Official Synopsis
Gossip of a woman’s husband cheating on her soon makes it back to the women herself. Shortly after, a divorce ensues and a group of women must band together to help her put her life back together, and get back at the woman who stole her man.
The movie starts out pretty speedy, as you’re taken swiftly through a women’s spa going from chatty-Cathy to chatty-Cathy until we end up at one of our ‘innocent’ antagonist Sylvia. Sylvia gets a good amount of information about our protagonist Mary, who has a cheating husband that she doesn’t know about. Being a good friend (and I mean ‘good’ in the lightest sense of the word), Sylvia finds the perpetrator of Mary’s marriage, Crystal, and reports back to Mary about her husband Stephen’s side dish.
As you can imagine, the movie spirals towards certain divorce, as Mary leaves Stephen (against her mother’s wishes) and goes off to Reno to find herself with the help of a band of divorcee friends. The friends do their best to not only help Mary through her tough times, but also keep the gossip Sylvia out of Mary’s life.
What happens at this point of the movie really shows the 1930s as they were sprinting towards the subservient 1950s. Mary’s friends, through some debate, convince her to get back Crystal and destroy her life, even though Stephen has decided to marry Crystal before the ink on his divorce is even dry. On the way, Mary is also advised to try to win Stephen back, regardless of his wrongdoings, so that she won’t have to be left out of a stable household — and endless happiness.
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Getting in the mindset of this time period is difficult considering the content. Obviously this was probably okay to do back in the day. If your man had a bit of indiscretion on the side, I guess it was okay as long as he made it back home and kept funding his family. Within that frame of mind it makes sense that this movie works without a hitch. The movie does well when it’s solely thinking of Mary’s happiness and making sure that she and her daughter won’t have to suffer through the hurtfulness that is a long divorce.
This movie makes sense within that context and because of that it’s fun to watch. The actresses really sell themselves well to the story. Norma Shearer as Mary does a fantastic job as the innocent wife trying to keep her life and family together. She was perfect for the role and she truly sells it well. Opposite of her is Joan Crawford’s Crystal, who is a royal bitch. She plays a good mean and conniving gold digger that plays everyone for her benefit. I’m not entirely sure that was a stretch for her, but she did well as the antagonist.
While the movie is enormously predictable, the actresses make it an entertaining ride along the way. Director George Cukor and writers do a great job with bringing these stage characters to life on the big screen. The actresses do a fantastic job in their respective roles.
Now with that said, this sort of story would not fly in this day and age. It’s difficult to look past one character’s infidelity and make them the ultimate winning goal for our protagonist. Mary shouldn’t go back to Stephen for stability, and the story, again within this day and age, simply sends the wrong message to women. It’s a good history lesson to see how far women have come since 1939, but it’s tough to watch the story go down the way it does and try to convince the audience that this was the happy ending everyone wanted. Stephen deserves all the misery and bad press he gets with his life. Mary should be a strong independent woman who doesn’t need him at all.
In the end, The Women does a great job with getting you to care about Mary and her dilemma. If anything there is that and that is enough to make this movie truly a classic.
As for the Blu-ray, it’s not too bad. I think the transfer certainly carried over some graininess from the original print, and there is occasional artifacts, but for the most part it’s clean. For a movie that was made in 1939 you can’t really complain with the end results. I have seen older films with a better transfer, Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) was far cleaner than this one, but when you’re reviewing these older films there’s so much to take into consideration. For example, the lighting scheme for Mutiny on the Bounty was far better than The Women. There was a bit more natural lighting in Mutiny, though, which could either work really well for the transfer or be disastrous. Thankfully, it worked out well. The majority of The Women was shot on a sound stage, so it was more consistent and consistently grainy. Still, at the end of the day The Women is impressively transferred to HD. It looks better than say a 20th Century Fox film called Rain Man, which was just awful on Blu-ray (and that’s still sad after a few years).
In short, you’ll be impressed.
As for the features, here’s what to expect:
· Documentaries, From the Ends of the Earth and Hollywood: Style Center of the World.
· Alternate Black-and White Fashion Show Sequence with Different Footage.
· Scoring Session Music Cues
· Theatrical Trailers of This and It’s 1956 Musical Remake, The Opposite Sex.
I like the documentaries they have packed with this Blu-ray — absolutely classic stuff about the studio and about the style center of the world (Joan Crawford’s dress is classic!). The alternate fashion show sequence is solid, as is the scoring session music cues. There is a strange cartoon included with this Blu-ray, I’m not sure where it fits, but it’s entertaining nonetheless.
As for the theatrical trailers, The Opposite Sex trailer is a neat spin-off of this film. Not only do you see one of the catalyst for the climax of The Women film, but you get to see the other side of the phone from The Women. It’s strange, but kind of neat at the same time. Also, and this is something that was pointed out by my wife, we never see a man in The Women. We see one in The Opposite Sex. Kind of cool.
Anyway, you do get a mixed bag of nuts with the special features, but you do get some good ones.
Get The Women on Blu-ray for the first time May 6th!
