The Lady Eve is a romantic fable. After spending a year "up the Amazon," Charles Pike is swept off his feet and falls head over heels in love with Jean, the sophisticated daughter of wealthy oilman Colonel Harrington. Later in the film he also falls in love with the Lady Eve, the charming niece of English aristocrat Sir Alfred McGlennan Keith. Yet, in both cases the woman of his dreams is really a grifter and con artist trying to fool and fleece the young brewing heir. Does the film tells us about male romantic desire and ideals of the feminine? Do we fall in love with a person or an illusion? Can the divisions of class, education and values be crossed for love? What is the film telling us about infatuation, lust and love? What is the connection between love and illusion?
The film, “The Lady Eve '' teaches the viewer that the innate human desire for romantic love drives us to show false identity creating an illusion we call true love. The false identity created from which we call love is formed in the human desire to be liked by those around you, especially your crush. This desire causes people to put on their best face or a display which is untrue like Jean had done by changing between herself and Lady Eve as a way to deceive Charles Pike and make him fall in love. Jean was able to accomplish this through her knowledge of the male desire for someone who is seen as “attractive” and fitting in as the “ideal lady”, which Jean had fit perfectly allowing her to win charles’ love not once but 3 times. This cycle of events combined with the film having his assistant try to warn him that “she's the same dame” emphasises upon the power of the male desire for love in which a man would ignore any red flag or suspicions he thought about the women to see her inner beauty. Preston Sturges emphasises the theme of lust in his film to represent the power the sin lust holds over the male desires, from which it is so powerful it can cause one to ignore all other ideas just for a chance. Overall this idea in the film was very powerful in the society of America drawing to the popularity of christianity along with the desires of mankind
ReplyDeletePreston Sturges’ “The Lady Eve” tells viewers that people often confuse infatuation with love, and that this confusion translates to an incompatible relationship. During the beginning of the film, Jean uses a camera to view Charles Pike. As she views him on the two dimensional screen, viewers realize that she is infatuated by him. As the plot continues, the audience watches as Charles falls in love with the illusion that Jean has constructed. From the very moment they meet, when Jean trips Pike, Pike believes that they met by chance or fate while Jean knows the context of their relationship. This power dynamic that is well represented by the scene when Jean trips Pike, foreshadows the instability and superficiality of their relationship throughout the rest of the film. Preston Sturges emphasizes this point with film techniques like his choice of angles and the placement of characters in the frame. An example of these techniques is during the scene when Jean and Pike discuss their ideal partner. Pike falls onto the floor and Jean lays above him on the chair. Sturges employs a high angle, showing Pike look up to Jean and Jean look down to Pike. This power dynamic is also illustrated in various scenes. For instance, whenever Pike admires Jean from afar, he would subsequently trip and fall. These scenes foreshadow the inevitable failure of their superficial relationship, which has ended up a failure despite Jean’s various crafted identities. At the end of the film, Sturges deliberately repeats the beginning scene of the ship where Jean and Pike first meet. In this closing scene, Pike shuts out his rocky relationship with Jean and immediately embraces her. Viewers are hit with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, anticipating yet another failed relationship.
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ReplyDeleteThe Lady Eve, a famous screwball comedy movie from the 1940s, depicts just how easily love and illusion can be intertwined. When you fall in love with someone, you will typically fall in love with their personality, however, there are a few exceptions. Sometimes, the idea of something will be a misconstrued meaning of love. For example, someone can love the idea of having a significant other, but not love the significant other. This love is an illusion, as loving the idea of a person, is far different than loving the actual person. The Lady Eve depicts a character who loves the idea of marrying the main character. She has only known him for a week but accepts his marriage proposal. She clearly doesn’t love him, as she doesn’t know him, however, she knows he has money and status. She loves the idea of marrying him, not him. Being a con-woman, she ironically tricks herself, confusing love for an illusion. An example of this from the film is when she only considers loving him if he has money. Once she learns that he is wealthy, she wants to talk with him. Her reasoning for marriage and love doesn’t lie in anything about him, rather, only in his possessions. This has real-world implications, as in life people have to realize whether they appreciate you, or just the thought of you. Also, it is important to understand if you like the thought of someone, or you actually like that person. Friendships are key in life, and if you realize you only like the thought of a friend, try and learn more about them, because living an illusion is hardly living at all.
