The Lady Eve (1941) - film review

After a year looking for rare species of snakes in the forests of South America, Charles Pike, son of a ludicrously wealthy ale magnate, returns home by cruise ship.  Rich, handsome and thoroughly available, he is the object of intense scrutiny for every woman on the ship, none more so than Jean Harrington.  With typical feminine guile, Jean insinuates her way into Charles’s affection and it’s not long before the inexperienced young man is head over heels in love with her.  But when he learns that Jean and her father are a pair of unscrupulous cardsharps, Charles calls an abrupt end to their romance.  Determined to score a cruel revenge, Jean impersonates an English socialite to gain access to Charles’s home and, once more, his vulnerable heart...

One of the most memorable and spirited of Hollywood’s screwball comedies of the 1940s, The Lady Eve typifies Preston Sturges’s extraordinary flair for comedy.  Regarded by many as the writer-director’s best romantic comedy, The Lady Eve is just one glorious succession of excruciatingly funny one-liners and sidesplitting surges of slapstick, a marvellously inspired reinterpretation of the Garden of Eden seduction of Adam by his predatory mate.

In his best comedic role, Henry Fonda relishes his part as the gauche serpent-fancying innocent who falls haplessly into the clutches of a deliciously scheming temptress, played by an irresistibly sultry Barbara Stanwyck.   The elegance and coolness that Stanwyck displays as she calmly seduces and then torments her prey is pure cinematic delight, and Fonda is both lovably pitiful and hilarious as the quivering lump of jelly he becomes in Stanwyck’s merciless clutches.  Marvellously scripted, faultlessly directed, and with performances to die for, The Lady Eve is a bona fide comic masterpiece.

© James Travers 2008

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