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Yar, you be here: The Women > Customer Reviews The Women Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 23 Reviews)One of Joan's Best!
I recently purchased the Joan Crawford Collection box set through amazon and loved it. All of the titles, including this one, are among Joan Crawford's best, that I am looking forward to Warner/Turner's release of more of her MGM films on DVD. This film is hilarious, and is carried off wonderfully by such a talented cast, including Norma Shearer and the always funny Roz Russell. I have always enjoyed this film, and the film itself deserves 5 stars. I only gave the DVD a four star rating on account of the packaging, namely the incorrect black and white photo on the back cover. By examining it closely, one can see that this photo is not from this film or time period at all. It appears to be a picture from an Anne Bancroft film. I realize that this is not that important, but I do think that more effort should have been put into the packaging of such a wonderful film, especially since it was released by a company like Warner, and not some budget company. The DVD itself is very good and includes many nice features, so I have no complaints there, just the minor one about the cover art on the case. Simply a great movie; as for the new DVD release...
If you already own the original DVD of "The Women", don't break your neck buying this latest release--it's exactly the same DVD that came out a couple of years ago, only it's been re-packaged in a plastic case to match the other Joan Crawford releases that just came out. And, as another customer noted below, for some inexplicable reason the only photograph on the back of the package is a picture from John Ford's "7 Women" (1966), which ironically hasn't even been released on DVD. Okay, I know Warner Bros. has put out a lot of DVDs to date (thank you Warner Bros. Home Entertainment!), but this is pretty shoddy quality control--don't qualified people check such things before they get printed? (Fox Home Entertainment is infamous for making similar mistakes on their DVD packaging.) La publicite, indeed! Anyhoo, the film is a treasure, the kind of movie you have to see multiple times to absorb all the wit and subtlety of Clare Booth Luce's original play and Anita Loos and Jane Murfin's script, plus George Cukor's masterful direction. Without a doubt, he definitely knew how to direct women, and here every actress shines equally. Every time I see it I simply can't figure out how Rosalind Russell is able to deliver her lines so briskly without taking a breath! A truly extraordinary cast in a one-of-a-kind motion picture. "A woman's compromised the day she is born."
Directed by George Cukor in 1939, from Clare Boothe Luce's satire of women's vicious and predatory nature in New York's upper class, The Women features a powerhouse cast of actresses, some only beginning long and distinguished careers. In this drama, a clique of society friends feeds off the gossip they learn from a manicurist in a nail salon. Sylvia Fowler, played superbly by Rosalind Russell, discovers, quite by accident, that Mary Haines's husband, Stephen, is having an affair with a shop girl who works behind the perfume counter at the ritzy department store where the friends shop. Crystal Allen (a pre-dark-eyebrow Joan Crawford) has set her sights on the wealthy Stephen, playing a masterful cat and mouse game of seduction. Mary (Norma Shearer), although brokenhearted, refuses to acknowledge the affair, hoping her husband will come to his senses. Wisely counseled by an astute mother, Mary is given two pieces of advice: "every man is prone to fall for the charms of a strange woman, bored by himself and his responsibilities" and "don't solicit advice from your girlfriends", because they will steer you toward divorce. Sylvia (Russell) rallies to Mary's defense, although she is the worst and most vicious gossip of them all. Visiting the perfume counter to give Crystal a hard time, Sylvia recognizes a like-minded spirit. Mary travels to Reno for a divorce, where she makes new friends, including Paulette Goddard, whose characters has stolen Sylvia Fowler's husband. When Mary and her new friends return to New York, Stephen has married Crystal, although she is already cheating on Stephen, her comeuppance on the horizon. With this group of women, soon more gossip begins, this time about Crystal and her secret affair. Eventually, all is made right between Mary and Stephen and Crystal is shown up for the conniving social-climber that she is. The dialog is snappy, the delivery a mile a minute, the gaggle of chattering ladies spiting out rapid-fire lines. The elegant Norma Shearer is perfect as the wronged woman, patient and long-suffering, but only to a point, when she stands up to the brittle and grasping Crystal. This is old Hollywood at its satirical best and most self-important, an upper-class drama with top screen stars, couture fashions, an upbeat score that is almost playful and the emotional tug-of-war between the heroine and the arch-villainess. In her diva-like superiority, Crystal's spits, "You noble wives and mothers bore the brains out of me." This war of the titans generates a blistering satire on the affairs of women, in this case, wealthy New Yorker's whose days are spent in idle mischief. Bearing in mind that this movie was released in 1939, one line shocked me, inserted towards the end of the movie, as Mary's mother comforts her daughter after the divorce. She explains that the single life has its compensations: "Heaven knows it's marvelous to spread out in bed like a swastika!" Luan Gaines/2005.
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