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ReplyDeleteThe 1941 screwball comedy, The Lady Eve, is an amusing film in which the main character, an awkward young man named Charles Pike, “falls in love” with the same woman twice without actually knowing her true identity or intentions. Given that the woman he falls for is a renowned con artist named Jean Harrington, it becomes clear that one of the main purposes of this unique (and often confusing) plotline is to convince the viewer that love isn’t always what we think it is. The first time Charles becomes infatuated with Jean, he believes her to be the daughter of a wealthy businessman and thus the perfect fit for a man like him (the heir to a sizeable fortune). In reality, however, she is a trickster who is seducing him in an attempt to swindle him out of a portion of that fortune. There is no denying that Charles is in love, but one cannot say that he is in love with Jean since he does not truly know her and if he did, he would no doubt snap out of this love trance (as he does when he later uncovers her con artist reputation). It becomes clear, then, that he must be in love with his image of her, the person he thinks she is rather than who she actually is. This concept becomes even more evident as the film goes on and Charles falls in love with Jean for a second time. This time, she is posing as an Englishwoman of the upper class to get revenge on her former love interest, which she succeeds in doing when they get married and she informs him of her multiple former lovers/spouses. The perception that Charles has of “Eve” when he “falls in love” with her does not align with the image that forms when he hears of her fake past, causing him to lose feelings and walk out on their marriage. So not only is the image that he falls in love with contrived, but so is the new image of her that he discovers and subsequently breaks up with her for. And all the while, he is unaware that he doesn’t know who she truly is. Therefore, The Lady Eve’s storyline makes the viewer question what love is and how we think of it. When we fall in love, are we catching feelings for the actual person or for who we think the person is? Through her unceasing manipulation of Charles Pike, Jean Harrington makes a convincing argument for the latter.
ReplyDeleteIs what you see what you get? Or is what we believe what we see what we get? Throughout the film, "The Lady Eve", love is a picture that is drawn by both people in a relationship. To start, Charles Pike almost instantaneously falls in love with Jean while only knowing her for a short period of time, and the image of love is laid out for the viewer. When Charles first met Jean, it was as if love just showed up between them. It was something that was meant to be. But when unpacking the complex idea of love and how it is portrayed in this film, its important to know that Charles knew nothing about Jean when he fell in love with her. So how did he fall in love with her so quickly, especially when she hid her true identity from him? It's simple, he fell in love with the idea of her. As soon as he saw her, his brain created and drew this painting of them together that was flawless. Additionally, as Charles was creating an illusion of who he wanted Jean to be, she was helping in this process. She changed and hid some of her identity and used her knowledge of what a man desires to enhance his view of her. As a con artist, she was specifically good at this, but in real relationships as well, people often create a picture of themselves because they want the other person to see them in that specific way. This movie clearly demonstrates the complexity of love versus an illusion and how they are inseparable in relationships.
ReplyDeleteWe don't fall for a person, we fall for what we perceive them to be. If you don't actively acknowledge that there may be more than the surface level you initial know, than you're prone to manipulation. Even though sometimes the side a person puts forth is their actual self, this generally isn't the case. Rather, as an extreme version in the movie, a person may leave out parts of their story or lie about traits to make them appear more likable. In such a case, you'll fall for your perceptions, not the person. When it comes to relationships, this is the point the movie is trying to make, albeit using an extreme example. Love is blind, not only to conventional beauty, but to negatives. It doesn't help that the male lead is frankly stupid, but he fell head over heels for "Lady Eve" to the point of marrying her, the same person he was infatuated with on the boat in the film. However, not only did he never figure out that Lady Eve and Jean were the same person, but he doesn't like the persona "Lady Eve," because of the stories she told about herself. The male lead, believing everything he hears, is dumbfounded when Lady Eve tells him story after story about her with other men, and eventually runs away. He leaves Lady Eve, not because she was lying, or because of her actually personality, or even her beauty. In fact, it can't be anything that Lady Eve is, since she "never changed," but rather the way he perceived her changed. So what is this telling us? It's telling us that we can't rely on these perceptions alone. Consider the butler of the male lead. The butler seemed to actually understand what was happening, and tried to persuade the male lead to be cautious. Of course, the lead threw caution to the wind and ignored him, leading to a broken relationship. If we can't rely on how we perceive things, than we need that second opinion to help us. Even though the lead was tricked even into the final scene, he's going to find out eventually, and therefore this movie is not exactly a happy one. It's almost a word of caution to not get trapped in your illusion of love, and instead try to think impartially, or even ask a friend for help if necessary.
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