The Lady Eve
Director: Preston Sturges, USA, 1941, 94 minutes, 16mm A brilliant and hilarious boudoir battle of the sexes, with Barbara Stanwyck supplying gold-digger sass to Henry Fonda's ingenuous shyness. Her role reflects Sturges' ultra-civilized attitude toward the female of the species. The lady cardshark playing for her supper and the junior herpetologist rolling in an inherited ale fortune meet aboard an ocean liner after the boyish millionaire has just spent months alone in the jungle. - Andrew Sarris, Village Voice The Lady Eve is one of Sturges' best romantic comedies, with just the right blend of satire and slapstick. Sturges, who began as a contract scriptwriter for Paramount, promised Stanwyck that he would write a great comedy for her some day, and she got it. She pitches much of her performance into a kind of hushed, urgent, intimate whisper. When she talks to Fonda, she's constantly toying with him, touching him like a fetish, and she's always in his face, often looking at his lips. Then out snakes a sexy leg - a very sexy leg-and over he topples. - TV Guide Internet Movie Database listing
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