The Women

Not one man appears in this film. All of its more than one hundred and thirty speaking parts are women; men are discussed, pursued, unfaithful and abandoned, but never on screen. The rule comes from Clare Boothe Luce's 1936 play and the film keeps it exactly. Anita Loos and Jane Murfin wrote the adaptation. The cast shows what MGM could assemble: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Mary Boland. Marjorie Main and Phyllis Povah carried their stage roles over. In the middle, with no narrative justification whatsoever, sits a Technicolor fashion show running nearly six minutes. The film is in black and white; that sequence is not. Adrian designed the costumes, and the segment survives as a record of 1930s haute couture in its own right. The plot: a woman learns from her manicurist that her husband is unfaithful, travels to Reno for a divorce, and forms alliances with other women along the way. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Hollywood comedy that moves fast and lands line after line. Who it is not for: anyone expecting solidarity between women. The film mostly sets them against each other, and its final resolution has aged badly.