Movie Masterworks

“Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!”

Synopsis: The “dialogue is scintillating, characters…extraordinary, direction…perfect and production as fine as anything 20th Century Fox has turned out” in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “captivating” (Variety) Oscar winner for Best Picture. From the moment she glimpses her idol at the stage door, Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) moves relentlessly towards her goal: taking the reins of power from the great actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis). The cunning Eve maneuvers her way into Margo’s Broadway role, becomes a sensation and even causes turmoil in the lives of Margo’s director boyfriend (Gary Merrill), her playwright (Hugh Marlowe) and his wife (Celeste Holm). Only the cynical drama critic (Oscar winner George Sanders) sees through Eve, admiring her audacity and perfect pattern of deceit. Thelma Ritter and Marilyn Monroe co-star in this acclaimed classic, which won six Academy Awards and received the most nominations (14) in film history.

Critique: All About Eve isn’t just a great movie about the theater, it’s a great movie about talent. Talent has nothing to do with being a nice person; if it did, Celeste Holm’s long-suffering wife would be center stage, not catty Margo Channing. It used to be, in old musicals, the snooty star would break her foot, and the sweet, plucky understudy would be vaulted to stardom. Mankiewicz’s tale is a variation on that chestnut–in this case the ingenue, Anne Baxter’s Eve Harrington, is a snake, and she still gets pretty much what she wants.

The reason? She may not be good, but she’s good at what she does. Ability beats virtue any day. Which is why Mankiewicz can’t bring himself to punish Bette Davis’ glorious Margo for her ego, her temper, and her insecurity. As George Sanders’ deliciously wicked theater critic Addison DeWitt tells her, “You’re maudlin and full of self-pity. You’re marvelous.”

Even if you’ve seen All About Eve a dozen times, there’s always something new to catch in Mankiewicz’s sumptuous, spiked plum pudding of a script–the knowing banter between Margo and her director boyfriend Bill (Gary Merrill), the way Margo smirks at hateful Addison before chomping down hard on a stalk of celery. Every character has been blessed with a viper’s tongue, down to Margo’s skeptical maid (the perpetually underrated Thelma Ritter), and it’s a pleasure to hear them bicker: No other movie makes being smart and cynical look like more fun.

-Jim Ridley NashvilleScene

My thoughts: I had never seen Betty Davis until seeing her in All About Eve. What she lacked in beauty she made up for in raw force of personality. A young Marilyn Monroe also steals scenes, drawing the camera to her like a magnet. Along with the film’s personalities, it’s the dialogue that makes All About Eve so memorable. If I had to sum this movie up in one word, it would be “sharp”… sharp dress, sharp minds, and sharp tongues.