Feminism, Part 2: 2008

I just got back from taking my daughter to see “The Women,” the new remake of the 1939 MGM classic that has been adapted and directed by Diane English. The original is high on my Top 10 list of the best films of all time. It starred Norma Shearer and Rosalind Russell as Manhattan socialites Mary Haines and Sylvia Fowler and a sexy Joan Crawford as manipulative shopgirl Crystal Allen who is having an affair with Mary’s unseen husband. Also starring in this exquisite film were Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Marjorie Main, Mary Boland, and nearly every actress under contract for Metro. Following the lead of the original film, not a single man appears in this new version of “The Women.” It's a terribly fun gimmick that was stupidly bypassed in the previous remake, a 1956 film called “The Opposite Sex” starring June Allyson, Dolores Gray, and Joan Collins as Mary, Sylvia, and Crystal. In the current version, those iconic parts are taken up by Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, and Eve Mendes. The cast includes a a bunch of great actresses including Candice Bergen, Bette Midler, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and many others. My capsule review of the film is so short and pithy that I hereby give the studio permission to use it in their print ads:

"This piece of crap is the worst abomination since Rumor Has It dared to fuck with The Graduate."

—Danny Miller, “Jew Eat Yet?”

Holy Mother of God, this movie is so bad it’s not even worth the time to thoroughly trash it—I can’t bring myself to live in its world long enough. Lest you think I have some vendetta against this type of film, let me remind you how much I enjoy so-called chick flicks and what a fan I am of the talented women in this cast. Unlike Kendall, who boycotted the film out of disgust that anyone would attempt to tinker with such perfection, I was looking forward to seeing the film, convinced that the sparklingly witty Clare Booth Luce play on which it was based was perfect fodder for a modern treatment—an incisive look at relationships among women in the twenty-first century. It may have been, but apparently Diane English felt that the original play and movie were way too bitchy and showed women in too negative a light. She decided to twist the plot to showcase the fact that, no matter what else is going on in these characters’ lives, women are ALWAYS THERE FOR EACH OTHER, even if that means taking a cell phone call from a cheating ex-husband in the hospital room where one of the gal pals is giving birth to her sixth or seventh insufferable brat.

Luce’s original story was intended less as a love poem to her sex than a vicious and superbly written expose of the idle rich. Even so, I find the characters in the original film far more genuine and loving towards each other than anyone in this politically correct dreck. Check out the scene when Paulette Goddard tries to comfort Norma Shearer following her divorce, or when the friends rally around poor Mary Boland who’s just been humiliated by husband #6, or even when conniving but self-aware Joan Crawford gracefully admits defeat at the end of the film: “Well, it’s back to the perfume counter for me.” 

You’d be hard pressed to find a single authentic moment in the new film. The only characters that seemed remotely real were the older generation. Candice Bergen provided some rare laugh-out-loud moments as Mary Haines’ mother although the scene when Meg Ryan visits her following Bergen’s plastic surgery is painful to watch. The women in that scene look like something out of “The Snake Pit” and the whole theatre cruelly laughed when Ryan remarked to Bergen that if she ever goes under the knife, she hopes her daughter will be as supportive as she is. Um…IF she ever goes under the knife? Let’s be kind and leave it at that. I also liked Cloris Leachman as Ryan’s maid and Bette Midler in her frustratingly brief homage to Mary Boland’s Countess de Lave (now a ruthless Hollywood agent). It was actually painful to see some of these talented women so underused in this film. The most egregious offense was watching the brilliant Carrie Fisher in such a stupid, horrible, and tiny role (why oh why didn’t they let her rewrite this mess?).

Another shock was seeing all of these beautiful women looking so God-awful. Truly, the actresses should band together and file a class-action suit against Diane English and the cinematographer. The whole film was shockingly ugly. Where is George Cukor when you need him? English clearly isn’t gay enough to direct a bunch of women. And, oh God, did we have to see yet another montage of a woman “letting herself go,” which in movie terms involves Meg Ryan wearing sneakers and an ill-fitting sweater for a few scenes and sitting at her kitchen table eating M&Ms (the horror!). And then…voila…the stunning makeover which always consists of making curly hair bone straight, putting on a tight black dress and heels, and pulling a successful dazzling new career out of your ass. Please. As far as I’m concerned, Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, and Betty Grable presented a more realistic vision of New York women in the ridiculous 1953 film, “How to Marry a Millionaire.”

