthy women in Manhattan and Reno. Their lives revolve around gossip, divorce, and social competition.

sharpsophisticatedwittybitingglamoroustalkysatiricalindulgent

What happens

The Women is a 1939 American comedy-drama film directed by George Cukor. The film is based on Clare Boothe Luce's 1936 play of the same name and was adapted for the screen by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin, who had to make the film acceptable for the Production Code for it to be released. The film stars Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Lucile Watson, Mary Boland, Florence Nash, and Virginia Grey. Marjorie Main and Phyllis Povah also appear, reprising their roles from the stage play. Ruth Hussey, Virginia Weidler, Butterfly McQueen, Theresa Harris, and Hedda Hopper also appear in smaller roles. Fontaine was the last surviving actress with a credited role in the film; she died in 2013. The film continued the play's all-female tradition—the entire cast of more than 130 speaking roles was female. Set in the glamorous Manhattan apartments of high society evoked by Cedric Gibbons and in Reno, Nevada, where the women obtain their divorces, it presents an acidic commentary on the pampered lives and power struggles of various rich, bored wives and other women they come into contact with. Filmed in black and white, it includes a six-minute fashion parade filmed in three-strip Technicolor, featuring Adrian's most outré designs. Often cut in modern screenings, it has been restored by Turner Classic Movies. On DVD the original black-and-white fashion show, which is a different take, is available for the first time. Throughout The Women not a single male character is seen or heard. The attention to detail was such that even in props, such as portraits, only female figures are represented, and several animals which appeared as pets were also female. The only exceptions are a poster-drawing of a bull in the fashion show segment, a framed portrait of Stephen Haines as a boy, a figurine on Mary's night stand, and an advertisement on the back of the magazine Peggy reads at Mary's house before lunch that contains a photograph of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. In 2007 The Women was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and recommended for preservation. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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