The Lady Eve (1941)

Directed by Preston Sturges. Starring Henry Fonda, Barbara Stanwyck, Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, William Demarest, Eric Blore, Melvin Cooper.

Sturges’ combo screwball romance and grifter farce hardly feels dated and remains arguably his most persistently amusing feature. The usually sober, sincere and dignified Fonda demonstrates solid comic chops when playing, well, someone trying to cling to sobriety, sincerity and dignity while being worked over by father-daughter con artists Coburn and Stanwyck, who are looking to fleece the snake-loving boob out of his fortune of an inheritance. Fizzy writing meshes well with abrupt slapstick, the romance begs for investment no matter the scatterbrained complications (“It’s the same dame!”), and terrific scenes and quips are in abundance, like the pleasurable “outcheating” twists in a high-stakes card game and Stanwyck’s declaration of Fonda’s spill over a couch being an icebreaker. Second and best pairing of the leads, with solid support from Coburn’s discerning card sharp and Pallette as Fonda’s blustery pops, among others. Loosely remade as The Birds and the Bees in 1956.

86/100