The Women (1939)

Set in the upper crust of Manhattan society, a cheerful wife (Norma Shearer) finds her "perfect" life crashing around her when she discovers her husband is having an affair with a scheming shopgirl (Joan Crawford). Despite her mother's (Lucile Watson) advice, she goes to Reno for a divorce, a decision she will later regret. Based on the play by Clare Booth Luce and directed by George Cukor (GASLIGHT). The film has a huge following among gay men but I don't think it holds up well. Its attitudes toward women and marriage are outdated and in a post feminist society, its suggestion that women are not complete without a husband is ridiculous. As the nobly suffering wife, Shearer is annoyingly saccharine. Enough to make you understand why her husband would look elsewhere for relief. The dialogue is bitchy and mirthful but the women are all such cats that it doesn't reflect well at all on women. There are compensations: Rosalind Russell comes into her own as a comedienne here and steals the movie, Paulette Goddard's sexy minx would soon propel her into one of the 1940s popular leading ladies and Crawford is amusingly brittle as the homewrecker. I much prefer the 1956 remake THE OPPOSITE SEX (who wouldn't take June Allyson over Shearer?). The all female cast includes Joan Fontaine (whose breakout role in REBECCA the next year would take her out of these wimpy parts), Mary Boland, Phyllis Povah, Virginia Wiedler, Marjorie Main, Ruth Hussey, Virginia Grey, Butterfly McQueen, Mary Beth Hughes and Theresa Harris.