Monday, February 10, 2020
What You See Is What You Get?
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?
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In The Lady Eve, Charles Pike who has recently come back from being “up the Amazon” manages to fall in love with Jean who seems incredibly witty and genuine at the time that they first meet. This first interaction shows Jean purposely tripping Pike in order to trick him into changing her shoes where she then works her con artist magic. Instantly Pike begins showing signs of attraction for Jean specifically when he smells her perfume and mentions how nice it smells directly to Jean. She continues to be flirty and friendly as the scene continues until they almost have an intimate moment when Pike is changing Jean’s shoes. Pike begins to fall in love with the act that Jean is putting on to make him more vulnerable and susceptible to her con tactics. Here he does not realize, but he is falling in love with the illusion of Jean being this perfect human being and not who Jean really is. This is interesting because as the film continues we start to see Jean (what we think) genuinely fall in love with Pike. This raises a question of whether or not it is true love if you fall in love with someone who is putting on an act without realizing. This question is later answered when Pike finds out Jean is a con artist and he no longer believes that she truly loved him. In the second part of the film we see this same cycle of “love” between Pike and Jean who is disguised as Lady Eve. He again falls in love with this alternate character that Jean plays and we see the same exact thing happen. Lady Eve tells Pike about her experiences of sleeping around with guys and they end up getting into a divorce issue. It is not until they see each other on the boat the next time that we can assume they truly fall in love. In this scene we see them fall in love with each other and it seems like this time they are both being genuine in their love for each other. It is finally not an illusion of love, but genuine feelings.
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ReplyDeleteIn the movie The Lady Eve, there is a big theme which is that Pike fell in love with an illusion. Gene tricked Pike into thinking that she was in love with him but after all she was just after his money. She eventually actually fell in love with him but then Pike found out he was being tricked and that broke his heart. He thought he was in love but in reality it was just a con. Gene actually loved him but Pike didn't believe her after he found out it was just a con. He fell in love with someone who was just conning him the whole time. When she came back as The Lady Eve just to mess with Pike again who fell in love with her again. He thought it was a whole new lady and a whole new life he was going to start but yet again it was just another con. Both times he has fallen in love it was a con. The movie ended well by having them actually fall in love, for real this time. I thought it was crazy how he fell for her not once but twice and wasn't even real both times. I found it especially crazy how he didn't recognize her when she was the lady eve. I thought there was an interesting connection between love and illusion because they are very mixed. Love and illusion are very similar to Pike because he couldn't tell the difference between being conned and being in love. I thought this movie was very interesting and love plays a big part in the movie.
ReplyDeleteIn The Lady Eve, Charles Pike who has recently returned from his adventures in the Amazon falls in love with Jean. Jean is a con master, who uses her wit and good looks to win over Pike. Pike immediately succumbs to Jean’s strategy. However, as the plot progresses, Jean begins to accidently fall in love with Pike. The audience (us) shows us throughout the entirety of the movie Jeans and her father’s plan, however what the movie silently shows us is Jean falling for Pike. Sadly, when Jean finally understands that she is falling in love with Pike and tells her father, the truth falls out. The captain of the ship hands over a file exposing Jean as a con artist to Pike. Pike is heartbroken, and when he finds Jean in the later scene he explains how hurt he really is, then leaving Jean heartbroken. This leads Jean to enact her revenge where she becomes Eve. Eve wins over Pike as fast if not faster than Jean does. Continuing in marrying him. Eve then ruins Pike by explaining about all the people she has slept with. Damaging Pike just as much as the file of Jean being a con artist has done. There is still a happy ending! When the two meet each other again on the boat they both fall into true love. Jean has finally gotten her revenge but still feels empty without Pike. And Pike feels as if Jean is the bit of adventure he needs. In conclusion, Jean and Pike both were stuck in the illusion of love; it was not until they could rely on their feelings until they felt true love.
ReplyDeleteThe Lady Eve explores the standard love story in a very different way because of the unique character dynamic. One important contextual clue that really helped tie some things together is that Pike had just returned from the Amazon. After a long time away from civilization it is quite obvious the idea of falling in love right away after returning would be fulfilling. This idea could have been motivating Pike in addition to the fact that Jean is very smart, and she knows how to manipulate people to think the same way as her. None the less she fell in love with him. There appears to be a lot of conflict within Pike because of how Jean is sending mixed signals, and this leads to the relationship as a whole to be wishy-washy. Their love is not false although there were a lot of factors that helped motivate either side accomplish that. Jean fell in love with the idea of having a clean slate with a man who was kind and did now know much about her. Although when more truth is revealed the lines become a little more blurred. The idea of love between different social classes is obviously possible as seen by every Disney movie ever, so the more unique part of the story is how the characters interact, and how their unique emotions play out.
ReplyDeleteIn The Lade Eve, Jean uses her charm, good looks, and deception to seduce Charles Pike, the wealthy young heir to an ale business. Jean is a con artist and works along side her father to con unsuspecting victims. The method they use in the film is to let Pike win a few hundred dollars playing cards, enticing him to want to play more. However when he comes back to play, the father-daughter duo use sly tricks to earn (steal) considerable amounts of money (I think at one point around $30,000). Jean is able to keep Pike playing by seducing him, such as when she purposefully trips him so that they can go back to a room together. Jean creates an image of a woman that is extremely attractive to Pike, who starts to fall in love with the character she has created. This having been said, it is clear that Pike wasn't in fact falling in love with Jean, but with how she was portraying herself, despite Jean accidentally developing real feelings for Pike. After Pike has realized this and moved on, Jean disguises herself as the Lady Eve and meets him at his house. He is suspicious at first, but is easily convinced that she is a completely different person and falls in love with her, to the point of getting married to her. At two different times in this film, Pike is deceived into loving the same woman who is portraying herself as two completely different people. It is not until the very end of the film that Pike divorces the Lady Eve for how many people she has slept with, that he finds Jean on a ship and is overjoyed to see her. This is the only time in the film there is real love, and not some kind of deception.
ReplyDeleteIn The Lady Eve, character Charles Pike had recently come back after spending a year up in the Amazon. Being away from social interactions with women for so long, it is not surprising when he falls in love with Jeans act within a matter of what seems like minutes. The second that Jean was able to be alone with Charles, she started to work her manipulative side while putting up a flirtatious act as if she were truly interested; all to get Charles to fall for her. Easily showing signs of attraction to her shoe collection and more specifically her perfume, Charles was entranced by the act that Jean had set up. She has lured him in with her beauty and kept him with her damsel in distress act when she got scared of the snake and then wanted him to protect her. He believed that he was falling in love with the girl he thought was perfect, but the reality was that he was falling in love with the illusion of his perfect girl. This thus proves that the male romantic desire is a woman who is beautiful, knows what she wants, and helpless so they can protect them. Seeing the side of Jean that she only wanted him to notice, he was naïve to who Jean really was. This takes a similar turn of events when we see in the beginning that Jean might actually be falling for Charles. Their relationship is an example of an illusion in itself because they both claim it to be love, but philosophically speaking, you cannot truly love someone if what you love is pretend. Charles cannot truly be in love with Jean if he falls in love with the woman she is pretending to be, and not who she really is. Love cannot be based off a lie and therefore, Jean cannot truly love Charles when she knows that the only reason she loves him is because of a lie. The connection between love and illusion is that you cannot fall in love with the person they pretend to be because then it is not real. Love comes after you know who the person really is and after time. You have to see how you fit into the other persons life before you can assume it is love. This is why we can generally believe that their love is real towards the end of the movie when they see each other again. At that point the lies are all over and the audience as well as the two characters are able to see who they really are.
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