What I Watched: The Lady Eve (1941)

I watched this movie last night and I thought it was perfectly forgettable. I chose it because of the cover and I thought I would like it better than the other choices I had. I told you previously about being unexcited about the silent films on the list and that unexcitement is actually turning into a strong aversion. I was looking at them in my Netflix instant queue and thinking they looked Dreadful. With a capital D. So I chose this one and now I am literally having some trouble recollecting it for this post just mere hours after watching it. This is a classic screwball comedy about a young scam artist named Jean, played by Barbara Stanwyck, who falls in love with a man she intended to scam.


Theatrical poster via Wikipedia

In the film, the man she is scamming is named Charles Pike, played by Henry Fonda, and he is the wealthy heir to a beer company. He is naive and kind of dense. In the course of one day he and Jean fall in love and plan to get married and she discontinues her con. But then Charles finds out that Jean and her father are scam artists and breaks it off with her. Jean becomes angry with Charles for dumping her and devises a plan to reinvent her identity as a British socialite named Eve to exact revenge. Eve and Charles meet and they fall in love and get married. Eve plans to drive him to divorce for a settlement and begins telling him about her fictitious escapades with other men. They end up separating, but not divorcing, and during their estrangement she reverts back to Jean and bumps into him again on another cruiseliner and they reaffirm their love for one another. Charles never knows the two women are one in the same. The end.


The lovely Barbara Stanwyck via Wikipedia

I cannot for the life of me figure out why this is one of the 100 greatest movies. It obviously falls into the romantic comedy genre because there are some comedic moments, but the plot line is ridiculous and neither of the characters are endearing. There is also some slapstick comedy in the film, namely when Charles falls for Eve and bumbles around in her company, knocking things over and falling everywhere because he is overwhelmed by her feminine wiles. So it's a comedy and an unremarkable one at that. Why is it on the 100 Greatest Movies list? Apparently is it a romantic comedy masterpiece and Mr. Dirks of Filmsite thinks that it is amazing this film only received one Academy Award nomination. I read and reread his synopsis and still cannot see his point of view. Peter Tonguette said this film was "one of the finest screwball comedies ever made," but I much preferred His Girl Friday. I will say that Jean is a very strong character and Barbara Stanwyck played her well, but her character was a swindler with no redeeming qualities. Charles could have been played by anyone. The blandness of his character, played by Henry Fonda, is actually precisely what makes their love affair unbelievable and makes Jean just seem conniving.


L-R: Henry Fonda, Preston Sturges, and Barbara Stanwyck via Roger Ebert

While researching reviews of this film I discovered that writer/director Preston Sturges was known for writing tough, witty, and sometimes caustic heroines and this was remarkable for his time.While I can appreciate that, I take issue with Charles Barsanti calling this film "as powerful a feminist statement as it is a smart comedy." Roger Ebert says, of Jean's relationship with her father, "that they're two adults and not locked into a narrow daddy-daughter relationship." This, perhaps, is the only feminist notion I can find in the film. Even though Jean works with her father she is her own independent woman and what she and her father do is a business in which she has equal weight and responsibility. Other than that I am at a loss. Tonguette asserts that it is feminist because Jean is strong-willed and shows us that "women...are the pursuers of love as much as they are the persued." That's not feminism. Do Barsanti and Tonguette mistake this movie as a feminist statement because Jean manipulates, dupes, and controls a man for personal gain? Because that's not feminism, either.   

Garden of Eden, anyone? via Nathan Hartman

I do get Garden of Eden references throughout the film. Jean's alter ego is named Eve and she is a temptress trying to lure the innocent and unknowing Charles. In the opening of the film we learn that while Charles is a brewery heir, his main passion lies in reptiles. He is a snake enthusiast "in pursuit of knowledge" about these creatures. He even brings a snake onto the ship on which Charles and Jean first meet. Jean gets Charles' attention by bonking him in the head with an apple. Then repeatedly we see him falling, both figuratively and literally, for Jean/Eve. While this theme is obvious it is pretty much ignored by most comtemporary reviews and discussions of this film. Everyone just comments on the hilarity of the movie and the outstanding performances, both of which I obviously missed.

