The Lady Eve

Preston Sturges makes The Lady Eve funny enough to recommend for the dialogue alone, then gives the courtship enough feeling to matter. It is an excellent romantic comedy, including for those of us who sometimes find the business of bringing couples together exhausting. Barbara Stanwyck plays Jean Harrington, a card-sharp with her eye on Charles Pike, Henry Fonda’s guileless heir. Sturges writes and directs their encounters with an evident enjoyment of Jean’s ability to get ahead of Charles.

Stanwyck makes Jean’s quickness pleasurable rather than exhausting. She can suggest that a remark has been carefully prepared while making it sound as though it has only just occurred to her, and there is warmth beneath the calculation. We laughed aloud at the mirror scene because she seems to be directing the comedy herself, with everyone else a little behind. Stanwyck gives Jean an amused confidence that makes her control of these encounters convincing, while leaving room for uncertainty about her own feelings.

Fonda is essential to this. His Charles is slow to understand what she is doing, yet Fonda makes that slowness touching: there is an openness here that would be easy for a less patient performance to turn into simple stupidity. Their exchanges stay funny because his embarrassment never feels like an actor waiting for the next joke. We want Jean to enjoy herself, but we also want her to be careful with him, and Fonda earns that concern through the hesitations in his performance.

Victor Milner’s cinematography gives Stanwyck space to do that work. In the mirror scene, the framing makes the act of watching someone funny, and we share Jean’s pleasure in being quicker than everyone else. Edith Head’s costumes help make Jean’s confidence persuasive; she looks accustomed to being noticed, which suits the way Stanwyck plays her. These are useful contributions to a comedy in which so much depends on how one person looks at another.

Stuart Gilmore’s editing keeps the dialogue and the physical comedy in the same rhythm, which is harder than the film makes it appear. We have time to register a reaction without feeling the actors hold for applause. The music, credited to Gil Grau, Sigmund Krumgold, Phil Boutelje, Leo Shuken, John Leipold and Charles Bradshaw, works best when it supports the lightness without pressing the romance. Much of the attraction is carried by the voices, and the accompaniment wisely gives them room.

Not every physical joke earns its place. Sturges occasionally sends Fonda through another pratfall when his expression has already done enough, and those repetitions can make Charles seem less interesting than he is in conversation. The lapse is small, but noticeable in a film whose dialogue is so alert to differences between people. Charles Coburn, as ‘Colonel’ Harrington, supplies another kind of comic assurance: he has the ease of someone who expects to be listened to, and Sturges sensibly lets him speak.

Screwball comedy can become a competition to see who can remain least affected by anyone else. Here the possibility of hurt keeps the clever talk from becoming tiresome, and Stanwyck lets Jean’s confidence falter without making her seem helpless. At 97 minutes, the film has room for that uncertainty as well as the business of making us laugh. Watch it for the flirting, and forgive the occasional extra fall.