MIFF

Joan Crawford leads a fabulous all-women cast in this impossibly glamourous, deliciously acidic comedy of manners about wealthy socialites in 1930s Manhattan.

Norma Shearer, Joan Fontaine and Rosalind Russell join Crawford in an ensemble of 135 that included some of Hollywood’s biggest names of the day as bored Park Avenue women who gossip, scheme and backstab their way through their privileged lives, spent largely at beauty salons and fashion shows. Come for the incredible costumes – created by MGM’s mononymous head designer Adrian, who later established both a couture house and the ready-to-wear line Adrian Originals – but stay for the venomously cutting banter, scripted by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin from Clare Booth’s original Broadway play.

Remade in 1956 (as The Opposite Sex), and again in 2008, the original remains the touchstone for this fiendishly entertaining satire about the idle rich. Its famous Technicolor fashion show was also a touchstone for the contemporary couturier industry, with retail stores including Macy’s jumping on The Women’s bandwagon to outfit their customers in clothes inspired by the film.

"The catty banter and Wildean aphorisms are delivered with impeccable timing by a cast only MGM could have mustered." – Chicago Reader