THE WOMEN - Women's Herstory Month Hosted by Irene Eckert

Showings

Cinema Arts Centre - Cinema 2 Mon, Mar 19, 2018 7:30 PM

Description

Women's Herstory Month Screening and Discussion 

Hosted by Irene Eckert


THE WOMEN


Starring Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Joan
Fontaine, Paulette Goddard
, and Rosalind Russell
Monday, March 19 at 7:30 pm | Members $11 | Public $16


An amazing cast featuring many of Hollywood’s most legendary stars highlights this hilarious comedy about a group of society women whose lives are turned upside down when they discover that one of their husbands is unfaithful.

“It’s all about men!” ran the original poster tagline for this deliciously overwrought ensemble melodrama based on the Clare Booth Luce play of the same name. Norma Shearer, Joan Fontaine, and Rosalind Russell lead a gaggle of New York society women who spend their days in gossip, petty rivalries, divorce ranch showdowns, and copious chatter about, well, men—despite the fact that, in a daring move, there’s not a single man so much as glimpsed among the film’s 135 characters. (Per Cukor’s orders, even the onscreen dogs and horses were female.) This was the role that established Russell’s status as a great comic actress, but the greatest pleasure of the acting is cumulative: watching the rest of the cast bounce off and bristle against Shearer’s wronged housewife. With its scenery-chewing performances and stinging, rapid-fire putdowns, The Women is an acid delight. (USA, 1939, 133 min., NR, English | Dir. George Cukor)