THE LADY EVE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 108, 18 July 1941, Page 17

THE LADY EVE

(Paramount)

F any of you remember some of the nasty things this department has said in the past about the cult of crazy comedy, you will realise

just how good an opinion we must have of The Lady Eve to stand up and clap (our highest award). It’s this kind of pleasant surprise that gives film-going its greatest charm. You may plod for weeks across deserts of arid repetition and then, when you least expect it, you stumble upon an oasis of originality. Until I saw The Lady Eve I’d have argued that there was nothing left to say about crazy comedy except perhaps a requiem over its corpse, and then along comes this fellow Preston Sturges, who not only has plenty to say, but says it so freshly and brightly that, far from intoning a requiem the least the grateful critic can do is to chime in with a few heartfelt hallelujahs. This isn’t the first picture written and directed by Preston Sturges, but as I hadn’t seen his two most recent ones, T'he Great McGinty, and Christmas in July, and had forgotten that he wrote the scripts for The Power and the Glory and Remember the Night?, it came as a camplete surprise to encounter his work in The Lady Eve. What strikes one about Mr. Sturges is that he is able to tell old jokes as if they were brand-new, and give original twists to the most hackneyed situations. He brings a new mind and a new approach to an old formula. To describe this feeling of freshness in his work is impossible; it is so much a matter of a subtle touch here and there. You get much the same sort of thing from Capra or Lubitsch-the same but different, and it is beyond me to tell you exactly where the difference lies. But if I say that Sturges is able on several occasions to involve his cast in the most old-fashioned type of slapstick, custard. pie farce and yet make it seem a new and uproarious kind of fooling, then you may form some idea of his accomplishment as a director, True, it is to the critic and the connoisseur that these finer points of direction appeal most, but perhaps even without being aware of them, the general public will, I think, react to the infectious gaiety and spontaneous wit of The Lady Eve. And once the show is talked about, it will surprise me if it doesn’t become good box-office. I’ve given most of my space and enthusiasm to the man behind the cameras, because I think he deserves it, but at the same time the show wouldn’t be half the success it is if Henry Fonda, Barbara Stanwyck, Charles Coburn, Eric Blore, Eugene Pallette and the rest of the excellent cast hadn’t put their very best into it, if they hadn't " caught on" to the director’s mood. I’m prepared to admit that Henry Fonda is a most improbable hero as a rich young man with a passion for snakes who, returning after a year spent in the Amazon, falls in love with an enticing card-sharper on the boat, finds out about her, throws her over, and then promptly falls in love with her again and marries her under the impression that she is someone else. I’m prepared to

admit that Barbara Stanwyck is equally improbable as the seductive siren who falls truly in love with her intended victim, marries him for revenge, and then discovers that revenge is not so sweet, but that love prevails; and I'm also prepared to admit that most of the situations are highly unlikely. But the point is that, within the limits of improbability set by the story, the characters behave in a probable way. In unreal circumstances they have a reality of their own. Like Cynara’s lover, they remain "faithful after their fashion" to their author’s original conception. And that seems to me to be the essence of true farce. If you have never liked Henry Fonda before, you may quite possibly like him in this role, because it is in some ways a satire on all the serious-minded young men whom he has so frequently portrayed. The sickly look on his face as his bride "confesses" to a series of imaginary indiscretions with other men is a joy to behold. And Miss Stanwyck matches him in an understanding of the film’s comic requirements. I’m only sorry that Paramount didn’t invite me to the preview of The Lady Eve, so that I could have told you about it earlier, instead of having had to wait till it was publicly released.