Rating: 
Summary: True - even for today!
Review: This movie is so great! Even if there aren't any men in it, that doesn't matter. Joan Crawford as the scheming Crystal is so funny! This movie really shows how women are, even in today's time. It has all the emotions in it, love, hate, revenge...........I highly recommend this to any one!
Rating:
Summary: The Remarkable Roz!!!
Review: I know there are 130 women in this film (in an all female cast,) and a rather star studed one too. But the one who stood out was Roz. (Producer Freddie Brisson thought so too. If it wasn't for "The Women" he may have not have made up his mind so quickly that he was going to find that girl and marrie her!)
I love Roz and I would watch any (well almost any) thing with her in it. But this great movie makes it a treat to see her at her funniest and craziest! She plays the up to no good, out to reck others lives',Sylvia Fowler. (aka "the head wich.")You probably should hate Sylvia more than anyone else in the movie, and you do, but you find you just can't help but laugh at her and see her for just what she is! Yet she may not have been such fun to hate, or so wonderful to laugh at if she wasn't played by the remarkable Roz....but the best for her was yet to come.
Rating:
Summary: All this, and wardrobe, too
Review: I second all previous laudatory claims for this fabulous
movie. But, even it was a stinker, it is worth the price of the
video just for the wardrobe. Thanks to earlier reviewer who
identifies the gowns as Adrian. Mary's maribou peignoir will blow your doors off. It is a marvel of a movie. Watch it with your mom if you are over fifty. She'll clue you in on all the "gals."
Rating:
Summary: No Other Word But Fantabulous!
Review: When watching this movie, it's important to remember when it was made, and that things have changed a lot in the last 50 years. This is an incredible movie, not only because there are NO men it in anywhere, but the story is really very well done, the acting is superb, and you will be drawn into the characters' lives as the proceed to completely mess with each others heads, all the while pretending to be friends. Hmmm, at times it was almost like watching people I know. Buy it! Trust me, because you will want to see this one more than once.
Rating:
Summary: a vision of love that is wonderful
Review: i have watched this movie over and over again just to capture and enjoy the rhythm and cadence of the verbiage tossed back and forth.....it's musical ......lycrical...comical......and thoughtful.....these women are catty, political....fight against their feelings and ultimately can't help but show what they're feeling by trying to hold back or in trying to manipultate others.....i see my mom in these gals...their love for family....wanting to be the showgirl of the times for their love...and yearning for what it means to just be while being the ultimate "woman"........cukor is a genious......and the woman in this film deserve a standing ovation......roses.....and many hugs from anyone who can appreciate their strength and honesty in the feelings they offered us in this film.........
Rating:
Summary: There's a name for you ladies.........
Review: MAGNIFICENT!!! This movie has it all...love, lies, deceipt, scandals...mixed with enough vamp and bitchiness to entertain the most descriminating oldies movie watcher. You'll love the characters, the plot, the clothes, the catchy never-to-be-forgotten one-liners...from start to finish. I've seen it on TV, rented it and now am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my very own copy from Amazon! Oh, hurry UPS man....or someone "bring me a bromide...and put some gin in it!"
Rating:
Summary: Oh, l'Amour, l'Amour!
Review: I came across "The Women" on Turner Classic Movies one rainy afternoon and found it to be such a delight, I purchased it without having seen the first half. A showcase of some of the great female actresses of the '30s and '40s (Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, and Norma Shearer-though she has a tendency to overact), "The Women" is great good fun, a well-written, stylishly-directed comedy with some classic scenes sure to bring a smile to any classic movie fan's face.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie
Review: I found this movie totally by accident late one night. It was just before Christmas and being exhausted by all the "to-do" that this time of year brings, I was VERY surprised that I was just as wide awake at the end of the film as at the beginning of it! This is the BEST movie I've seen in a very long time. Most of the stuff that's cranked out now just isn't worth the time or the expense of a ticket. "The Women" was something I just couldn't tear myself away from. I'm very glad that it's available on video tape because this is one movie I'll watch again (and again!).
