Film

The Women

Name: The Women
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Released: 1939
Cast: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Mary Boland, Paulette Goddard

A glittering, vicious comedy of manners set among Manhattan's idle rich, where gossip is a blood sport and a marriage can be destroyed over a manicure. Famous for its all-female cast — not a single man appears onscreen — it's dialogue-driven, catty, and gorgeously dressed. Watch it for the wit and the venom, not the romance; friendship here is both weapon and lifeline.

TMDb rating

7.2

If you liked this

All About Eve1950

If you loved the razor-tongued dialogue and women circling each other like sharks, this is the finest of its kind — Bette Davis at her most magnificently cutting.

But Its wit is dense and theatrical; if you want plot momentum over monologue, it can feel stagey.

His Girl Friday1940

Same golden-age snap and speed, dialogue fired like machine-gun rounds, proof that cruel, fast wit didn't need cattiness to be devastating.

But It's a battle of the sexes rather than between women — a different dynamic if that's what drew you in.

The First Wives Club1996

The Women's direct spiritual descendant — three wronged wives band together for glorious, satisfying revenge instead of quietly divorcing.

But Broader and more slapstick; the class satire gets traded in for feel-good comedy.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Divorcee1930no page yet

Norma Shearer herself starred in this Pre-Code film nine years earlier — same actress, same subject of a wife navigating infidelity and divorce, but played utterly straight instead of for laughs.

See where Norma Shearer's icy composure in The Women actually came from — a rawer, sadder performance about the same social trap, made before the Code sanitized everything.

But It's melodrama, not comedy — no wit to cushion the pain, and the moralizing of early-30s Hollywood shows through.

Steel Magnolias1989

Trades Manhattan penthouses for a Louisiana beauty parlor but keeps the formula — gossip as armor, humor as survival, grief eventually breaking through.

But It turns genuinely tearful in its back half; if you want the barbs without the heartbreak, be warned.

Sex and the City1998

The modern reincarnation — friendship, gossip, and men reduced to backdrop rather than point, with enough cattiness and couture to fill six seasons.

But Its sincerity about love and self-discovery is a very different register from the film's brittle cynicism.

Big Little Lies2017

Wealthy women, immaculate surfaces, secrets rotting underneath — same ecosystem, dragged into prestige drama and thriller territory.

But It's darker and more thriller-paced; you lose the comic lightness for genuine dread.

Nine to Five1980

Women banding together against the men who wrong them, played for huge laughs — the comedy-as-revenge engine at its most purely joyful.

But It's broader and sillier than anything happening in The Women's drawing rooms.

Waiting to Exhale1995

Four women, unreliable men, and friendship as the only steady ground — updates the formula with warmth and real soul.

But It's sincere where The Women is sardonic; expect earnest emotion, not arch one-liners.

The Devil Wears Prada2006

A different arena — fashion magazines instead of drawing rooms — but the same fascination with women, ambition, and cruelty dressed beautifully.

But It's really about one woman's career, not an ensemble of wives; the comparison is more thematic than structural.

Gone Girl2014

Same premise, turned menacing — a marriage curdling in public view, a wife recalibrating her whole identity around a husband's betrayal, except now it's a psychological thriller instead of a drawing-room comedy.

It takes the film's cynicism about marriage and performance and pushes it somewhere genuinely dangerous — infidelity as the fuse for something much darker.

But The tone is nothing like The Women's — cold, paranoid, and increasingly twisted rather than witty or warm.