All About Eve (1950)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

All About Eve (1950) – J. L. Mankiewicz

It is the screenplay by director Joseph L. Mankiewicz that really carries the film, rather than the cinematography or direction (which are no frills) – and, of course, the larger-than-life portrayal of aging actress Margo Channing by Bette Davis (then 42 herself).  Who can forget “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!” (spoken when Channing is going on a drunken tear after realising that up-and-comer Eve Harrington, played by Anne Baxter, is angling for a plum role earmarked for her).  There are a lot of minor characters here, most played with panache by well-cast players – chief among them is George Sanders as theatre critic Addison De Witt.  Did he ever play the sleazy heel better? (One of his “associates” is a young Marilyn Monroe, playing a dim-witted actress trying to break in).  He’s a perfect match for scheming Eve Harrington who fools most of the others (but not assistant Thelma Ritter or director Gary Merrill, Davis’s real-life husband-to-be), including the playwright (Hugh Marlowe) and his wife (Celeste Holm).  The ways Harrington plays everyone in order to cynically force her way to the top suggests an acidic view of human nature – or just the reality of competitive professions such as actor/acting.  The fact that she doesn’t exactly get what she wants in the end suggests that using people to get ahead could backfire.  As a result, we have more sympathy for Davis’s Channing -- although a tempestuous prima donna, she’s more human because of it.  Davis herself managed to extend her career time and again by accepting new and different roles (for example, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, 1962, for which she was nominated for the Oscar, as she was for this film).  But it’s hard to say whether her strong-willed personality was cause or effect of this longevity…