 Starring: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Year Of Release: 1950
Plot: Having gone to every performance and endlessly hung around the stage door of theatre star Margo Channing’s latest play, super-fan Eve is finally introduced to her idol by Margo’s friend, Karen. Feeling protective of the sweet young girl, Margo takes the endlessly appreciative Eve under her wing. However some of those around the diva-esque Margo begin to wonder whether Eve is really as sweet as she seems. |
There are quite a few films I think are very good and some I think are great. Then there’s that select band of movies where every time I watch them I’m stunned by how someone could create such a fantastic piece of cinema. All About Eve is most certainly one of those movies. It’s a rare example of an almost perfect film, filled with wonderful actors at the top of their game (although interestingly none of the main parts went to the first choice actors, with the likes of Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Tallulah Bankhead and Ingrid Bergman all considered for the role that later went to Bette Davis, and which she later considered had rescued her career from oblivion), some very smart and subtle direction, and all underpinned by what may be the best script ever written.
It’s a movie full of wonderful lines, three of which made Premiere’s 2007 list of the 100 Greatest Movie Lines of all time (they were, “Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night”, “All of a sudden she's playing Hamlet's mother”, and “You won't bore him, honey. You won't even get a chance to talk”). However it’s not just that the movie is filled with quotable lines that are full of acid wit and wonderful bitchiness (it was this film above all others that turned Bette David into a camp icon) that makes All About Eve’s script so impressive, but also the way the story is constructed and how fully formed and interesting each character is.
On the surface it seems like a film that’s just about backstage bitchiness, divas and knowing wit, but when you start to look at it, you realise that it’s actually put together like a film noir. There’s an unreliable narrator, a femme fatale who real motivations are initially unclear, a cynical outlook on the world, everyone is fallible, and even the dialogue has a hard-boiled edged to it. Much of the joy of the film is that while you quickly get invested in the characters, the film constantly reveals more and more about each person, so you’re constantly questioning how you should feel about them and who they really are underneath the facade. The setting of the theatre is perfect for this, with the movie playing with the idea of life being a performance, and also our expectations of the egos and ambitions of actors.
Is Margo Channing just the ego-centric, bitchy diva she seems, or is there a real heart underneath? Is theatre critic Addison DeWitt just a pompous blowhard, or is he as cunningly intelligent as he seem to think he is? And most importantly, from the moment Margo’s assistant suggests that Eve is “studying her [Margo] like a blueprint”, the movie flings you from one extreme to the other over whether Eve is sweet and innocent, or the most manipulative, cut-throat bitch imaginable. The film is an absolute masterclass in how to create complex, fallible characters, who are utterly riveting and consistent, even though you’re never sure what their motivations are. Even when you discover what’s really going on and quite how much of a super-bitch one of the characters is, you still can’t help but be impressed by her back-stabbing audacity.
Some have suggested the film demonstrates 50s-style sexism, with Margo talking about the fact that the reason she is bitchy and always dissatisfied, is because she isn’t married and doesn’t have a family. However this does really stand up, because very quickly after each of these scenes is another one where Celeste Holm’s Karen talks about uncertainty and problems of married life, and that having a man isn’t the bed of roses Margo seems to think it is.
I really don’t have the words to describe how well written All About Eve is, where every line is a corker, each character is wonderful, the story itself is riveting, and all leading up to a wonderfully ironic and somewhat creepy final scene.
I’m certainly not the first to praise All About Eve’s script, as in a 2002 poll of the greatest screenplays ever, as voted for by American screenwriters, All About Eve was in the top five, alongside Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Chinatown and Casablanca. It’s certainly illustrious company, and while I’d agree that all of those films are extremely good, purely in terms of the writing, I’d have to put All About Eve at the top of the tree.
So if you haven’t seen All About Eve, first feel ashamed and then immediately go out and watch it. It still holds the record (now tied with Titanic) for the most Oscar nominations ever, which just goes to show how good it is right across the board, from acting to costumes to editing.
It also has to be a testament to the script (and the actors) that that film still has more acting Oscar nominations than any other movie ever, with George Sanders (who won Best Supporting Actor), Bette Davis, Celeste Holm, Anne Baxter and Thelma Ritter all scoring nods from the Academy. It won six Oscars, including Best Picture, as well as Best Director and Best Screenplay for Joseph L Mankiewicz. Indeed Mankiewicz is the only person ever to twice win the Director and Screenplay award at the same ceremony, as he also picked up a duo of Oscars for A Letter To Three Wives in 1939.
In fact while I’m talking about Mankiewicz, I still don’t understand why he isn’t as well known as some of the other directors from Hollywood’s Golden Age, like Hitchcock, Michael Curtiz and Cecil B. DeMille. As well as All About Eve, he directed the likes of The Ghost And Mrs Muir, The Barefoot Contessa, Sleuth, The Quiet American, and Suddenly, Last Summer. He was also the man who pulled Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra from the brink when it threatened to destroy 20th Century Fox. He made an awful lot of excellent films, and yet he rarely seems to be mentioned when people talk about the great directors of the 50s and 60s, which is just wrong.
With All About Eve he created one of the best movies of all times, and may well have written the greatest screenplay ever – it certainly gets my vote. Indeed, If I ever wrote anything half as witty, clever and well plotted, with such brilliant characters and filled with such wonderful lines, I’d be very happy indeed.
TIM ISAAC
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