Great comedies tend to be full of jerks. There’s nothing funny about people who are nice to each other. Comedy is mean. Comedy has victims. Comedy is a snakebite that doesn’t kill you. The funniest character in a comedy is often also the meanest. They’re the one who’s unafraid to be up to no good and who stands for the dark side of every person. Comedy can be beautifully done, but there’s nothing beautiful about comedy itself. It’s nasty stuff, never sweet. We only think that it is because we enjoy it so much. Most of us don’t know how dark we are.
Bad comedies tend to fuck up all of that. They want to be sweet and they want to be funny at the same time. They don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve got it backwards. They don’t get it.
The Women gets it. It’s the meanest, most catty and jaded American comedy film of the 1930s. It’s also the greatest. The insults here fly like claws in a cat fight. When word gets around that the nicest, most settled and happiest married woman (Norma Shearer) in the New York City upper crust social circle has a cheating husband, her friends couldn’t be more thrilled. They want every last bit of dirt on the story that they can find. They’ll go out of their way to get it. A marriage falling apart is the best show in town.
The great thing about this story (adapted from the play by Clare Booth Luce) is that it doesn’t indict any of these characters for their prurient interests. They’re too funny. Rosalind Russell, brilliant as the biggest snoop in the group, lights up the screen whenever she’s on it. These 
characters roll around in the mud, and we’re right there with them, warm, cozy and having a blast.
That viciousness is part of why this film has aged so well. There are many great comedies in the 1930s, but this is the one still most capable of destroying the room when shown in a theater. I highly recommend the experience if you can manage it. Cancel all other plans for the night. Call in sick to work. Tell your friends you have pneumonia and can’t make their wedding (they’ll probably be divorced in five years anyway). Just go see this with a crowd. A good half or more of the audience will be gay men. The other half will be a mix of old ladies and film dorks. All will be laughing their brains out.