George Cukor's queenly classic 'The Women' is famous for a couple of reasons. First, there is not a single male actor in it, they are always just around the corner or on the other end of the telephone, and secondly, it was the first major Hollywood release that SHOULD have been played by a cast of men in drag.
It's bitchy, occasionally saccharine, childish and gleefully satisfying in some of the casting. The star is Norma Shearer. I've always found her to be a bit dull but she suits this nice, too- good-to-be-true character well enough. In the end, though, when she turns bitchy like her pals, she is less convincing. Her performance is largely contrived and fake but that isn't so unusual in movies of the 1930s before Method acting released the inner neurotic and all that nonsense. 'The Women' is a typically adolescent romp so beloved of my parents' generation, the WW2 era. They wanted fantasy to take their minds off Hitler and Hirohito and Stalin, and tinsel town gave it to them in a number of classic flicks of this sort. 1939, the first year of the Second World War, was a bumper year. 'The Women' didn't stand a chance at the Oscars with 'Gone with the Wind', 'The Wizard of Oz', 'Ninotchka', and 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' on the lists. But there are some great comic performances in it. Rosalind Russell is very funny as the catty gossip monger who jumps from her best friend status to Norma Shearer to that of Joan Crawford's sleazy slut, Crystal Allen, after Crystal seduces Norma Shearer's clearly weak-minded husband and marries him.
All these women end up in Reno getting divorce-lites. Marjorie Main runs the 'dude' ranch for divorcees and she's up to her usual camp standards as she describes 'those brick-headed men.. (who) like to get right to the point.' Paulette Goddard has a nice girl fight with Rosalind Russell (who's husband Goddard has seduced), complete with hair pulling and clothing ripping. The ever-boring Joan Fontaine is the young wife who thinks her husband doesn't love her anymore (and no wonder, she's such a simpering nitwit) but suddenly discovers she pregnant, and in an especially nauseating scene calls him from Reno to tell him the news in the most sickening female baby-gushing ever to be seen in any movie. I hated her in this movie, and that's saying something. But that's what 'good' women lived for in those days, babies. The others, like Crystal Allen, live for bubble baths and orgasms.
The real star of this movie comes in about halfway through in the glorious, plump personage of Mary Boland as the Countess de Lave, who is on her fourth husband and about to make off with Buck, the dude ranch hand. Boland gives the middle and end of this movie the kick in the bustle it needs as one tires of the schtick of the other women.
I keep this movie in my collection simply for Mary Boland tossing herself distraught on to the nearest chaise-longue wailing 'La publicité!!' after a scandal in the nightclub back in New York when Buck has teamed himself up with Crystal Allen.
There are also some wonderful character actresses who get most of the good lines.
'The Women' isn't as great as people once thought, but it's still a fun, camp party flick.
It's bitchy, occasionally saccharine, childish and gleefully satisfying in some of the casting. The star is Norma Shearer. I've always found her to be a bit dull but she suits this nice, too- good-to-be-true character well enough. In the end, though, when she turns bitchy like her pals, she is less convincing. Her performance is largely contrived and fake but that isn't so unusual in movies of the 1930s before Method acting released the inner neurotic and all that nonsense. 'The Women' is a typically adolescent romp so beloved of my parents' generation, the WW2 era. They wanted fantasy to take their minds off Hitler and Hirohito and Stalin, and tinsel town gave it to them in a number of classic flicks of this sort. 1939, the first year of the Second World War, was a bumper year. 'The Women' didn't stand a chance at the Oscars with 'Gone with the Wind', 'The Wizard of Oz', 'Ninotchka', and 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' on the lists. But there are some great comic performances in it. Rosalind Russell is very funny as the catty gossip monger who jumps from her best friend status to Norma Shearer to that of Joan Crawford's sleazy slut, Crystal Allen, after Crystal seduces Norma Shearer's clearly weak-minded husband and marries him.
All these women end up in Reno getting divorce-lites. Marjorie Main runs the 'dude' ranch for divorcees and she's up to her usual camp standards as she describes 'those brick-headed men.. (who) like to get right to the point.' Paulette Goddard has a nice girl fight with Rosalind Russell (who's husband Goddard has seduced), complete with hair pulling and clothing ripping. The ever-boring Joan Fontaine is the young wife who thinks her husband doesn't love her anymore (and no wonder, she's such a simpering nitwit) but suddenly discovers she pregnant, and in an especially nauseating scene calls him from Reno to tell him the news in the most sickening female baby-gushing ever to be seen in any movie. I hated her in this movie, and that's saying something. But that's what 'good' women lived for in those days, babies. The others, like Crystal Allen, live for bubble baths and orgasms.
The real star of this movie comes in about halfway through in the glorious, plump personage of Mary Boland as the Countess de Lave, who is on her fourth husband and about to make off with Buck, the dude ranch hand. Boland gives the middle and end of this movie the kick in the bustle it needs as one tires of the schtick of the other women.
I keep this movie in my collection simply for Mary Boland tossing herself distraught on to the nearest chaise-longue wailing 'La publicité!!' after a scandal in the nightclub back in New York when Buck has teamed himself up with Crystal Allen.
There are also some wonderful character actresses who get most of the good lines.
'The Women' isn't as great as people once thought, but it's still a fun, camp party flick.