All About Eve       

Made: 1950

Cast:  Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill, Hugh Marlowe

Director: Joseph Mankiewicz

Screenwriter: Joseph Mankiewicz

Cinematographer:  Milton Krasner

Producer: Darryl Zanuck

This is an example of why I love dialogue driven movies.

               All About Eve is a very quotable movie, and that is because it remains true to life. It is set around theatre people, those vein actors, directors and actresses that just have to be the best, lest they contest. Like all great stories, it could be based around any type of people because at the core it is a story about one's personal worth, whether that be relationships to others or unique perspectives on the human condition. The title is apt because while seeming to be based on the star Margo Channing it is actually about her rabid fan Eve Harris and her partner Addison Dewitt.

               The first scene establishes two married couples as real people, with strengths and weakness. Margo (Bette Davis) and Bill (Gerry Merrill) have been in a loving relationship as a director and his star actress, and their best friends Lloyd (Hugh Marlowe) and Karen (Celeste Holm) are a playwright and a loving housewife. The story is told as one long flashback using an award ceremony as the basis of where the people getting thanked by the star (in this case Eve) don't look happy at all. Karen begins the tale of how the four met Eve, an obsessed fan who had seen every play Margo had done. "Don't you find that, well, expensive?" is Karen's response. She believes Eve to be a naive fan and introduces her to Margo backstage, and from then begins an apprenticeship made out of pity for the poor retched fan who only wants to help the "great" Margo. Birdie, Margo's maid, is the only one who sees through Eve's act at first, but it doesn't take long for Margo to catch on when she sees Eve flirting with Bill.

               Baxter starts placing herself in well viewed spots and passive aggressively interfering in Margo's life: a phone call for her husband on his birthday which Margo would have forgotten, helping her pick out a wardrobe and trying on her dress, but Margo doesn't fall for it and often asks for Birdie's advice. Eve's flirtations on Bill don't work, so she goes after Lloyd, a much more promising candidate for manipulation and as famous a playwright as Margo is an actress. When Karen asks her husband how he can trust Eve after what happened with Margo and Bill, he responds, "She apologized didn’t she?"  to which Karen replies, "On her knees no doubt!" in one of the movies funnier lines.

               One can guess where the plot goes from there in most movies, and theoretically it does in this one as well. The use of flashback was not uncommon, perhaps influenced by Joseph Mankiewicz brother Herman's screenplay for Citizen Kane, however there is a true paradigm shift in plot points in AAE. The backstage approach to the story and what would normally be the climax (the big play with Cora and the stealing of Karen's husband) is replaced by voice over camera work of what actually happened. Where AAE is different than most movies is its focus on characters. Margo is a perfect little narcissist: "Every one thinks they know me, i wish i did. I wish someone could tell me about me." Davis gets a career defining role as Margo and the film's most famous line in "Fasten your seatbelts, its going to be a bumpy night!" However, the plot is just as much about Karen and what she goes through as Eve terrorizes her love life. Addison Dewitt, an influential film critic about town and friend of the couples, notices a kinship in Eve and sees through her disguise, leading to loving feelings.

               Director Joseph Mankiewicz does a beautiful job of constructing a stereotypical story and twisting the plot in almost invisible ways. Eve's screen debut is immerging out of the shadows, instantly placing her to the audience as a shady character, much like Alfred Hitchcock would do to let the audience in on something. When she sneakily becomes understudy and reads a script in Margo's place at an important sit down, Eve backs off into the shadows once again and lets the three friends fight out the jealousy Margo feels. There is blackmail, but not how it typically goes in theatre movies. There is relationship drama between Margo and Bill, but in Bill there is a very devout and wise character quality that outlasts any contrivances. Mankiewicz bases the story off a true tale he read in a paper (called "The Wisdom of Eve"), but the ideas and instances are fictional and all unique to him.

               As a director, Mankiewicz is great at having lead actresses take on the major roles while their husbands take on background roles. This can be affirmed by his other dark comedy masterwork A Letter to The Wives (1949), many of the films he worked on as a producer(The Women, The Philadelphia Story, The Shopworn Angel), and many comparisons to George Cukor. He had written over twenty screenplays before All About Eve, dating far back into the 1920's, most famously Manhattan Melodrama (1934), a precursor to the film noir style. Mankiewicz's use of twisting audiences was expertly developed later in the often misunderstood western There Was a Crooked Man (1970) and the spy thriller Sleuth (1972), two of his best films. The theme to his filmography is a deep understanding of the human psyche, and a dark undercurrent with characters that are deeply disturbed. Jean Luc-Goodard called him the greatest American director ever. He is definitely an overlooked talent, and perhaps the greatest screenwriter of all time and All About Eve is his best screenplay.

               Most reviews of AAE focus on the performance of Bette Davis, what happened with the movie at the real Academy Awards in 1951. Usually, critics will knock Baxter or the other performers while doing this. Truth be told, all of the performances are of amazing quality and all are developed better and more timely than most movies circa 1950. I won’t be doing any of this because I have seen the film many times now and feel it is about something much deeper and much more pure than fame. Two things: First, it is about obsessed fans and obsession: "Do you like the play?" Eve is asked. "I'd like anything Ms. Channing does." This is commentary of the fan mentality, how one can blindly follow and stop "thinking" about opinions and just "doing".           

               Secondly and most importantly, it is a study on nihilism. Honestly, not in a negative but a positive way. AAE is an odd candidate for "most misunderstood movie of all time." The climactic scene with Addison and Eve is the turning point. The true nature of two jackals is exposed. They belong together, why try to hide it? It is handled with directorial and writing skill never seen before 1950 and hardly since. Addison Dewitt delivers the classic lines, "That I would want you at all suddenly strikes me as the heart of Improbability; but that is probably the reason in itself. You’re an improbable person Eve and so am I; we have that in common. Also our contempt for humanity and inability to love and be loved, insatiable ambition and talent. We deserve each other." Wow. Mackewitz's true point to All About Eve may have well been: true love: what a joke.