62. The Lady Eve; movie review

THE LADY EVE
Cert U
90 mins
BBFC advice: Contains very mild innuendo, scenes of smoking

Those were the days - when people fell in love at the scent of perfume and proposed to marry before they had even kissed.
Hold on, did that ever actually happen?
What did they do if they discovered poor tongue work? Call the whole thing off or offer their new partner intensive training?
And were people really as naive as Henry Fonda's character, Charles Pike, in The Lady Eve which was made in 1941?
I rather hope so but I doubt it. I would have thought war would have prompted deep cynicism.
Fonda's Pike struck me as too gentle to have been on an expedition to South America but it is from there he is returning when he bumps into card sharps Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck) and her father (Charles Coburn) on a cruise ship.
They run rings around the poor young man until the most unexpected happens and she falls for him.
Although Preston Sturges' film hasn't passed the test of time, it is plenty of fun.
Stanwyck is a super mix of feisty and lovelorn while Honda's slapstick timing is neat as he dithers over falling in love.
It surprises me how many of the films of the 40s are concentrated on the wealthy.
Scenes at the Pike residence after the cruise are particularly ostentatious at a time when most cinema-goers would have had very little money.
The movie was released as Hitler was doing his worst across Europe and just before America's inevitable intervention.
I can only presume it was seen as a diversion for those in the midst of war or fearing being part of it.
Anyway, Stanwyck is suitably over the top and Fonda is a great foil with exaggerated sidelines from Eugene Pallette (better known as Friar Tuck in Errol Flynn's Robin Hood) and Eric Blore as a fake British knight.
I am afraid I cannot laugh at 1940s comedies unless they are Laurel and Hardy but this was pleasing on the eye, nevertheless.
It is back on the big screen, thanks to the BFI, from February 15.

Reasons to watch: Classic old-fashioned romance
Reasons to avoid: Its sensitivities haven't passed the test of time

Laughs: None
Jumps: None
Vomit: None
Nudity: None
Overall rating: 8/10

Did you know? In 1994, THe Lady Eve was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.

The final word. Victoria Wilson, Barbara Stanwyck's biographer: "It was “high elegance and high sophistication while being banana-peel low, and Barbara as an actress is freed up by it.”

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