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The Lady Eve on DVD (1941)

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Average rating: 73%
12134161620616
3.5
from 316 members
 
Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda
Director: Preston Sturges
Studio: UNIVERSAL PICTURES UK
Certificate: U
User collections: Groovy Movies That You May Have Missed, Feeling Jaded?, For no other reason than I can., My favourite Directors
Genres: Comedy
Languages: English
Released: 02/10/2006

Brief synopsis of The Lady Eve

When Jean Harrington meets Charles Pike on a ship, a misunderstanding leaves them parting on bad terms. In order to win back his love, Jean disguises herself as an English lady and sets off to pursue him...

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Critics Reviews

Rating of 5 stars out of 5 Radio Times

A wonderfully witty masterpiece, written and directed by the inimitable Preston Sturges. The plot gives a couple of near career-best roles to two of Hollywood's finest players, who are perfectly cast here. Henry Fonda, a wealthy young man obsessed by snakes, lays himself wide open to the schemes of professional con artist Charles Coburn and his daughter, Barbara Stanwyck. Fonda's buddy William Demarest intervenes, but Stanwyck, undeterred, later reappears in disguise at his palatial manse and tries again. Naturally, the slick, assured sexual opportunist falls for the gauche brewer's son who has spent a year up the Amazon, resulting in a witty, sparkling combination of romance and screwball comedy that is still unequalled. There was a 1956 remake with Mitzi Gaynor called The Birds and the Bees, but it didn't come within spitting distance of this great original.

Rating of 3 
	  stars out of 4 Halliwell's Film Guide

Hectic romantic farce, the first to show its director's penchant for mixing up sexual innuendo, funny men and pratfalls. There are moments when the pace drops, but in general it's scintillating entertainment, especially after viewing its weak remake Th

Time Out

A beguilingly ribald sex comedy, spattered with characteristic Sturges slapstick (Fonda can hardly move without... Read more on www.timeout.com

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Members Reviews

Reviews Voted Most Helpful

Rated - 5 starsStanwyck In Excelsis

Swede from Oxford , 05/07/2005

I'm really not sure if there is a better Hollywood comedy extant than The Lady Eve. Unencumbered by all the low level businness that usually clutters up Sturges' films, The Lady Eve provides Barbara Stanwyck's finest moment. Her routine of a card sharp masquerading as an English duchess is textbook screwball comedy. Rent this and only give it back under duress.

  6 out of 6 people found this review helpful
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Rated - 3 starsPreposterous Ending

Penny from Anstruther , 24/02/2007

This starts off really well...whilst they remain on the ship, but once they come ashore, the plot runs aground too. The second half is based on Henry Fonda's deception, but it's so ludicrous as to become a bit tiresome.

  3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
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Rated - 5 starsA comedic treasure

SBC from London , 09/08/2005

From one of the first great writer-directors of comedy this is one of Preston Sturges masterpieces. The 'card cheating' scene alone is worth watching this film for but there are many moments of brilliant dialogue and situational comedy. A young Henry Fonda excells at physical comedy but, for me, Stanwyck steels the film. Watch it, laugh and afterwards lament that dialogue just doesn't come like this anymore.

  2 out of 3 people found this review helpful
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Rated - 4 starsFantastic Froth... for the 1940s

A customer from Manchester, England, England , 08/11/2005

Lots of Fun and sassy and I love Barbara Stanwyck and it has some great one-liners - 'They say a moonlit deck's a woman's business office.' - and some great pratfalls, but it is too good at being complicit with a 1940s audience and hence doesn't travel well to year 2005. Other members of the audience loved it, but I thought it was a bit silly - not much there, unless you are prepared to watch it again and analyse.

These crowd-pleasing films seem just corny 60 years on - I like it better when they are trying to be important and monumental - that's when they are really hilarious.

Basically i was entertained but hardly engrossed by the action.

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Most Recent Reviews

Rated - 3 starsPreposterous Ending

Penny from Anstruther , 24/02/2007

This starts off really well...whilst they remain on the ship, but once they come ashore, the plot runs aground too. The second half is based on Henry Fonda's deception, but it's so ludicrous as to become a bit tiresome.

  3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
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Rated - 5 starsSpectacular

A customer from London , 17/05/2007

Few movies can be more enjoyable than THE LADY EVE - it is Stanwyck's finest hour with ever line delivered with a sort of immaculate zaniness ('A moonlit deck is a woman's office' and so on) - but also its the ensemble of players around her - the rest of the card sharpers, the wonderful idiots in Connecticut, some tiny roles on board the ship (the bar keep, the girls trying to catch millionaire Fonda's eye) and Fonda's own role as sacrificial victim - his absolute refusal to be anything other than a total blank against which Stanwyck can shine. It's tricky overpraising a film - but just listen to what they say and how they do the countless bits of 'business' and it's as fun as Twelfth Night. The ending, incidentally, is EXACTLY right.

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