The Women

One of my all-time favorite movies is The Women (MGM 1939). Starring Norma Shearer (another fave!), Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, and written by Clare Boothe Luce. It's about New York socialites of the 1930s...when women went to Nevada for 6 weeks to get a divorce. They didn't deal with the pesky details. Norma Shearer plays Mary Haines, a woman who finds out her husband is having an affair with Joan Crawford's character, Crystal. The film follows her as she finds out, and then goes to Nevada for the divorce. It's not only full of fabulous clothes and gossip, but reveals the complexity of friendships between women. You have to take the film in its context of the 1930s to get past some of the women's beliefs about marriage.

But now, there is an updated version about to hit screens staring Meg Ryan, Annette Benning, Candace Bergen...the list goes on! I remember reading in the mid 90s that Meg Ryan was trying to get this film made. I think the problem was over who had rights to the script. I was excited to hear about it then, and I'm even more excited now. It has Debra Messing in it, but I'll get over that little detail. I haven't read anything about it because I want to be suprised when I see it. I've added the 1939 version to my Netfilx queue and plan to see it again before I go.

Typically, I don't care much for remakes of the Classic Hollywood era. There is usually a connection made in the film -whether its the group of actors, the director, even the time period that makes the film what it is WHEN it is. For instance, you just can't ever remake Bringing Up Baby, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. The timing and pace of that film is perfection. Re-making it would diminish that. Perhaps I will return to this topic later, lots of thoughts floating around.

But The Women, for me, is a different situation. While I don't know about the new version, I can speculate on why I would want to see this film updated. The heart of the film is the relationship between these women. I am still friends with women I met in high school. At times our relationships have met with complications, misunderstandings, and sometimes we grew apart only to find each other again a few years later. But mostly they've been wonderful connections that will always be around. Women in the 1930s had friendships just like women today. The core of that type of relationship will never change and to update a film like The Women only speaks to that.