All About Eve 1950
All About Eve is one of the mostly highly rated movies ever made. It was nominated for a record 14 Oscars, including 4 of the actors plus screenplay, director, and picture. And it won six. That acclaim shows two things: this is a great movie and Hollywood has always loved movies about Hollywood, or in this case the theater. I bought the 2019 Criterion release of the movie based on that strong reputation. Maybe it was not the best decision since Criterion, famous for restoring old movies, gets about the same result as the most recent Fox blu-ray release of the movie. I want to get Criterion discs, but honestly, they don’t have that many titles I want to take a chance on.
The movie starts a little slowly, jumping at first to the ending where we see Eve Harrington (played by Anne Baxter) getting a theater award to great acclaim while some in the audience refuse to applaud. Then we jump back and get introduced to the characters, including famous aging (40!) diva Margo Channing, played by Davis, her boyfriend (a director), a playwright and his wife, and a theater critic. All theater people. The movie picks up steam as it goes and since we already know the ending, we don’t have to worry so much about where things are going as we do how things happen and the performances. That’s a smart way to go and the script is sharp enough for that to work. All of the main characters are very good, though Bette Davis is just amazing: able to look great or worn out and plays drunk pretty well too, not overdoing it. I once tried to watch Sunset Boulevard and couldn’t get past the overacting. There a lot of great lines in the script and some saucy innuendo for that time period. The script also has parallels with the antics of the real life Davis, who married the actor playing her younger boyfriend in the movie. And in a movie about young actresses taking over for older ones, Marilyn Monroe has one of her first roles as an up and coming actress. This movie deserves its reputation as a classic and is still fun to watch.
Written: 01 Dec 2019
Owned on: Blu-ray, Digital