The Women

Experience the greatest films from Hollywood’s Golden Age back on the big screen, every week at The Loft Cinema!
 
Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell star in this hilariously biting, all-female comedy classic about a group of sharp-tongued Park Avenue Ladies Who Lunch … and dish … with disastrous results! Based on the hit stage play by Clare Boothe Luce, The Women follows happily-married Manhattan wife and mother Mary Haines (Norma Shearer) and her large circle of sophisticated New York society “friends,” who recommend divorce after gleefully informing her that her husband has been stepping out with a predatory department store clerk named  Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford), and soon all hell is breaking loose as the women trade verbal zingers, jockey for supremacy and use any means necessary to outwit, out-dress, out-finagle, and even out-slug their dear, devoted sisters. A collaborative effort between famed writer Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jane Murfin, The Women features 135 women, each of whom has a speaking role, to the complete exclusion of men – famously, not one man appears on screen, as an incredible cast of 1930s actresses (including Mary Boland, Paulette Goddard and Joan Fontaine, among many others) indulge in delightfully saucy conversational gymnastics, with overlapping, rapid-fire repartee delivered so quickly it almost requires repeat viewings. Featuring an over-the-top, six-minute fashion show shot in dazzling Technicolor (in an otherwise black and white film), The Women is a raucous, rollicking romp that also broke new ground in Hollywood cinema. (Dir. by George Cukor, 1939, USA, 133 mins., Not Rated)