Stalag 17, 1953, dir., Billy Wilder, written by Donald Bevan, Edmund Trzcinski (Play), Billy Wilder, Edwin Blum (Screenplay), starring William Holden, Otto Preminger, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Peter Graves.

The next time you have the girls over for potluck and a video, consider renting this one. Low on quilts, romance, Winona Ryder, and sisterhood epiphanies, and with an all-male cast, this movie about life in a German POW camp during WWII is not a traditional chick flick.

So why is it considered a chick flick? Aside from great writing, great acting and great direction, there’s something about all those men locked up together that is very appealing to a room of women eating potluck off pastel picnicware. It’s one of the smartest movies made about the war and an unconventional, character-driven murder mystery. It’s also a great movie about men.

Contrast this with an all-woman film:

The Women, 1939, dir. George Cukor, Written by Clare Boothe Luce (play), Anita Loos, Jane Murfin, F. Scott Fitzgerald (uncredited), Donald Ogden Stewart (uncredited), starring Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Mary Boland, Marjorie Main, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, and on and on.

This one is also low on quilts, Winona Ryder, and sisterhood epiphanies, though it does feature some romance. No men appear on-screen, but they figure into the plot as catalysts for conflicts between various spoiled Park Avenue women. Though sexist by today’s standards and dated in other ways, a lot of the writing still holds up, the set and costume design is eye candy, and the performances are terrific. Norma Shearer plays Mary, a rich wife who thought she was happily married, until she learns her husband is cheating on her with a perfume counter clerk (Joan Crawford) at Black’s Fifth Avenue. Rosalind Russell turns in a deliciously nasty performance as Sylvia Fowler, the friend who plots to help destroy Mary’s marriage, and Mary Boland does a great comic turn as the Countess de Lave who, despite three husbands, two of whom tried to kill her, retains her faith in “l’amour, l’amour.” The color fashion show sequence is laugh-out loud funny. Bottom line: This is classic bitch-fighting, never done better. “I’ve had three years to grow claws, Mother. JUNGLE RED!”

His Girl Friday -- Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell show men and women how it's done in this rapid-fire remake of The Front Page. Rosalind Russell is all set to leave the newspaper business to marry a nice insurance salesman and move to Albany to live with him and his mother. But a scheduled, and dubious, hanging forces her back into the newspaper biz, by the side of her ex-husband Cary Grant, for one last story. This has got to be one of the all time great remakes, and the humor still holds up after all these years.