27. The Lady Eve (1941)

Directed by Preston Sturges
Written by Preston Sturges
Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, and Charles Coburn

I used to get so livid when live-action movies had animated sequences during the opening credits. What a cruel deception. Why couldn’t they make the whole fucking film a cartoon? At eight years old, I didn’t give a shit about the sexual tension between two shrunken teenagers riding an ant in Rick Moranis’s backyard or Peter Sellers pretending to be a detective with a bad French accent. I wanted portals to fantasy realms and flying monsters and the pathos of a thousand dying robots. Real people were boring and none of them ever looked like me. At least Better off Dead justified its use of animation by making John Cusack’s character an actual animator. The Lady Eve’s cartoon introduction cleaves together the biblical Adam’s wife with the evil serpent, which makes for a fractured symbolic matrix, since Pike is an ophidologist and Jean already knows good from evil. That cheek-to-cheek scene is sublime. During a dance freshman year of high school, my friend S wore a crimson dress, and when the DJ played “Lady in Red,” she and I smashed our faces together and laughed. Pike’s father is a rich brewer whose voice betrays an indulgent fondness for cigars. My boss at a cafe I worked at ten years ago had the same gravelly way of speaking. It was an open secret that he sold cocaine on the side. Once, before the lunch rush, he confessed to his hustle. “I sell cocaine,” he said. “Okay,” I said. He pulled out different sized baggies of white powder and explained how much each cost. I asked if I could take a smoke break when he was done. Earlier that year we ran into each other on the Metro. I was pretty fucked up after drinking alone for a few hours in Dupont Circle. At the bar, I ordered Belgian-style ale and wrote stories I thought might mean something to people and, I don’t know, change the course of their lives. Jean’s British accent is pretty suspect but awards her a +2 charisma bonus. Smitten, Pike convinces himself Eve and Jean aren’t the same dame. It’s so easy to believe a charming lie.