Ragazze che sognano

Having never heard of this movie before, I found it to be a pleasant surprise when I found it on youtube. From reading the other reviews, it appears I'm in the minority, but I can't help it. In most cases, a film either has me after a few minutes, or it doesn't. From the start, I found Gene Tierney to be enchanting and, as the plot unfolded, I thought, "Ooh, this going to be fun.", and it was. People have compared this to "The Lady Eve", but that has a plot even more preposterous. I mean, come one, only someone with brain damage wouldn't know Eve and Jean are the same person. So, John thinking he had discovered a method for gambling doesn't seem that far-fetched. Though not one of the best film comedies of all time, it was still enjoyable.

Gene Tierney wants "Rings on Her Fingers" in this 1942 comedy starring Henry Fonda, Laird Cregar and Spring Byington. Tierney is a shopgirl drafted by Byington and Warren to help them con rich men out of their money. One of their marks is Fonda, with whom Tierney falls in love. Problems arise, and that's putting it mildly.

Mamoulian loved scripts that contained characters with dual identities such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Mark of Zorro, so "Rings on Her Fingers" must have appealed to him. It has Tierney, a New York salesgirl posing as an heiress, Fonda, an accountant who at first gives the impression he's a rich man, Cregar, posing as a yacht owner, and Byington, posing as Tierney's wealthy mother.

I liked this charming comedy, but I have to take issue with calling it screwball. It's played too straight. Fonda creates a wonderful character - a sincere, caring person who wants to live life in the present and not live as others - lock up their money and, in so doing, lock up their lives. His internalized approach to acting did not lend itself to comedy. Tierney is gorgeous, and a good actress, but comedy wasn't her thing. Picture the airport scenes with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, and you get the point.

Laird Cregar is wonderfully bombastic and funny as the conniver Warren - what a loss to filmdom that he died so young; and Spring Byington does a great job as his partner.

Henry Fonda never forgave Darryl F. Zanuck for forcing him into a seven-year contract in order to do The Grapes of Wrath; though Mamoulian was a great director, I think Fonda probably felt misused here. Opposite a pro like Stanwyck, he fared in comedy much better. Tierney is lovely, though.

Good film.

"Rings on Her Fingers" is a thoroughly charming picture that takes a kaleidoscope of elements from films of the era -- the shop-girl Cinderella, bathing suit poses on the beach, the rich man's yacht, the poolside party, mistaken identity, love on the breadline, evasion in a crowded terminus, the casino, the gangster -- and mixes them all up in a hectic, hilarious, but instinctively good-natured plot. As a romance, it's very funny without ever needing to resort to the anarchic destruction of many 'screwball' affairs; as a comedy, it laughs at its characters with loving affection rather than glee and discomfiture.

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.

Having seen Henry Fonda in many of his serious films like 12 Angry Men and Grapes of Wrath, it was quite surprising to see how funny he can in Rings on Her Fingers. He has a nice chemistry with his co-star Gene Tierney as the girl that falls for him. She's involved with a gang of con-artists but can't resist accountant Fonda's sweet natured charm. The plot gets out of hand when Tierney wants to return the stolen money to Fonda. Spring Byington, as Tierney's "mother" is always a pleasant addition to any movie. Playing one of the con-artists, her acting is a little tougher than the usual flighty dowager we've seen her portray before. There are some good laughs along the way especially the chase scene at the airport terminal.It you want to see Henry Fonda in one of his rare comedies this movie is hard to beat.

Here's a light and frothy comedy with Henry Fonda repeating his "The Lady Eve" role as the rube being taken for his money by travelling confidence tricksters Laird Cregar and Spring Byington, plus their newly recruited honey-trapper Gene Tierney, fresh from the girdle section of a New York department store, lured by the exciting and seemingly glamorous life of wealth distribution, the dainty way Cregar describes the team's modus operandi of parting the rich from their money.

The catch here is that Fonda this time isn't filthy rich at all, the boat-buying con he falls for relieves him of his hard-earned, mathematically calculated, life savings leaving him penniless, although his consolation is that he and his temptress Tierney fall hard for each other so much so that she surreptitiously tries to put things right for him. Naturally there's a reckoning to be had, which fortuitously comes about when Cregar & co. and their victim coincidentally end up under the same roof, to wit Fonda's millionaire bachelor buddy's place, who himself is set to be the next target for the travelling tricksters.

While not hysterically funny, the film makes the most of its ever more unlikely situations and is nicely played by the four main leads. Fonda and Tierney combine well together as do Cregar and Byington. There are some amusing scenes, like when the young couple plod their way around a dance floor amongst some limbs-flying jitterbuggers, Fonda's "lucky" gambling streak at the casino and earlier when Fonda is distracted by Tierney in a bathing suit as he's trying to describe the dimensions of the boat he's seeking to buy.

The ending seems a bit contrived bringing all the main characters together again with Fonda improbably stepping out of character to get his girl in the style of Cagney, but at least it all ends happily ever after as there's little doubt that even the thwarted Cregar and Byington will continue undiminished on their merry way, indeed, in my opinion, an extra finishing scene showing them hooking up with another aspirant young shop girl to do their bidding could easily have been tagged on to keep the circle unbroken.

This wasn't the best screwball comedy I've seen and certainly Sturges and Hawks executed these farces a little more sharply and amusingly but this was still an engaging, pardon the pun, film to watch.