Interesting note: Jean's main con is that she is a card sharp so she cheats people out of money during card games on cruiseliners. I always thought the term was "card shark," but everything I was reading about this film kept referring to her as a "card sharp." I started feeling like I had possibly misheard, and therefore was misusing, this popular turn of phrase. I had a friend in high school who swore another popular phrase was "I'll give it a world" and could not be convinced otherwise. How embarassing. Luckily, our favorite myth-busting website, Snopes, has an article about this etymological quandry. Evidently, both are correct and there is much dispute over which word originated first, but "card shark" in a more inclusive term which can be used to describe people skilled at cheating in cards or skilled at simply playing cards and is not necessarily pejorative, while "card sharp" is only used in the negative sense. Good to know.

Have you seen this movie? What did you think? Am I way off base by being thoroughly unimpressed?

What I Watched: His Girl Friday (1940)

This is one of the few movies from the 100 Classic Movies list that is streaming on Netflix, so I watched it last night. It is a witty satire about the lengths to which news reporters will go for a story, but with a romantic twist. Side note: Some of the other films I could have chosen last night were the long and bleak-looking silent films Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. I am not excited about watching these, but I have to if I want to fulfill this goal. Help me get excited!

Theatrical poster via Wikipedia. I hate that tag line "She learned about men from him!" She was a smart cookie in her own right.

Anyway, my first impression of this movie was that is was really fast. All of the dialogue and the action happened so quickly that sometimes I wasn't sure what was said. In reviews of the film, this is often one of the first things noted and is supposed to be part of what is funny about the movie, but I'm not sure I agree. Also, I loved Rosalind Russell in this film. She played Hildy, a young newspaper reporter in Manhatten who is giving up the reporter's life and her sneaky newspaper editor ex-husband, played by Carey Grant, to marry a dull insurance salesman and move to the suburbs. She thinks this is what will make her happy, but it turns out she is a damn good reporter and she makes a deal to cover one more story before she goes at the request of the ex-husband who is secretly trying to win her back. Grant's character goes to great lengths to prevent Hildy from marrying the insurance salesman by getting him continuously arrested and jailed on comically ridiculous charges and he thinks he is being so sly, but the straight-talking Hildy, who is the master of her own destiny, sees straight through him. She becomes consumed with covering the story of a convicted murderer who is scheduled to be executed and her fiance goes back to the suburbs without her because he realizes the life they envisioned together is not for her. She, of course, has more in common with the ex-husband than she initially cared to admit.
 

Grant and Russell via Wikipedia

Evidently, Rosalinda Russell was considered for the role of Hildy only after it was turned down by quite a few famous ladies including Joan Crawford. I'm so glad she ended up in the role, though, because she was so sassy in it and by far my favorite character. I am ashamed to say that I had never heard of her prior to this film even though she had a very long career as an actress and a writer, but I will admit that I am not as familiar with actresses in older films as I wish I were. I will definitely be seeing some of her other films after this one. Interestingly, in the original version of this story (The Front Page, 1931) Hildy's character was a man and the plot was a little different, but it was changed for this version in the initial readings. It seems the stars really aligned for the role to fall to Ms. Russell.

The lovely Rosalind Russell via Love Mind Travel

This film is characterized as a screwball comedy and I was so curious where that term came from because it sounds like it would mean a silly, Three Stooges-type film, but that is not the case. That is slapstick and screwball is a witty and more sophisticated variation and is actually a sub-genre of romantic comedy that typically includes a battle of the sexes. Screwball comedies were popular during the Great Depression and in the early 1940s and were characterized by fast-paced repartee (check), farcical situations (check), escapist themes (check), plotlines involving courtship and marriage (check), and a female who dominates a relationship with a central male character (check). Once I understood what a screwball comedy was this one seemed pretty obvious.

Hildy holding her own with the male reporters at her paper. Via Entertained News

I thought this movie was entertaining, but why is it classified as one of the greatest films of all time? I was not sure, so I turned to Filmsite's discussion for a little enlightenment. I should have seen this coming because remember how I just outlined how this movie is a screwball comedy? Apparently it is "one of the best examples of its kind in film history." Oh.

Have you seen it? What did you think?