Review of The Lady Eve (1941) by Ruairí Pan M — 17 Aug 2011

Truly funny if romantically stunted, Preston Sturges' battle of the sexes on land and sea is just as risque and quick today as it was in 1941. Henry Fonda doesn't make a very good romantic lead but perhaps his casting is part of the point, as Barbara Stanwyck brings enough energy and charisma to fill two leading roles- and does so to the story's delight.

The two of them carry on a series of shifting oddball relationships as she dupes him once and then twice, resulting in a hysterically mixed-up love square involving only two people. If there was one thing Sturges was good at it was dodging the censors; his films, by finding clever ways to both avoid and obsess about sex, wind up being far more scandalous and enjoyably sexy than the unappealingly unsubtle gender-oriented comedies of today.

Note the scene in which Stanwyck talks herself off while caressing Fonda's hair, perhaps Hollywood's first masturbation scene; the stupefied look on his face doubles as a mockery of the Hays Code, a system of content regulation which acted as a butterfly net with holes the size of basketballs- and thank goodness! Romantic comedies don't come much smarter than this one, and even if the romance seems lacking, it at least has some inexplicable tinges to it that make it chaotically amusing and, at some points, surprisingly realistic.