All About Eve

Movie Review: All About Eve

Year of Release: 1950
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Cast: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill, Hugh Marlowe

Plot outline: An ingenue insinuates herself in to the company of an established but aging stage actress and her circle of theater friends (IMDb).

All About Eve is a withering satire - witty, mature and worldly-wise. Obviously, Mankiewicz had been observing the theatre and its charming folks for years with something less than an idolater's rosy illusions and zeal. And now, with the excellent assistance of Bette Davis and a truly sterling cast, he is wading into the theatre's middle with all claws slashing and settling a lot of scores. If anything, he has been even too full of fight - too full of cutlass-edged derision of Broadway's theatrical tribe. Apparently his dormant dander and his creative zest were so aroused that he let himself go on this picture and didn't know when to stop. For two hours and eighteen minutes have been taken by him to achieve the ripping apart of an illusion which might have been comfortably done in an hour and a half. And that's the one trouble with this picture. It beats the horse after it is dead. But that said, the rest is boundless tribute to Mankiewicz and his cast for ranging a gallery of people that dazzle, horrify and fascinate. Although the title character - the self-seeking, ruthless Eve, who would make a black-widow spider look like a lady bug - is the motivating figure in the story and is played by Anne Baxter with icy calm, the focal figure and most intriguing character is the actress whom Bette Davis plays. This lady, an aging, acid creature with a cankerous ego and a stinging tongue, is the end-all of Broadway disenchantment, and Davis plays her to a fare-thee-well. Of the men, George Sanders is walking wormwood, neatly wrapped in a mahogany veneer, as a vicious and powerful drama critic who has a licentious list towards pretty girls; Gary Merrill is warm and reassuring as a director with good sense and a heart, and Hugh Marlowe is brittle and boyish as a playwright with more glibness than brains. Celeste Holm is appealingly normal and naive as the latter's wife and Thelma Ritter is screamingly funny as a wised-up maid until she is summarily lopped off. (NYT)

My judgement: *** out of 4 stars