Review:The Lady Eve

I just finished this film. It had been sitting in my “to watch” pile for several weeks, then we watched the beginning in our film history class. Having finished it, I can say that it further cemented my love for Barbara Stanwyck.

This scene is really hot:

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After she gives Henry Fonda the worst case of blue balls in history, some story flaws started to appear, at least to my modern eyes. She falls in love with him, for no discernable reason. He’s a very weak character, constantly bullied by his father, his valet, and even Stanwyck’s character, Jean/Eve. He falls in love with her twice, and rejects her twice for superficial moralistic reasons. The proposes marriage to her after knowing her for two days, and yet has the temerity to judge her for aspects of her life that he didn’t know about. We’re a little less trigger happy when it comes to marriage these days, but I’m pretty sure that if you like a girl enough to propose the next morning, you’d better be prepared to take the bad with the good, regardless of the era.

This happens again later in the film. When she torments him with made-up stories of the dozens of men she’s slept with, he freaks out and ditches her on the train. Perhaps in the ’40s men still expected all girls to be virgins until marriage, but his reaction was almost a tantrum, and made his character very unlikeable. He’s so butthurt he can’t even man up enough to ask her for an annulment in person, and instead hides behind Daddy and his lawyers.

He’s weak and spoiled and a rather dim bulb, and yet she goes back to him, after being rejected twice. Maybe she thinks it’s cute and funny how he’s always spilling food on himself? I dunno.

Despite all this, what makes this movie such a joy to watch is Babs’s atomic charisma. You’d measure her charm the same way you measure nuclear blasts, in megatons. She’s gorgeous, funny, and whip-smart. Why she goes for a total pussy is beyond me. Regardless, watching her on screen is such a pleasure that makes up for the implausibility of the story.

One more thing. As I watched, I found myself wondering how Hollywood stars went from this:

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