Directed by Preston Sturges • 1941 • United States
Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn
Barbara Stanwyck sizzles, Henry Fonda bumbles, and Preston Sturges runs riot in one of the all-time great screwballs, a pitch-perfect blend of comic zing and swoonworthy romance. Aboard a cruise liner sailing up the coast of South America, Stanwyck’s conniving card sharp sets her sights on Fonda’s nerdy snake researcher, who happens to be the heir to a brewery fortune. But when the con artist falls for her mark, her grift becomes a game of hearts—and she is determined to win it all. One in a string of matchless comedic marvels that Sturges wrote and directed as part of a dazzling 1940s run, this gender-flipped battle-of-wits farce is perhaps his most emotionally satisfying work, tempering its sparkling humor with a streak of tender poignancy supplied by the sensational Stanwyck at her peak.
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The Palm Beach Story
Directed by Preston Sturges • 1942 • United States
Starring Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary AstorThis wild tale of wacky wedlock from Preston Sturges takes off like a rocket and never lets up. Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert play Tom and Gerry, a married New York couple on the skids, fin...
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Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch • 1938 • United States
Starring Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Edward Everett HortonThe great Ernst Lubitsch lends his famously sophisticated touch to this whimsical farce about a spoiled American millionaire who uses his wealth to lure an attractive French aristocra...
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Detour
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer • 1945 • United States
Starring Tom Neal, Ann SavageFrom Poverty Row came a movie that, perhaps more than any other, epitomizes the dark fatalism at the heart of film noir. As he hitchhikes his way from New York to Los Angeles, a down-on-his-luck nightclub pianist ...
