The Lady Eve

The Lady Eve has the wrong title. The title should be Barbara Stanwyck Kicks Ass and Take Name for an Hour and a Half. Well, perhaps that's a bit much. How about Barbara Stanwyck is Better Than You, or Hey Moron, Why Aren't You in Love with Barbara Stanwyck Yet?

Whatever you call it, Preston Sturges's screwball comedy about a naive millionaire and the fraudsters out to fleece him is utterly, delightfully, hilariously brilliant. This is a movie that works spoken, physical, and character-based comedy into every scene, creating laugh-out-loud moments from sophisticated banter, pratfalls, and even simple moments like the unguarded shuffling of a deck of cards or the presentation of a lei.

Henry Fonda is the millionaire, a child of privilege on the return voyage from a long expedition up the Amazon. He's young, he's clumsy, he's idealistic, and he's so ridiculously, adorably, unstoppably in love that if you, dear reader, don't root for him, then you have an iron heart. Barbara Stanwyck is one of the fraudsters, the pretty girl who specializes in lovestruck rich morons. I've been crushing on Stanwyck since I saw Ball of Fire in 1982, and I've gotta tell you that her performance in this film eclipses even that classic. Stanwyck dominates every moment of The Lady Eve. She steals every scene she's in, and she steals every scene she's not in because even when none of the other characters are talking about her, they're talking about her. Her energy, her charisma, her combination of looks, brains, and balls (There's really no other way to put it: this dame's got big brass Bill the Goat balls.) sells Fonda's slackjawed lovesickness and sells her character's wit and audacity.

Toss in spot-on supporting comic performances from hall of famers Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, William Demarest, and Eric Blore, perfect direction, editing, and scoring, and you have as good a screwball comedy as anyone has ever run through a projector. And, again, Stanwyck. What a performer. What a performance.

What a movie.

It Happened One Night

Actually, it happened over a series of nights. But that's not important right now.

IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (Capra, 1934), is a romantic comedy / road movie starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Gable's the hard-drinking reporter whose dissolution hasn't yet caught up to his body and mind. Colbert's the spoiled society girl out to spite her father by running off to be with some pansy gyrocopter pilot. Circumstance throws them together in the back of a bus, with Gable telling Colbert, " Excuse me lady, but that upon which you sit is mine." "I beg your pardon?" Well, it will be soon enough.

The two most interesting things about IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT are the dialogue (Colbert to Pansy: "Promise me I'll never get off." Bet on it, sister!) and the power dynamics. Released just months before rules requiring new releases to have the Hayes Code seal of approval came into force, this film seems innocuous, but has some real adult humor going on just beneath the surface. The power dynamics are an interesting combination of gender and class conflicts, with one message sent to women (Submit!) and another to proletarians (Revolt!). Just get a load of this line, spoken by Gable's "man of the people" to the Colbert's millionaire father: "What she needs is a guy that'd take a sock at her once a day, whether it's coming to her or not. If you had half the brains you're supposed to have, you'd done it yourself, long ago." Dominance and insouciance, apparently, made for successful mainstream entertainment back when the Greatest Generation was in junior high.

But hey, don't watch this picture for material to gripe about at your next meeting of the Working Woman's Collective. Watch this picture to see Gable and Colbert, performers at the top of their respective games, bang out dialogue with near-scientific precision. Watch it for Joseph Walker's cinematography and marvel at the way light plays off a white silk dress in glorious black and white. Watch it for Capra, who knows how to get the most out of even his bit players. Most of all, watch it because it's funny. Watch it with a loved on and bring down the walls of Jericho.

To Be or Not to Be

I knew who Ernst Lubitsch, Carole Lombard, and Jack Benny were before I saw TO BE OR NOT TO BE. I knew that Lubitsch was a German Jew who fled to Hollywood during the rise of Hitler. I knew that Carole Lombard was a screen queen of the Golden Age. I knew that Jack Benny had a popular television show and made a running gag of his stinginess. I didn't know that Lubitsch had the talent to actually pull off a screwball comedy about the Warsaw Occupation. I didn't know that Lombard, in addition to being staggeringly beautiful, had perfect comic timing. And I didn't know that Jack Benny mixed detachment and warmth that kept me laughing both at and with him.

As previously mentioned, TO BE OR NOT TO BE labors under the burden of being set in the Nazy occupation of Warsaw. At the time of the film's release (1942), this was serious business, yet the full scope of the horrors of the occupation had yet to come to light. From our current vantage point, it's hard to associate the Warsaw Occupation with anything other than those horrors, but it's worth it to try and adopt the mindset of an America at war. At that time, it was common to paint our enemies as buffoons, and we were more than happy to engage with a troup of plucky resisters. Once we do adopt that mindset, we're in for a great time at the movies. Lubitsch takes jealousy, vanity, bravery, and fear; and he mixes them into high comedy combined with dramatic tension and a bit of cheerleading for the Allies.

He couldn't do it without Lombard, who comes off as smart, funny, and the greatest wearer of white silk dresses in Western history. She's the pivot about which the enterprise turns, and there isn't a moment she's onscreen that we don't invest in her. Benny's a great counterpart, a little older, a little vainer, and very jealous of his wife (as well he should be, with young Polish Air Force officer Robert Stack sniffing about), and the two play off one another with the aplomb of old pros.

So, while I admit that TO BE OR NOT TO BE made me a little uncomfortable at times (Col. Earhardt as a buffoon? That monster?), it stands as an excellent comedy and deserves its status as a classic of the screwball genre.

And now I know who these people really are.