The Lady Eve

1941 "When you deal a fast shuffle ... Love is in the cards."
7.7| 1h37m| NA| en| More Info
Released: 21 March 1941 Released
Producted By: Paramount
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Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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It's no accident when wealthy Charles falls for Jean. Jean is a con artist with her sights set on Charles' fortune. Matters complicate when Jean starts falling for her mark. When Charles suspects Jean is a gold digger, he dumps her. Jean, fixated on revenge and still pining for the millionaire, devises a plan to get back in Charles' life. With love and payback on her mind, she re-introduces herself to Charles, this time as an aristocrat named Lady Eve Sidwich.

Genre

Comedy, Romance

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Director

Preston Sturges

Production Companies

Paramount

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The Lady Eve Audience Reviews

SunnyHello Nice effects though.
Mjeteconer Just perfect...
Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype
BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.
mike48128 Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda in what is considered one of the best comedy "farces" of all time. It creeps up on the viewer slowly after Jean Harrington (Barbara) trips Charlie Pike (Fonda) in the grand dinning room of a cruise ship, just to get his attention. She is a card shark and intends to take him for every penny he is worth, but Jean falls head-over-heels in love with him. Her dad, the Colonel, (Charles Coburn) cheats Charlie out of $32,000 with a check he never cashes. Charlie is the heir to the family brewing fortune and prefers to capture snakes in the Amazon, so he brings a small one on shipboard. Jean breaks her shoe (on purpose) and lures him back to her stateroom, and thus the romance begins begins. A colorful cast includes gravel-voiced Eugene Paulette as "Charlie's dad" and William Frawley as "Muggsy", a family "retainer". In the last 40 minutes of the film, Director Sturges pulls out all the stops as Charlie is plagued by a barrage of pratfalls and stains several dinner jackets, the best one being the "gravy and prime rib spill". Jean passes herself off as "Lady Eve Sidwich" and Charlie is captivated once again, this time into marriage. Impossible, one would think, with fake credentials, but go with it. On their honeymoon trip on the train, she invents a "casting call" of "dozens" of willing Englishmen, starting at age 16, that she has amorous adventures with. Charlie leaves the train in anger and disgust. Jean is unable to go through with the final deception of a lucrative divorce settlement, much to the disapproval of her father. She meets him again in the same shipboard scenario. This time, when she trips him, he chases her back to her stateroom post-haste. "I'm married" he confesses. "So am I" she replies. Everyone failed to realize that Jean and Eve were the exact same person, as her fake British accent starts to slip toward the end of the film. Only Muggsy gets it right: "It's the same dame". Of course she is!
moonspinner55 Fast-talking, quick-thinking, altogether delightful comedy from Preston Sturges, who also adapted the screenplay from Monckton Hoffe's original story. An elderly cardsharp and his equally crooked daughter, traveling in style by cruise ship from South America, zero in on their next victim--a handsome but somewhat unsteady ale-heir--but the daughter mixes business with pleasure and ends up falling for the lug. Barbara Stanwyck, with her crafty stare and sexy smirk, surprisingly doesn't run roughshod over articulate Henry Fonda, and they make a winning combination. Sturges' script blends grown-up jokes and conversation with pratfalls while never losing the filmmaker's graceful touch and innate sophistication. The results are amusingly frisky, prickly and unpredictable. *** from ****
SnoopyStyle Charles Pike (Henry Fonda) is an heir to a beer fortune. He would rather study snakes in the jungle than face gold-digging reptiles in the modern jungle. He's going home on a cruise ship being hunted by every women on board. Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck), her father Colonel Harrington (Charles Coburn) and his partner Gerald (Melville Cooper) are a team of con artists. Jean literally trips Charles into her trap. Muggsy (William Demarest) is his ever-present suspicious guardian.Stanwyck talking trash about the other girls is brilliant. It's classic Preston Sturges and it takes a ballsy chick like Stanwyck to deliver those lines properly. She's great and so is Henry Fonda who has the sincere boy scout quality. The moment he pulls down her revealing skirt is all Fonda. They make for quite a rom-com pairing and Sturges showcases them magnificently.
JaydoDre Barbara Stanwyck is one of the hottest ladies to hit the silver screen. On top of that, in this film she is a really interesting strong character unlike the paper thin ladies in distress seen in so many other films of the time. This is very much her movie, just as the title accurately suggests. Most other actors are good too. Charles Coburn plays a father and partner in crime to Barbara's character and he is charming and has chemistry with the girl.It is unfortunately Henry Fonda, the biggest of the names, who is kind of boring at best and annoying at worst. He is given a role of a naive doofus and he plays that role a little too well. calling into question the believability of his given profession as well any chemistry between him and the intelligent lady. It feels from some of the initial dialgoue that the original plan may have been for him to appear as a smart bookworm who is simply awkward with women, but instead he is just dumb. This is not really a comedy where being dumb is more forgivable so this is just not a very interesting character to put in the lead role.And this flaw is one of the problems with the story. It starts strong, but fizzles out, both in terms of interest and excitement. The plot becomes increasingly ridiculous, depending on the stupidity of James Fonda's character for its continuation. Then, towards the end of the film, the two main characters argue (which is in itself a cliché) and the point of contention between them is based on a cultural norm for women that no longer exists, and in fact, was already not realistic at the time this movie was made.The dialogue can be quite witty. You have to be fast enough to catch the good parts. However, eventually it gets romantic or sentimental and that is when the movie becomes a cheap romance novel with lines like "You believe me, don't you" spoken from behind sad puppy eyes.The cinematography is OK, but there is nothing inventive or of particular interest. It is a surprisingly sexual film for a 40's film with a good amount of skin from the main lady, though not enough to make it interesting that way.The makers do something interesting with the music in the later part of the movie to incorporate it into the film, but at all other times it is the usual sappy 40s romantic tunes.Lady Eve is all about its main female character. To a lesser degree it is about the funny supporting characters. However, the story disappoints and the main male character is a drag.