The Lady Eve (35mm)

(Preston Sturges, US 1941, 94 min., 35mm)

Aboard a cruise ship leaving the Amazon, woman-shy snake expert Charles Pike (Henry Fonda) finds himself the chosen prey of a father-daughter card shark team. Everything is driven astray however, when the daughter, Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck), falls head-over-heels in love with the sucker. He gets wise and breaks it off. However, she’s not done with him . . . Stanwyck is perfectly cast as the hard-edged con woman with a heart in Preston Sturges’s clever, fast-moving, hugely entertaining “vexiest picture”!