Ajouter une intrigue dans votre langueTwo con artists take a shopgirl under their wing, but she disrupts their marrying-for-money scheme by falling for a mathematician.Two con artists take a shopgirl under their wing, but she disrupts their marrying-for-money scheme by falling for a mathematician.Two con artists take a shopgirl under their wing, but she disrupts their marrying-for-money scheme by falling for a mathematician.
- Réalisation
- Scénario
- Casting principal
- Tod Fenwick
- (as John Shepperd)
- Newsboy
- (as Billy Benedict)
- Captain Hurley
- (as Charles Wilson)
Avis à la une
Two swindlers take Susan/Linda (Tierney), a girdle shop assistant who dreams of a life of glitz and glamour, under their wing and employ her for their money-grabbing schemes. Things get complicated when Susan/Linda falls for the small-time accountant John (Fonda) they are trying to con who parts with his life savings to impress her.
Fonda and Tierney's chemistry save this movie from becoming another unimaginative and dull comedy that relies on its star billing for top box office draws. Susan/Linda transforms herself from Brooklyn shop assistant to high society heiress with ease - cementing herself as the Grace Kelly of the 1940s. It is hard to believe she is only 21 years old in this movie. While he's no Cary Grant in the romantic comedy arena, Fonda plays the hapless and financially unsuccessful John perfectly who, like any man would, falls for Tierney in a heartbeat.
Although not a hit in its day and practically forgotten by today's audiences, "Rings on Her Fingers" is worth a watch for Fonda and Tierney's early comedic performances alone. They work well with the script and story they are dealt with.
In the best of farces, absurd events unfold with a seemingly inevitable logic. It must be admitted that in this picture, the plot occasionally skates past short-term expedients that just have to be taken for granted -- but the ensuing situations are milked to such good effect that it's easy to turn a blind eye. The film is rich in set-pieces both verbal and visual, with a host of lively minor characters to accompany the note-perfect performances of the principals.
Laird Cregar excels as usual in the role of the resonant, urbane Warren (performing with impressive agility in his swimming-pool scene), while Spring Byington is here the best I have seen her, the actress submerging her trademark mannerisms in an actual character. Gene Tierney is sweet, smart, funny and distinctly shapely as the girl who pulls off the perfect con and then learns what she has really done. Henry Fonda -- for my money, both more credible and more sympathetic here than in "The Lady Eve" -- plays a mathematical dreamer with a passion for sailing and the sea, while some eye-catching yachts of the era star in the background, apparently shot on location!
The film starts off light and gradually gains in intensity and emotional weight as it goes along, with frequent upwellings of laughter to season some very genuine feeling. The two lovers are charming together, from a very Freudian first scene (in which the camera settles on Linda's trim contours as a somewhat dislocated John tries to describe the lines of his yacht) to the final escape, Perhaps the highlight is the taxicab sequence in which our hero, intoxicated with excitement, is convinced he has devised a 'system' to beat the roulette wheel, while Linda and the audience, in on the secret, find him both hilarious and adorable at the same time.
Like all good comedies, "Rings on Her Fingers" laughs at our human frailties, but it does so with a gentle touch. It shares with "Some Like It Hot" an essential innocence and sweetness at the root of its effervescent humour, and scarcely sets a foot wrong in the process. I enjoyed this little-known, little-rated picture very much indeed.
The latter half of the film kind of reminded me of the many confusing and chaotic comedies that Abbott and Costello had so much success in making films in the same era of the 1940's decade. I guess I have a bit of a hard time appreciating Henry Fonda playing the sap who falls in love with his con artist girlfriend. When Gene Tierney whose alias is Linda Worthington is being chased by a private detective in the airport and the two men who both want to marry her are also present, Linda must stay on her toes to keep the two men apart from each other while either one is in her presence.
I just felt that this film could not decide if it wanted to be a crime film, or a comedy, romance or a drama? In the end it does not matter as it really is a forgettable film other than seeing the beautiful Gene Tierney in a bathing suit squirming around on a blanket trying to get Henry Fonda's attention.
I give it a 6 out of 10 rating
Le saviez-vous
- AnecdotesWhen Laird Cregar asks who Gene Tierney, then serving in a shop, is, Spring Byington tartly remarks, "A shop-girl, of course. Who did you think she was--Brenda Frazier?" The very glamorous and wealthy Brenda Frazier was the most famous debutante of the 1930s.
- GaffesWhen John slides his roulette chips across the table to cash them in, other people's bets are corralled with them, yet no one complains.
- Citations
Susan Miller: Say, are you really millionaires?
[Warren and Maybelle burst into laughter]
Warren: Why?
Susan Miller: Well, there seems to be something missing.
Mrs. Maybelle Worthington: Just the millions, and they can't rule you out for a technicality.
Warren: You see, nature played a little trick on us: we should have been born with blue blood, so we have devoted our entire life to correcting this... biological error.
Susan Miller: What do you do? If you're not, what are you?
Mrs. Maybelle Worthington: Well, we're sort of an excess profits tax. To criticize us would be unamerican.
Warren: We are merely bees that take a little nectar from the flowers that have so much. And you too can have some.
- ConnexionsFeatured in AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Henry Fonda (1978)
- Bandes originalesYo, Ho, Ho, and a Bottle of Rum
(uncredited)
Traditional
Played and sung at the beginning
Meilleurs choix
- How long is Rings on Her Fingers?Alimenté par Alexa
Détails
Box-office
- Budget
- 651 000 $US (estimé)
- Durée1 heure 26 minutes
- Couleur
- Rapport de forme
- 1.37 : 1