The trailer for George Cukor‘s “The Women” (1939) begins with close-ups of the picture’s three biggest draws — the actresses Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell — before even the title is shared. Yet it’s the concomitant parenthetical comment that provides zing: “And it’s all about men.” If that weren’t enough, the clip ends with a group of sprightly young ladies at the spa and an overlaid text that reads: “Women … women … everywhere … and NOT A MAN in sight!”
“The Women” is being featured this weekend at the Paris Theater as the final film in the series “The Wonders of Technicolor.” You might wonder why it’s been included: Cinematographers Oliver T. Marsh and Joseph Ruttenberg spent the majority of their time keying the picture to a velvety range of black and white. There is, however, a six-minute technicolor exception wedged into the movie, and it is something to behold. The segment features an array of models dressed in fashions designed by Adrian Adolph Greenburg — better known in the trade as just Adrian — and stage designs overseen by Cedric Gibbons.
Cukor came to regret this super-saturated intrusion and was overruled by studio bosses when he wanted to leave it on the cutting room floor. At this date, the narrative-be-damned intrusion can’t help but be viewed as kitsch, but what splendid kitsch it is. The camera leads us to a theater that is clearly a contrivance: its architectural framework being no less a cardboard cut-out than the mavens of haute couture seated in the audience. The accompanying stage sets revolve, veering from a bucolic spring day to the laboratory of a mad scientist. Adrian’s fashions are as elegant, severe, and fabulous as the scene requires.
But what about the remaining two-and-a-half hours of “The Women”? The screen adaptation of the hit Broadway play by Clare Boothe Luce was initially delegated to, of all people, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ultimately, the duties fell into the capable hands of Anita Loos and Jane Murfin. Cukor came on board after having been canned from his duties on “Gone With the Wind,” where Clark Gable, from some accounts, bristled at being directed by a homosexual and a Jew. Cukor was happy to leave Tara behind: He was dissatisfied with his early work on “Wind.”
The opening credits of “The Women” set the tone: Each of the film’s ingenues is introduced with an animal equivalent, mirroring the function and character of each role. Shearer is a wide-eyed doe, Crawford a leopard and, further on down the line, Marjorie Main is portrayed by a hee-hawing ass complete with a snippet of down-home fiddle music. We are then shepherded into a Manhattan spa of absurd splendor; think Brueghel by way of “Metropolis.” All the while, the camera moves with an assurance that is both fluid and encyclopedic. This opening — it can’t be more than a minute or two in length — is a splendid bit of filmmaking.
As for the women-folk, well, they’re reeling from and dealing with infidelity or, at least, that’s the case with our heroine, Mary Haines (Shearer). When she gets wind that her husband has been stepping out on the town with the perfume attendant at a local department store, Crystal Allen (Crawford), there follows a cascade of doubts, tears, and barbs, lots of barbs. “The Women” takes time to start cooking — the first thirty minutes are creakier than the speed of its repartee would seem to admit — but once you’re in its groove, enjoy a cast game for anything. Russell plays it loud-and-large as a snarky fashionista, and if a young Lucille Ball didn’t take notes on her performance, I’ll eat one of Adrian’s ridiculously overwrought hats.
In a contemporaneous review in the New York Times, Frank Nugent noted that “we don’t know when we’ve ever seen such a terrible collection of women. They’re really appallingly good.” Terrible, appalling, and good are adjectives that still hold true, albeit under circumstances altered by time, for this unwieldy, remarkable, and peculiarly contemporary movie.
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