NFR Project: 'All About Eve" (1950)

 

NFR Project: “All About Eve”

Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Scr: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Pho: Milton R. Krasner

Ed: Barbara McLean

Premiere: Oct. 13, 1950

138 min.

This is a true story. Did you know that? I did not. Evidently it happened to German actress Elisabeth Bergner (1897-1986). Bergner is best remembered for some featured British film roles she filled in the early Sound Era (The Rise of Catherine the Great, Escape Me Never, As You Like It), despite her pronounced accent.

The inaugural production of The Two Mrs. Carrolls, in which Bergner starred, opened in London in 1935. A young woman huddled in the elements outside of every performance. Bergner took pity on her and hired her as an assistant. The girl became her understudy, and tried to take over her life. New York Times obit writer Mary Orr rendered it as a short story, “The Wisdom of Eve,” in Cosmopolitan in May 1946. In turn, it was staged as a radio play on NBC Radio City Playhouse on Jan. 24, 1949.

Finally Hollywood optioned it and Joseph L. Mankiewicz turned into a perfect story of deceit and betrayal, of paranoia and regret. It features three-dimensional characters, and addresses topics such as aging, faithfulness, and the blindness of kindness. Here manipulative figures advance themselves at the loss of their humanity. The good guys give ground and retain theirs. It’s a wise screenplay that takes a long look at aspirations and choices. It won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

And the film won Best Picture, and Mankiewicz won Best Director as well, and three others. Utilizing Mankiewicz’s witty and perceptive script, the cast has a blast with tale of fateful ambition.

It’s set in the New York theater world, where Margo Channing (Bette Davis) rules as queen of leading ladies. She is brilliant in her new play, though she is playing a 24-year-old at the age of 40. She questions the path her life is taking. She is in love with her director, Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill). Their best friends are leading playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe) and his wife Karen (Celeste Holm). There are tons of martinis and cigarettes.

Into their lives sneaks Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter, in a killer performance), a meek, mousy fan who hangs around outside the theater – and goes to all the performances of – Margo’s new play. The group takes her in, save for the cynical maid Birdie (the great Thelma Ritter); Margo gives her a job as an assistant.

Soon evil Eve is manipulating everyone around her, nominating herself as Margo’s understudy and enlisting the help of Karen to get Margo offstage so that Eve can play the role in front of the press corps. Margo rails against Eve, and her friends tell her she's imagining things. Eve soon seduces Lloyd (it is implied), and nabs the leading role in his new play. She wins the Sarah Siddons award for acting excellence (the great Walter Hampden speaks), and she is off to Hollywood and everyone is pleased save for the people she screwed over to get there.

Baxter is at her conniving best as Eve, coming on all smooth and sweet and abjectly humble while advancing her own interests ruthlessly. Davis is at her best as Margo; Davis was also a beautiful, aging actress doomed to soon leave leading roles and start playing matrons. She fights against the stage’s ageism, but in the end accepts her fate. Unlike Eve, she finds happiness – with herself, with Bill.

Davis is nearly a tragic heroine here; she looms over all the other actors with her bold expression of the vibrant and brassy Margo. And she made other people look good; Holm and Ritter were nominated for Best Supporting Actress, and George Sanders won Best Supporting Actor for his role as “that venomous fishwife, Addison DeWitt!” Theater critic and casual blackmailer. In the end, Eve's life is a complete lie.

The direction is effortless – there are no great artistic “signature” camera moves. It’s a seamless assortment of mid-range shots, duos and trios, and closeups. Mankiewicz lets the actors act, and gets much more from them than a director usually does. All About Eve is about performing, on and off stage; everyone acts with measured thought with the best of intentions, generally, and things get all balled up. Emotions are repressed and indulged to a delicious degree.

Specific as it is, Eve expresses some home truths about human nature. The pattern is doomed to repeat itself. How will one play her role in the game of life?

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Asphalt Jungle.