Rating:
Summary: THE camp classic
Review: It's still somewhat astonishing to remember that THE WOMEN was actually written by a woman, since it must be one of the most misogynistic movies ever made: though not a single man appears anywhere in the film, all the women characters do is obsess about them both in terms of the two things they can bring them (sex and money). But that aside, this movie is an awful lot of fun: it featured an almost who's who among all the best actresses on the M-G-M lot, and most of them are having a grand old time. True, there's not much fun to be had with Norma Shearer's archly noble Mary Haines, but Joan Crawford, Paulette Goddard, and particularly Rosalind Russell seem to be having the time of their lives with their over-the-top roles. Even little Virginia Weidler manages to camp it up in the great bathtub scene she has with Crawford ("And another thing, Crystal... this bathroom is perfectly ridiculous!"). The film is also endlessly quotable even down to the most throwaway lines (one of my favorites: Olga the manicurist greeting Mary by saying, "Reading a novel, huh? How *do* those writers ever dream up those plots?"). Best of all, everyone is gussied up in the most sublime Adrian gowns imaginable--the film even reaches its one moment of actual sublimity at the end of the famous all-color fashion show sequence, when the soigneé mannequins stalk off the whirling giant test-tube rack (don't ask) while enormous chords thunder on the soundtrack. Truly a mixture of terror and awe!
Rating:
Summary: ...and it's all about men...
Review: I remember hearing four or five years back that a remake of the 1939 classic, "The Women," was in the offing. I don't know whatever happened to the plans for that remake, but it's hard to imagine that such a film could be made today. It reinforces just about every negative and politically incorrect stereotype about women imaginable, up to and including Norma Shearer's final line about pride being a luxury that a woman in love can't afford. It also includes other statements that couldn't be made today ("She thinks that because Lulu's dark he won't be able to see her" and "It's not her fault she wasn't born deaf and dumb"). The film, according to its trailer, has a cast of 135 women. I presume that they are talking about the speaking roles because there are certainly more women on screen than that. There is not a single man to be seen anywhere; even the various animals are female. There is one scene near the beginning where a photo of a man graces the back of a magazine cover; this shot stands out like a sore thumb each time I see it, and I wish somebody had caught it and corrected it. Despite its political incorrectness, "The Women" is one of the funniest and most rib-tickling films ever made. I've probably watched it more than any other film in my collection; I've even taped the soundtrack and listened to it, a thoroughly satisfying way to enjoy "The Women" in the car, for example. Of course the raison d'etre of this spectacular film is the bitchiness of almost all the leading characters, set off by Norma Shearer's near-saintly Mary Haines. Such a character would be considered a crashing bore nowadays--her scene with daughter Mary, played by Virginia Weidler, gets this very fast-paced comedy off to an incredibly leaden start--and I have a hard time believing that she ever carried the full sympathy of the audience. Even her wise old mother, delightfully played by Lucile Watson, displays more character; fumigating the room after a party attended by most of the of the other characters, she says "How do you stand those dreadful women?" Rosalind Russell as Sylvia Fowler gets the cattiest lines and somehow manages to be able to talk a mile a minute through the whole film, even while doing strenuous physical exercises. Her two scenes with Joan Crawford are the high points of the film. Joan had to fight for the relatively short but very important role of Crystal Allen, the "terrible man-trap" who steals Stephen Haines, Norma Shearer's husband, but her hunch paid off: despite the brevity of her role, Crystal dominates the film from the time of her first appearance. And even though she gets her comeuppance at the end (an element missing from the original play by the way), she leaves in triumph, looking gorgeous and with one of the best exit lines ever written. The supporting cast doesn't have a weak link. One standout is Paulette Goddard, the most beautiful woman in the cast and certainly one of the most spirited, as Miriam Aarons, a junior-league Crystal Allen. Another is Mary Boland as the ditzy but generous-hearted Comtesse de Lave; even after her fifth husband Buck Winston has left her for Crystal, she still refers to the radio moguls who wouldn't give Buck a job on the radio as "the old meanies." But all the leads are spectacular: Joan Fontaine as the naive Peggy, Marjorie Main as Lucy, the proprietess of the Reno dude ranch, Phyllis Povah as Edith (largely forgotten nowadays, she was brought over from Broadway to recreate her role for the film), Florence Nash as tweed-suited Nancy the author, and the others. One thing I have come to appreciate more with each viewing of this film is how many actresses, many of whose names I don't even know, created truly memorable characters with just a handful of lines or less. My own particular favorite is Virginia Grey, another very beautiful woman, as Crystal's pal/nemesis Pat in the delightful telephone scene (and anybody who thinks Crawford can't act should see this scene). But others such as Olga the manicurist, Butterfly McQueen as Lulu, and the wonderful model whose tag line is "Our new one-piece lace foundation garment; zips up the back and no bones," are just three more standouts in a hugely talented supporting cast. They prove the old adage that "there are no small parts, just small actors." "The Women" is one of those films that makes me feel especially sorry for people who claim they can't watch black-and-white films. I'm not referring to the technicolor fashion show sequence when I say that this is certainly one of the most colorful films ever made.
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