The Lady Eve

This film is extraordinarily magnificent in so many ways. No really, it is! I don't know why I've never watched it before! 17 years of my life without it - it's abominable! This is going on my list of "Films To Show People Who Don't Like Classic Films", there is no way they would not be hooked after seeing it.

According to the film poster, Barbara Stanwyck has Henry Fonda "bewitched and bewildered", yet for some reason I'd got it into my head that it was a film noire - as if the tag line doesn't give it away!! How thick can I be? (Still, it's not as bad as becoming confused when, instead of Barbara whom I thought was in it (don't ask!), Bette Davis came out shooting David Newell in The Letter. )

Anyway, on with the show!

The titles are amazing! Well, they made me chuckle, anyway. Although at first I have to admit I thought I was watching the wrong film!

Barbara plays Jean Harrington, a beautiful (well, hello! It's Barbara!) con artist, who, along with her father (Charles Coburn), is out to, well, con Charles Pike (Henry Fonda) on a ship travelling from South to North America. Pike is a snake expert (I can't for the life of me remember the correct term!), and heir to the Pike Ale Fortune, who has been on a year-long expedition up the Amazon. All the women on the ship are trying to snap him up, but of course, no one snaps a man up quite like Jean. However, whilst ensnaring Pike, she falls in love with him. She protects him for her cardshark of a father, and they embark on a very whirly whirlwind romance.

It sounds like a story that's been told a hundred times, but it most certainly isn't. I had no idea what was coming, and I must say, I thought what came was magnificent. Barbara was spectacular...she outdid herself! Well, no she didn't, because she's always so fantastically smashing that she couldn't possibly do better!

I HIGHLY recommend that you see this film...immediately. I can't sing it's praises enough...I'm in love with it! It's certainly going to be one of those films that I'll watch over....and over...and over...and over again. You need to see it!

Not content with intentionally dropping something on Pike's head as he's climbing up onto the ship, Jean spies on him through this little beauty...

I have no idea what it is, but I want one...

...whilst entertaining us with a rather amusing commentary, and then she proceeds to trip him up as he's walking past her table.

One of Jean's shoe heels is conveniently snapped off when he trips, so she very smoothly commandeers him to escort her to her cabin to put on another pair of shoes...which, of course, she makes him pick out and put on her.

This scene just sizzled. Actually the whole film sizzled. I've never seen such a sizzling scene in any modern films...everything's just too crude.

This is possibly the cutest outfit ever...as soon as I saw it I squealed!