sdyer@bbnccv.UUCP (Steve Dyer) (06/26/85)
[net.women readers, I've cross-posted this here because of the films'
probable interest to many of you.]
A double feature of 1930's films, linking the German "Maedchen in Uniform"
with George Cukor's "The Women", adapted by Anita Loos ("G'men Prefer Blonds")
from a play by Claire Booth Luce.
I didn't see "Maedchen" this time, having seen it a few years ago. It
is a remarkable film about a repressive girls' school in pre-Nazi
Germany, and the relationship which develops between a new teacher and
one of her students. It is an anti-Fascist allegory written and directed
by one of the few women in film at the time. Even more remarkable is the
treatment of the teacher's lesbianism, which is clearly and sensitively
drawn without exploitation. This is a real gem which you should
make a point of seeing if it ever pops up in your area.
I was looking forward to "The Women". Pre-festival publicity had cast it
as a kind of progenitor of gay camp sensibility, with an arch script,
and performances close to burlesques by the cream of Hollywood's actresses,
including Rosalind Russell and Joan Crawford (in the kind of role she came
to embody.) What I saw was fairly disappointing: some excellent writing
and performances, but fatally flawed by its length (135 min), its lack of
focus, its wild veering between sentiment and satire, and its maddening
compromises between the sophistication of the script and directing and the
retrograde values it served up despite them. Of course, it is unfair to
the film to judge it by today's standards, but even back then, it wasn't
particularly daring to suggest that a divorced woman could succeed without
getting back with her ex-husband.
The story concerns a group of society women, one of whom has the "perfect
marriage" on the outside, only to discover that her husband is cheating
on her. Naturally, her friends all know this first through their gossip mill.
The gimmick here is that the men in these women's lives are never seen or
heard on film. We only hear one-sided phone conversations and descriptions.
Finally, this version of the film had the rather bizarre "fashion show"
scene in Technicolor, embedded within a black-and-white film. For ten
minutes, we are treated to an absolutely serious late-30's fashion show
in lurid color. I guess this was the 1930's equivalent to today's special
effects gimmicks.
--
/Steve Dyer
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