Introduced by David Thomson

David Thomson is the author of A Biographical Dictionary of Film, a new edition of which will be out in October."

A brilliant and hilarious boudoir battle of the sexes, with Stanwyck supplying gold-digger sass to Fonda's ingenuous shyness. The lady cardsharp playing for her supper and the junior herpetologist rolling in an inherited ale fortune meet aboard an ocean liner after the boyish millionaire has just spent months alone in the jungle. In the eyeglass-steaming seduction scenes that follow, Sturges circumvented the censors with a rowdy blackout technique that began where a more discreet Lubitsch left off. The romance, nonetheless, is warm and winning, and from Charles Coburn's aloof cynicism to William Demarest's short-fuse exasperation, the one-liners are generously spread all around. Stanwyck...incarnated all the wit of that period's worldly women. Sui generis, she demolishes the traditional complications of boy-meets-girl movies....(Her role) reflects Sturges's ultracivilized attitude toward the female of the species."