1939: The Women

The Women (Cukor, 1939) 6/10

The one-sheet tagline for George Cukor's 1939 film The Women declared 'It's all about men!" Yet, throughout the course of Cukor's 133 minute melodrama, there is not a single masculine presence visible. Furthermore, despite having an entirely female cast featuring some of the biggest stars of the period, it is the topic of men that dominates the proceedings through hearsay, third-party gossip and the rare off-screen appearance.

Before Sex and the City monopolized the superficial plight of the modern Manhattan socialite, there was The Women. Released by MGM in 1939 and shot by famed ‘women’s director’ George Cukor, The Women is an archetypal example of MGM's high production values during the 1930's. Taken from a play by Clare Booth Luce, the film centers on a group of catty and shallow high-society women who are as eager to backstab one another, as they are to indulge in sherry-filled fashion shows and afternoon tea parties.

The crux of the film details the collapse of Mary Haines' (Norma Shearer) marriage to Stephen Haines, the latter having absconded his marital vows to embark on an illicit affair with snarling working-class perfume saleswoman Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford). Unbeknownst to Mary, this information has been spread without her knowledge throughout her Park Avenue social circuit by her garrulous cousin Sylvia (Rosalind Russell). After crushingly hearing the news via a talkative manicurist, Mary leaves Stephen and heads to a ranch in Reno, where along with other divorcees she must decided whether her pride is more important than her marriage.

Adapted by pioneering female screenwriters Anita Loos and Jane Murfin, The Women is mostly a callous and throughly bitchy affair. Despite its projections of aristocratic sophistication, The Women features waves of snappy dialogue drenched in sexual innuendo and vitriolic assaults quite unbecoming for MGM's output during the period. Besides its physical exclusion of the male sex, The Women is also particularly interesting for its conceptualization of "the modern woman."

Mary Haines certainly considers herself to be a progressive character and avoids the recommendations of her mother to act obliviously toward Stephen's indiscretions. Nevertheless, Mary's supposed liberal mindset is rarely applied with conviction throughout the film: resulting in a rather regressive portrayal of womanhood. Although characters exist from each class bracket in Cukor's film, it is the upper-class figures who are garnered the majority of the film's attention. Subsequently, a skewed upper-class definition of contemporary femininity emerges that today appears volatile, negative and rooted in stereotypes.

The women in The Women are primarily portrayed as solely interested in gossip, money, fashion and physical fitness, the latter purely for sexual purposes. Scarcely any of the women are employed and even fewer are educated at a tertiary level. Any progressive attempts toward gender solidarity are also non-existent in the film. The rigidity of class relations takes precedence in their lives, as evidenced when Sylvia appears to take greater offense to Stephen having an affair with Crawford's Crystal for the clerk's social rank, rather than the act itself.

With little personal socio-economic freedom separate from their husbands, yet an abundance of leisure time, the film's characters tend to take an unhealthy interest in their friends' private lives. Their leisure time is not devoted to a pursuit of the liberal arts, but rather engaging in the art of liberally pursuing each other's dirt, secrets, lies and scandals. For several of the characters in The Women, pleasure appears to be obtained more so from the anguish of others, rather than personal development.

Consequently, the examination of feminine identity and gender-related struggles in The Women intrinsically follows a singular track. Maternalism is given preference over careerism, as Cukor's film tends to laud Shearer's doting mother. The latter's progressive 'feminism' is aggressively gnawed away by the film's insistent unspoken idea that dependence and loyalty is greater than independence and pride. Often the film tends to characterize women as petty, hysterical, chatty, irrational and primal: no more so than the film's zoological-themed opening credits delineating a corresponding animal for each character.

In casting the film in its initial moments as an animalistic menagerie, the film underscores the rare outlets for power available to its protagonists. In the concrete jungles of Manhattan, survival is obtained through uncouth alliances and marital usurpation. In trying to manipulate their surroundings or re-invent themselves, several characters in the The Women attempt to address the imbalance of power between the genders and the fetishized and sexualized commodification of their sex.

Nevertheless, feminine power in Cukor's film is a device limited to the female community which adheres to its own racial, class and socio-political prejudices. With limited options for personal socio-economic growth, the male animal becomes vital for the women in the film. The failure to transcend the autonomy of their gendered environment results in characters like Mary Haines capitulating to the status quo: as her defiant resistance to her husband's immoral actions relinquishes toward a passive acceptance of her position.

In spite of Cukor's reputation as a 'women's director,' the adherence to patriarchal and conservative values is at the cornerstone of The Women. It is this advancement of male domination which perhaps sits most uncomfortably in Cukor's purportedly 'feminist' film. One certainly has to wonder had the film been made deeper into the Second World War, when women performed a greater role on the homefront, would Cukor's film have retained the same glowing appraisal of male dominance.

Recently remade by Murphy Brown creator Diane English, The Women still retains its classic status, despite its increasingly waning critical stature. Although some critics have posited Cukor's film as a comedy or a satire, the film places far too much in the melodramatic plight of its central heroine to conform into any strict comedic classification. The performances range in divergent standards with Shearer's overwrought cuckold aging poorly, whilst Crawford's conniving temptress maturing into a fine flavour. Nevertheless it is in the snappy, fork-tongued dialogue of Loos and Murfin's script that The Women briefly exceeds the overcooked melodramatics of Cukor's direction in an otherwise clichéd and dated ensemble film

*The Women is released by Warner Home Video and is available in their Joan Crawford Collection Vol. 1

Copyright 2008 8½ Cinematheque