Two Cents is a Cinapse original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team curates the series and contribute their “two cents” using a maximum of 200-400 words. Guest contributors and comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future picks. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion. Would you like to be a guest contributor or programmer for an upcoming Two Cents entry? Simply watch along with us and/or send your pitches or 200-400 word reviews to [email protected].
The Pick: The Lady Eve (1941)
The Team
Elizabeth Stoddard
Preston Sturges was a one-of-a-kind writer/director whose work continues to influence filmmakers, generations after his death. The Lady Eve shows his distinct writing and directing style, sharp wit, and flair for casting. Here the usual romance gender dynamic is switched, with con artist Jean (Barbara Stanwyck) pursuing and seducing naïve brewery heir/ophiologist Charles (Henry Fonda). But then she really falls for him and thus must have revenge after he finds her out. “I need him like the axe needs the turkey,” she quips to her team as she plots next steps.
Stanwyck shines in romantic comedies — my first exposure to her was Breakfast for Two, which made me a fan for life – but The Lady Eve stands out. What other film would have her attempting a British accent? She can’t quite pull it off, but she doesn’t need to. We’re in on the con.
And Fonda, better known for his dramatic roles, takes pratfall after pratfall. The gag where he goes through about five different suits in one party never fails to crack me up. He and Stanwyck share sizzling chemistry, especially during the early shipboard romance. And then there’s the horse that steals the scene in a later confession of love! There’s not a dull character to be found here. Each role is delightfully quirky, from Jean’s card sharp dad (Charles Coburn, a popular character actor in the ‘30s and early ‘40s) to the British con artist/uncle-type Jean ropes in to her scheme (Eric Blore, another notable character actor of the time) to Charles’ skeptical minder, Murgatroyd (William Demarest, a regular in Sturges’ films). Sturges points fun at the American obsession with British aristocracy/monarchy and makes the audience fall for a group of con artists. The Lady Eve pushes the limits of the production code and takes the audience for a rollicking ride.
Frank Calvillo
No one had better skill at handling the different elements that comprised cinematic comedy than director Preston Sturges. His ability to craft an array of comedic setpieces featuring characters who felt like genuine people set the standard for the genre and has rarely been matched since. There’s nothing but pure pleasure when it comes to The Lady Eve with Fonda at his most affable and endearing and Stanwyck at her most…Stanwyck. Sturges’ film is so carefully measured with such comedic precision, that there isn’t a missed beat or cue to be found. The laughs are plentiful, especially the ones that come courtesy of Fonda’s Charles Pike and his many tumbles throughout the film. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find another movie that managed the art of the pratfall the way The Lady Eve did.
Both actors tackle the piece with such abandon, giving themselves totally to the material and the many zany places its prepared to take them in this tale of a con artist who falls for her latest prey, a snake-obsessed member of high society. The romantic chemistry between the two remains pitch perfect. Both actors are clearly so into each other (from a character perspective, at least) and it shows. The moments when Charles and Jean are seen falling for each other are just ripe with the kind of passion and fire that the best romantic comedies are made of. In later years, Fonda would call Stanwyck his favorite leading lady and it’s easy to see why. The actress balanced comedy with take charge femininity in the way that only she could. Meanwhile it’s refreshing to see how Fonda, known primarily for playing men of dignity, was totally willing to look the fool here, which he did magnificently. When it comes to comedies of the romantic kind, The Lady Eve remains the blueprint.
I know that casting Henry Fonda as the heavy in 1968’s Once Upon A Time In The West was a stunt because Fonda is primarily known as a heartthrob, nice guy, hero type. But seeing as OUATITW is my favorite western of all time, I primarily know Fonda as villainous. So it was a surprise and delight to see him as the befuddled and besotted, pratfalling, love sick puppy Charles Pike in Preston Sturges’ 1941 comedy The Lady Eve.
I’m unfamiliar and inexperienced with screwball comedies so this month I’m learning and exposing myself to something largely unknown to me. And while I probably enjoyed last week’s My Man Godfrey a little more than I did The Lady Eve, there is something primally amusing about a man simply outmatched and outwitted and undone by a dame running circles around him, and Barbara Stanwyck (don’t be mad if I said this is likely the first Stanwyck film I’ve ever seen) is so brazenly confident as the firecracker that will just absolutely decimate this poor lovestruck lunk into submission.
I did have a little trouble accepting the sheer stupidity of Fonda’s Pike as he falls for Stanwyck two different times in the film as her conwoman works her wiles on him and convinces him that she’s a long lost twin of some sort after her con is exposed and he breaks things off with her. I mean, how dense can this guy be? But humorously the film plays into that question, even closing with Pike’s guardian who’s been skeptical of Eve the whole time noting “Positively the same dame”.
