All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950)
All About Eve is an example of great scripting coming together with great acting. It personifies all the good qualities of the 40s-50s era of Hollywood. Bette Davis is wonderful and all the acting is good, and the multi-narrative style is engaging. Through the story of a woman who manipulates herself into being a star by treating her public persona like another character in a play, the movie dismantles the mythology of Hollywood, portraying it as elitist, cold heartedly ambitious and utilitarian.
It's also ironic to watch All About Eve as part of a venture to watch the 100 most critically acclaimed movies of all time. The character Adison Dewitt is a smug intellectual critic who at the very start of the film describes his service to the theater industry as 'necessary'. He takes self-satisfied delight in being the grand arbitrer of good taste, and here I am following his instructions.
There are a few 1950s-isms that in this day and age seem a bit awkward, like the way Margo acts like her theater career is now irrelevant because she's getting married. (There's no way a modern film could have a line like "A woman isn't really a woman if she doesn't have a husband to wake up next to.") But those sorts of things are overlookable because of the general high quality and attention to detail of the scripting. The final shot with the younger girl manipulating Eve and watching dozens of images of herself in triangular mirrors holding Eve's award sums up the entire picture.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
16/100
Next: Ugetsu, Goodfellas
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment