Qui perd gagne

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.

In 1941, a year after Fonda made "Grapes of Wrath" for Twentieth Century Fox', the studio loaned him out to Paramount Pictures for Preston Sturges' hugely successful "Lady Eve." That film gave Fonda a rare chance to play comedy, and he is particularly believable and appealing as the naive millionaire. Fox's head of production, Daryl Zanuck, saw the tremendous box-office potential in casting his dramatic star in similar roles, and a year later produced this pleasant ripoff of Sturges' premise: what would happen if a con-artist (in "Eve" Stanwyck, in this film Gene Tierney) fell for the man she'd conned. Tierney is as always very lovely and considerably less wooden than normal in the part of the reformed crook, but it is Fonda with his All-American Boy good looks who steals the show. Rouben Mamoulian, usually not associated with this sort of fluff, does an excellent job of directing.

I have not seen Henry Fonda in very many forgettable performances but Henry Fonda's performance in Rings on Her Fingers, is one of his clunkers. The film stars the beautiful Gene Tierney who is a wholesome hard working girl named Susan Miller (alias Linda Worthington) selling girdles, until two scammers wave a bunch of greenbacks in her face to join them in suckering foolish and gullible men out of their hard earned money. One of the men these three (3) con artists decide to con is a wealthy young man named John Wheeler played by Henry Fonda.

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

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.

"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.