chaos-rampant Here we have another film about the flustering of identity, the storytelling we weave as we try to pursuit our desire, the turbulence of that pursuit. The same thing in a screwball context that underpins so many musicals of the era and of course the early steps that film noir was taking.Here's what transpires here. She's trying to seduce him, initially for just money on board a cruiser returning from South America. He's a bookish loner, aloof to the advances of other women, preferring his book, which is a way of hinting that here's someone who prefers the world with the clarity that stories provide it rather than as it is, a bit disheveled.So she trips him, quite literally, and he falls over. On a moonlit deck he professes deep love. Now it's her turn to be swept up. Having perhaps been so guileless to her tricks but so earnest in feeling at the same time, she falls for him. She shields him from her card-cheating companions.We are as vulnerable, as susceptible to the clarity that cuts through the stories we tell about ourselves, revealing us to be not quite who we thought, as our best attempts to avoid that clarity. Having done her utmost to seduce him, to weave fiction, real feelings pour through.But now look. He's handed a manila envelope containing a captioned photograph announcing her as a well known crook; another story, complete with images this time, that trips him and destroys that clarity. She protests that people will sometimes do things. Flustered by the betrayal he goes away.A third story brings them together, again spinning fiction. She has gotten herself invited to his fathers' home in Connecticut, in disguise supposedly as the niece of a neighbor (himself a crook in disguise). She shows up there in resplendent beauty, immediately he's taken aback. In a part you'll simply have to swallow, he becomes convinced that she's not really the same person. The filmmaker juggles this bit well though; another story is dished out to him about twins separated at birth.As well mannered, bright visitor from England he falls for her all over again, whom he had just spurned as a crook, although she is the same person. It's fun to watch with a lot of slapstick shenanigans and really a lot of the film is. Trying to get close to her over dinner, now the world conspires to make a fool of him.And then we shift again. Her payback is another story she innocently begins to blurt, about a dozen different sex partners before him. He is indignant, so easily flummoxed again by life that is not quite as he thought it should play out. We have quite clearly the foolishness of this narrator taking shape as the film around him.The film does not look to make a big deal about how, being so susceptible to stories we have in our heads about how life should be, so rigidly fixated on the idea that self is this solid, immutable, once-for-all thing, which of course goes against everything our senses report to us, that we miss out on the marvelously transient romp of persisting with the ride. But using this bookish, naively romantic guy who keeps moving away from his heart's desire only to find himself chasing her in another guise, it may be this very romp. It's not quite a masterpiece but come to it for a bit of funny clarity some day.

moonspinner55 Fast-talking, quick-thinking, altogether delightful comedy from Preston Sturges, who also adapted the screenplay from Monckton Hoffe's original story. An elderly cardsharp and his equally crooked daughter, traveling in style by cruise ship from South America, zero in on their next victim--a handsome but somewhat unsteady ale-heir--but the daughter mixes business with pleasure and ends up falling for the lug. Barbara Stanwyck, with her crafty stare and sexy smirk, surprisingly doesn't run roughshod over articulate Henry Fonda, and they make a winning combination. Sturges' script blends grown-up jokes and conversation with pratfalls while never losing the filmmaker's graceful touch and innate sophistication. The results are amusingly frisky, prickly and unpredictable. *** from ****

jacobs-greenwood Directed by Preston Sturges, the whole cast is terrific and includes (many from Sturges' other great films): Henry Fonda, Barbara Stanwyck, Charles Coburn, Eugene Palette, William Demarest, Eric Blore, and Al Bridge (uncredited). The script was Oscar nominated. Added to the National Film Registry in 1994. #55 on AFI's 100 Funniest Movies list. #26 on AFI's 100 Greatest Love Stories list.Fonda is a wealthy, naive ophiologist (snake expert) that runs into father and daughter con artists (Coburn and Stanwyck) on a cruise ship while returning from an expedition. However, Stanwyck falls for Fonda and tells Coburn to lay off him. Demarest plays a servant, protector of Fonda. When Fonda learns what she really is, he is disillusioned and breaks his relationship with Stanwyck.Later, back in Fonda's high society world, he is surprised to see someone looking very much like Stanwyck (it is her, with a new identity) at a party at his home. She's with Blore, another con artist. Fonda tries to figure out who she is, and must wrestle with his affections and his trust.

Sergeant_Tibbs The first half of The Lady Eve is one of my new favourite things. Film noir mixed with screwball romance, it blends them both magnificently, utilising Barbara Stanwyck's smooth femme fatale and Henry Fonda's clear lack of comfort zone in any of this. Taking place over the course of a boat trip, the dialogue is sharp and witty, lying through their teeth but grounding it in compelling and whole-heartedly engaging truth. It has a feel that Preston Sturges had a very inspired weekend and wrote this on a productive bender and that kind of thing rubs off on you in the best way. It's a truly wonderful 50 minutes or so. Unfortunately, the plot thickens and life gets complicated after the boat. The film keeps its wit but gets very messy. It becomes difficult to keep track of what's going on, what the motive is and why the characters can't plainly see the problem. An overuse of Fonda falling down proves that the second half just isn't on the same level as the first. However, it doesn't drag the film down too far for me, it only drags it off a potential spot on my all-time favourites list.8/10