The Opposite Sex (1956)

(On Cable TV, August 2020) Knowing that The Opposite Sex is adapted from the same novel that led to 1939’s classic The Women, and having a look at its great cast, and watching its roaringly cynical start in which a woman speaks tartly about other women, you could be forgiven for having high expectations for it. Alas, the reality is a bit more pedestrian: The script settles into a lower-pitch struggle between women arguing about men. It’s certainly watchable, but there are many missed opportunities to do better. Bizarrely enough, I’m against the decision to include male characters in the film—The Women showed how to do it well, and they don’t add much to the arguments between the female protagonists. The musical comedy nature of the film is hard to grasp, considering that seasoned signer Dolores Grey barely sings, and noted triple-threat Ann Miller doesn’t dance nor sing. While the bon mots can be biting here and there, the script settles into a routine pace as the film advances: the women complain about men to other women, then complain about other women to yet other women. At least there’s more to see than to hear—I watched The Opposite Sex because of Ann Miller and was slightly disappointed in this regard, but that disappointment was more than nullified by seeing a lot of a young and radiant Joan Collins. Many other second-string notables populate the cast, from June Allyson, Joan Blondell, Ann Sheridan and Leslie Nielsen in a very serious role. Also worth noting is the garishly oversaturated Technicolor, which for some reason doesn’t really feature a lot of greens but does push the MGM Technicolor style about as far as it could go. Somehow less modern than the 1939 version, this mid-1950s romantic drama isn’t that bad by itself, but there are a lot of questionable choices made here knowing what else could have been done with this material and these performers.