Les femmes mènent le monde

Big June Allyson fan when I was a kid, crush and all. The girl next door, after all...but not next door to me. And now, years later, I can see why the crush: she was a doll! That wonderful voice and sweetness of heart. But now, of course - Lauren Bacall has a voice of a different octave, touched with her unique wry delivery. She's a grown-ups dream. So - you all know the story line - 3 men (and their wives as representatives) are up for a position of significance with Clifton Webb the decision maker. Cornel Wilde (Allyson), Fred MacMurray (Bacall) and Van Heflin (Arlene Dahl) are the contenders. Blatant technicolor and wonderful scenes of New York City - where I happen to be from - gloriously displayed and minus the chronic scaffoldings that adorn every street these current days. With their very different personalities, they vie. If you like just a few of these actors, you'll be happy enough. If you like a good story line and are not especially discriminating, you'll be happy enough. A few good scenes - the dress shopping spree with Bacall and Allyson, the last couple of moments of the show down, etc. - are all there is, basically. Clifton Webb, thankfully, toned down the typical superiority that he constantly indulged in. It was 1954 after all and it shows all over the place.

Watching how the actors are strategically placed on screen while performing their chores in WOMAN'S WORLD made me recall how seldom close-ups were used when CinemaScope was new. Instead, medium shots are used almost extensively so that the screen is filled by someone standing far left and the other far right. Occasionally the camera does move in a little closer for an over the shoulder shot, but it's obvious that CinemaScope was new and lensing a film in Wide Screen was not an easy matter.

The performances are all interesting, with LAUREN BACALL and ARLENE DAHL coming off best, while JUNE ALLYSON is forced to play a klutzy housewife with too many slip-ups to be tolerable. CLIFTON WEBB is the auto executive who wants to examine the wives of men he's considering for a top job at his auto plant. The men are well played by VAN HEFLIN, CORNEL WILDE and FRED MacMURRAY.

If you liked films like EXECUTIVE SUITE, all about climbing the corporate ladder, you'll enjoy this one--and furthermore it has sumptuous settings enhanced by color photography. Women will enjoy all the costumes and men will stay tuned to see which man Webb chooses for his open executive job.

Witty dialogue helps with Lauren Bacall handling her lines with the kind of skill she always brought to these kind of roles. Arlene Dahl shows a little more skill than usual as an actress with a strong confrontational scene with Webb.

Worth a look, but don't expect anything deep.

Very good cast highlight this film. Also great fashions. Arlene Dahl steals the film as an ambitious, scheming wife. All in all-worth seeing!!

In the fifties, Fox specialized in this multiple stories around one theme stories that were making money and the other studios started to copy. Movies like Three Coins the Fountain, How to marry a millionaire, We're not married!, forcing MGM to make Executive Suite which A woman's World is a lot like. One of three men will get the high post of a high-up executive in charge of production for a car company? Who it will be will be decided by the kind of woman they are married to. This film calmly taking its time shows the nuisances of the businessworld, the path to success and failure; the folly/desire for power in the nature of man by contrasting all the characters. The ending is a surprise and so is the movie. And most importantly, it gets better with every viewing.

Slick, superficial CinemaScope stuff from Hollywood's early-'50s panic attack: How ya gonna keep 'em down at the flicks after they've seen TV? Fox tried to with big screens, splashy colors, and half a dozen or so stars crammed into one entertaining soap-opera premise. There's no cinema-making genius going on here, but the movie is overwhelmingly entertaining, both for its look and its morality. A consumerist's paradise, it's so stuffed with cars and gowns and doodads that you're seized with an overwhelming urge to go shopping after you've seen it. (The cars, in particular, are '50s-futurists designs from Ford/Lincoln/Mercury, and they're knockouts.) And the morality is so utterly of its time: The onscreen drinking and smoking are nonstop, the gender premises (men seek power, women seek men) are unquestioned, and the subtext is clearly that money and power are fine, but holding on to your man is what really counts. And to do that, you'd better learn to be a dear little klutzy wifey like June Allyson instead of a calculating harlot like Arlene Dahl. Of the women, Allyson's wife-waif act becomes monotonous, and while Dahl is luscious to look at and seems to be in on the joke of how one-note her character is, she's not really much of an actress. So Bacall, her crisp-sophisticate act honed to a fine sharpness, comes off best by default. The men are all OK, but New York is the real star.