The Lady Eve (1941) - Please Tell Me I'm Not The Only One To Notice
Farfalla and I watched The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges wr. with Henry Fonda as a socially awkward nerd and Barbara Stanwyck) and we were elbowing each other all the way through. I queried the internets today and came up dry.
REALLY??
The movie is about a grifter named Jean who falls in love with her mark. When her beau finds out that she and her family are card sharps and worse, he dumps her, prompting her to initiate an elaborate (and risky) revenge.
The thing is... her family consists of her biological father and Gerald, his partner in crime and domestic affairs. Although the Hayes code was well in effect by 1941, the movie slyly never says a word. We see them scheming together, gambling together, eating together at home, and significantly, at one point father Harry asks Jean not to reveal their true identities to her boyfriend for another day "for the sake of your father and Gerald." On the heterosexual side, the movie pushes the envelope quite a bit (not in 1920's terms, but at least in Code Years terms) and ends with, well, a very clever strike at the code itself.
Seriously, watch this movie. Gerald is Jean's stepfather! He doesn't appear in the initial scene II which introduces the characters, but is carefully slipped in, and then his presence goes unquestioned. (A third, rather, er, flamboyant conman is clearly introduced as an old family friend.) The domestic scenes are very cute.
This movie stands up well over time. Unlike some of my other favorite 1940's movies, there are no offensive racial jokes, and nothing to get the feminist blood boiling. Yes, there's a woman putting off a man by making up stories about how she's been with 500 guys, but the man in question is a socially-inept nerdboy virgin. Sorry, gals, but I can point you to about 500,000 of them posting daily on the Chans. Don't have to like it, but there it is. His reaction is 100% in character.
(Compare-contrast this to that other classic war-of-the-sexes movie, The Awful Truth, in which Irene Dunne gets her revenge on playboy Cary Grant by pretending to be his lush partygirl sister, except that partygirl business is not an act at all. Cary Grant's character knows he married a sorostitute, and loves it--well, up to a point. Hence the war, & then the making up.)
SERIOUSLY INTERNETS, HAVE YOU NEVER SEEN THIS MOVIE?
REALLY??
The movie is about a grifter named Jean who falls in love with her mark. When her beau finds out that she and her family are card sharps and worse, he dumps her, prompting her to initiate an elaborate (and risky) revenge.
The thing is... her family consists of her biological father and Gerald, his partner in crime and domestic affairs. Although the Hayes code was well in effect by 1941, the movie slyly never says a word. We see them scheming together, gambling together, eating together at home, and significantly, at one point father Harry asks Jean not to reveal their true identities to her boyfriend for another day "for the sake of your father and Gerald." On the heterosexual side, the movie pushes the envelope quite a bit (not in 1920's terms, but at least in Code Years terms) and ends with, well, a very clever strike at the code itself.
Seriously, watch this movie. Gerald is Jean's stepfather! He doesn't appear in the initial scene II which introduces the characters, but is carefully slipped in, and then his presence goes unquestioned. (A third, rather, er, flamboyant conman is clearly introduced as an old family friend.) The domestic scenes are very cute.
This movie stands up well over time. Unlike some of my other favorite 1940's movies, there are no offensive racial jokes, and nothing to get the feminist blood boiling. Yes, there's a woman putting off a man by making up stories about how she's been with 500 guys, but the man in question is a socially-inept nerdboy virgin. Sorry, gals, but I can point you to about 500,000 of them posting daily on the Chans. Don't have to like it, but there it is. His reaction is 100% in character.
(Compare-contrast this to that other classic war-of-the-sexes movie, The Awful Truth, in which Irene Dunne gets her revenge on playboy Cary Grant by pretending to be his lush partygirl sister, except that partygirl business is not an act at all. Cary Grant's character knows he married a sorostitute, and loves it--well, up to a point. Hence the war, & then the making up.)
SERIOUSLY INTERNETS, HAVE YOU NEVER SEEN THIS MOVIE?