The Women [Import]

"More stars than there are in heaven." boasted MGM in the Golden Thirties.  And justly so. The studio's star-studded casting reached a peak in the hilarious 1939 comedy. The Women.  Based on Clare Boothe's Broadway smash, the movie brims over with box-office magnetism: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Joan Fontaine and Paulette Goddard. No males appear in the film, but men are what The Women is all about.  Played against the background of Manhattan's fashionable set, the story focuses on naive Mary Haines (Shearer), who loses her husband to ruthless Crystal Allen (Crawford), who is aided and abetted by poisonous Sylvia Fowler (Russell), whose own spouse has taken up with another woman (Goddard). In Reno, in the throes of divorce, all wage total war on one another.  Under the expert direction of George Cukor, the glittering cast brings a stylish sheen to one of the most blistering and witty comedies of all time.