If this film reflects the 2008 version of feminist ideals, I may have to rethink my leftist leanings. But wait, what am I thinking? Clare Booth Luce was no liberal, she was a staunch conservative who was elected to Congress in 1942 as a Republican where she fought FDR and was warmly embraced by the ultraconservative isolationists. President Eisenhower appointed her Ambassador to Italy in 1953 and she had a famous meeting with Pope Pius XII when she lectured him on her values and told him he needed to be tougher on communism in defense of the Church. This caused the Holy Father to quietly reply, “You know, Mrs. Ambassador, I’m a Catholic, too.” Luce was clearly more Sylvia Fowler in her personal life than she was Mary Haines. She campaigned vigorously for Barry Goldwater in 1964 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1983, four years before her death. I don’t think there’s any doubt who Clare Booth Luce would be supporting for President if she were alive today.

That must have been the problem with “The Women”—turning it over to the ultra-liberal Diane English, the woman who was publicly castigated by Vice President Dan Quayle for the single mother storyline on “Murphy Brown.” Maybe the new film needed to be reworked by someone with values closer to those of Clare Booth Luce. Can someone get Sarah Palin a three-picture deal at Paramount?

I can only think of one way to get the stench of this film out of my nostrils:

Comments

[Jeff]

Your "review" of "The Women" caused me to snort water up my nose! Funny!

[churlita]

Great review. It's too bad that the movie wasn't written better. I was kind of excited about seeing it, but now I know better. Thanks for keeping me from wasting my money.

[Debbie]

Despite knowing how my heroine, Eleanore Roosevelt detested the play, I've always found it a guilty pleasure. Politics aside, Luce wrote a well crafted piece that Cukor, as usual, polished to a gem and it is a joy to behold.

A few years back there was a New York revival of the play starring Cynthia Nixon. It stayed true to period and I think it was well done. PBS broacasts it from time to time and I recommend it.

Btw, TCM is showing the original tonight, followed by Stage Door. It doesn't get much better.

[scooterzz]

at the press conference for 'the women' diane english said she felt alright about remaking the film because the original has camp value but isn't really a classic....i think ms. english spells 'hubris' with a capitol H....
nice review, btw....

[Maria Sosa]

Well I agree that the original was by far better, but I did very much enjoy Agnes Moorehead and Ann Miller in the 1956 remake. And Joan Collins getting her comeuppance as Crystal was also very entertaining.

[La Framéricaine]

Last Friday after work I ran to my neighborhood multiplex to see "Read After Burning" (oh, sorry "Burn After Reading).

I only had one cider but nevertheless ended up in a viewing room watching the woman from Will & Grace greeting Will Smith's wife while some model got out of a car and got mad because someone called her a supermodel.

I kept thinking that I was watching a curiously long preview before the Cohen Brothers film until it finally dawned on me that I was in the midst of "The Women" which I had pondered seeing, given the cast, but immediately clawed off my mental list of films to see as I ran from the room to find Frances McDormand, a real woman!

So deliriously happy that you, too, "Hated it!" à la Men on Film.

Yesterday after bracketing my version of a nervous breakdown, I drove up to LA with Le Framéricain to see the French film by Claude Miller "A Secret" and the documentary "FLOW". Two snaps and a twist for both of them and then some, IMHO.

Great post, Danny!

[communicatrix]

I would leave a comment that said "HAHAHAHAHA!" but knowing the studios, they'd grab it and feature it as some big kudos.

I knew from the trailer this would suck eggs, but I was so DYING to see it anyway to say "I told you so!"

Thanks for taking one for the team, Danny.

[Hillary]

Your daughter is so lucky to be introduced to, and involved in, such great film, music, plays and events with both you and your wife - and that's not meant facetiously, because this new 'The Women' seems to be the only craptastic thing you've ever written about attending with her.

After re-falling in love with the 1939 version, the ONLY version, upon reading your praise of it, I must ask, How could anyone give the original even a half-hearted view and still endeavor to remake it, especially in anticipation of it maintaining even a modicum of the snarky synergy, appeal, or sparkling wit of the Shearer-Goddard-Russell collaboration? I've known since this film was posted on IMDb as being 'In Production' that it would be a travesty, an abomination, and a pox upon summer cinema-going. I just never knew that one could craft such a fitting tagline as yours.

Fascinating bit on Luce, as well - I've read about her in relation to the Fonda family (former wife of a former husband of Jane's mom's, I believe?! whew) but never knew anything you've written on her. I'll definitely have to do some further reading.

[mark]

No, wait! THIS is why I love your blog.