In the end this is a wacky comedy about a man just being totally wrapped around the finger of an overwhelmingly dynamite woman, and I quite enjoy the sincerity and purity of a film built entirely around the undeniable charisma of Stanwyck and the spicy-for-1940s chemistry of our two leads.
From his 2020 review of the Criterion Collection Blu-ray release of the film:
It was such a blast revisiting The Lady Eve — Sturges’ screenplay unfurls with fiendish glee through its brisk 90-minute runtime, and gives each character big and small a feast of comedic scenery to chew on. From Muggsy’s (William Demarest) cigar-chomping gumshoe valet to Colonel Harrington’s (Charles Coburn) debonair devilry, The Lady Eve is one of Sturges’ most memorable parade of faces. Stanwyck and Fonda are a wonderful match here, though; Stanwyck possesses such agency and determination which easily bests the men she’s in cahoots with as much as those she deceives, and Fonda’s established schtick as society’s most earnest upright citizen lays the foundation for such a hapless, lovable goof that you can’t help but adore. It’s such an unexpected subversion of screwball comedy dynamic — in addition to how its male characters’ bravado is endlessly undercut by their own buffoonery, as well as its quick evolution into a wickedly fun revenge story — that gives The Lady Eve such a timeless and inventive feel.
Brendan Foley
I would just like to use this opportunity to firstly shout out an all-time pantheon tough guy name that Sturges deploys here: “Ambrose Murgatroyd”. Murgatroyd! What a title. I want a whole spin-off series where he scowls his way into and out of various capers on various modes of transportation. Diamond heist on a cruise ship, missing paintings on a transcontinental railroad, let’s get Murgatroyd on the case.
Anyway, the movie! What I really appreciate about Sturges as a writer/director is his willingness to let the characters dictate the scenes and the story rather than the other way around. The Lady Eve has been ripped off and replicated ad nauseam, but reducing it down to formula misses the actual joy of the film. You can summarize the plot in one sentence (“vengeful con artists launches revenge scam against the sap who broke her heart”) but it takes an hour into a film that runs barely over an hour and a half to get there. Instead, Sturges let the audience revel in the building romance between Stanwyck and Fonda, content to park the movie in one spot and let a scene play out at length as the dialogue blazes and the chemistry sizzles.
What a picture.
Last week was my first, and now entering the second screwball comedy I’ve ever seen; The Lady Eve. While My Man Godfrey felt more like a straight comedy with romantic elements, this felt more like a straight romance that occasionally shifted into the laughs. This isn’t a complaint, of course, as the first half is remarkably sweet, as we watch these two love birds, one a card shark and the other a rich nitwit (I guess we’d call him a “himbo” nowadays?), slowly fall for each other on a cruise across the Atlantic (and, wow, I forgot how well films of this era could establish sexual tension. That entire “ideal person” conversation is a doozy).
Then, we shift into the 2nd half, and, to be frank, my patience with Fonda’s “aw shucks” naivete started to wane. What was a character that felt like a bit of a loner with a kind heart turned into a bit of an idiot (and kind of a total dickhead, especially during the train scene), that I was actually now rooting to get scammed. I think the film agreed with me, as we spend a good percentage of those last 30 minutes watching Fonda put on a master class of pratfalls, falling over seemingly everything that isn’t at eye level. It’s the uptick on the comedic beats that kept me locked in, even as Fonda was falling for one of the dumbest lies I’ve ever seen put on film.
Felt like we were shifting into a true, surprisingly-progressive-for-the-era win for Stanwyck, but, I also understand this is a love story from 1941 (also had a moment of “wait, why did all the boats stop? Ohhhhhh, yeah”), so that ending on the ship was kinda where this was always going to end up. Still, I’d let Barbara Stanwyck trick me into falling in love with her on a cruise, then trick me again into falling in love with her British “twin sister” who’s been married a dozens of times, and then finally get me to fall in love with the original girl that called me “Hopsie” any day of the week.
A JANUARY OF VINTAGE LAUGHS!
In an effort to combat the January blues (not to mention other devastating events taking place that month), the Two Cents crew here at Cinapse have decided to dive into the world of classic screwball comedies. The likes of Carole Lombard, Ernst Lubitsch, Barbara Stanwyck, Jack Benny, and Elaine May are all on deck to chase away those winter blues with a collection of movies that range from the romantic, to the scandalous. Spend the month with us and some side-splitting laughs from the masters who made the genre the riotous (and slightly subversive) staple that it remains to this day.
Join us by contacting our team or emailing [email protected]!
1/20- To Be or Not to Be
1/27- A New Leaf
