The Lady Eve (1941)

 Preston Sturges' "The Lady Eve"


The 1940s were the twilight years of the standard Hollywood genre of "screwball comedy." Its heyday in the 1930s had reached a more tired, standard format. Despite this, the genre was still flourishing with many of the day's high earning stars signing on to get their screwball on. One director who had spent plenty of time writing the screwball formula in the 1930s was Preston Sturges. By 1940, he became a director himself and was able to direct his own scripts, something that did not occur very often in the Hollywood industry. In 1941, he was able to enlist Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, two of the biggest stars at the time, to star in his screwball comedy "The Lady Eve." 

"The Lady Eve" centers on a classy card shark named Jean who spends the entire film trying to both swindle and romantically entice an heir to an ale fortune, Charles.  After he finds out her intentions the first time, she transforms herself once again into Lady Eve. Despite being bewildered by her resemblance to Jean, Charles fall for and marries Eve. After things fall apart between them, he gets back together with Jean, not realizing she is both Jean and Eve.

When I realized this film was a screwball comedy, I was bewildered by Henry Fonda's involvement. I would not have pictured the 'stoic' persona of Fonda having the range for something more silly. However, it seems as though Sturges compensated for this performative lacking by making his character extremely awkward and clumsy. Throughout the film, Fonda's character is constantly falling and knocking things over, as well as having things spilled all over him. The 'screwball' opposite persona to this is Barbara Stanwyck's smooth-talking Jean/Eve, who whisks Charles away with her deception and classiness. 

Overall, I felt that "The Lady Eve" was a solid entry into the screwball genre. I did not feel as though it gave me much to offer in the realm of contextualized significance. The only thing I could say about it was its soft touches upon dynamics of class divisions: the awkward, unaware wealthy and the smooth-talking weasel-y larcenists. However, there is not much consideration beyond that. Still, I enjoyed the film to the extent of its classification and genre.



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