For his final presentation, soon-to-be postdoc Preetham Ganupuru brought us the polar opposite to his first film, instead going with Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Oscar-winning classic, All About Eve. As I said in the email invite, this is definitely a film to have under your belt, and I had only seen it once, so I was ecstatic to see it come around on Movie Night.
Ceçi n’est pas un Theater Critic
The film starts with a bookend – at a theater awards ceremony attended by all of the main characters you’ll see in the film and narrated (to start) by noted theater critic Addison DeWitt (in a move that creates a sort of Citizen-Kane feel, Mank passes the narration between a few characters as we learn all about Eve).
Your cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding, almost as though you sense a disquieting metamorphosis. Is this haunted room actually stretching?
But first, we have to go back a bit – about a year or so and get ourselves introduced to Bette Davis’ Margo Channing, an incredibly famous, successful, but now aging Broadway star. Margo turns out to be the preferred leading lady and muse of playwright Looyd Richards, who also happens to be married to Margo’s friend Karen.
Minks for the minx!
Following a show, Karen encounters a young woman she recognizes from being in the audience for several shows as she is heading to hang out in Margo’s dressing room.
Her eyes say Anne Baxter but her shadow says Humphrey Bogart
The woman’s name is Eve Harrington, and she professes to be a star-struck fan of Margo’s who first saw her in a show that was playing in San Francisco, and was so impressed by her acting that she followed Margo back to New York and attends every show. Although Eve initially demurs, Karen insists on introducing her to Margo, and Eve tells a heartbreaking story that includes the death of her husband in the war, and Margo begins to feel sorry for her.
If you even think about making a Bette Davis Thighs joke, I’ll lock you in a standing headscissors so quick you won’t make it to the part about New York snow
Following an invitation of a room for the evening, Eve Harrington quickly proves herself incredibly useful to Margo, and before you know it Eve has landed a role as her personal assistant. Everything starts out just peachy keen, but as you can imagine, Eve begins insinuating herself into Margo’s life and things get a bit too close for comfort, as Margo begins to interpret Eve’s actions as attempts to steal away her fiancé Bill and push her way into Broadway.
Gentlemen prefer half the tar, all the flavor
Finally at a party hosted by Margo – which incidentally features a small, early part for Marilyn Monroe playing an aspiring Broadway actress herself – she drunkenly tries to fob Eve off on her producer, asking him to give her an office job. But, it quickly turns out to be too late, as Marilyn loses out on the newly-available part of Margo’s understudy to…Eve, of course.
And the phrase “sitting bitch” was born
By this point, Margo has nearly completely turned on Eve, but Karen still feels sorry for her, and she comes up with a really, really, really bad idea. She arranges a weekend vacation with Margo and Bill and contrives for the car to run out of gas in the middle of nowhere on the way home, causing Margo to miss a show and giving Eve a chance to star for a night. Of course, she informs Eve that she’s going to do this, so Eve makes sure that DeWitt and other theater critics attend the otherwise-unremarkable show – just in time for Eve to give a star turn on the big stage.
Have you seen Lambchop around?
Eve becomes an overnight sensation, and lo and behold! she does indeed secretly try to make off with Bill – unsuccessfully, for perhaps the first time in her life. Anyhow, Eve has her eye on the starring role in Lloyd’s upcoming play, and she blackmails Karen, threatening to tell Margo about Karen’s out-of-gas plot if she doesn’t manage to get her husband to hand her the starring role. Karen is only saved from this impossible situation by Margo prematurely declining the role, based on her age and the (bitter, very bitter) realization that it’s time to leave Broadway to the young and settle down with Bill.
It’s the very rare Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model brassiere
With Margo and Bill out of the picture, Eve next sets her sights on trying to land Lloyd, a plot she reveals to DeWitt in a hotel encounter just prior to the off-Broadway open of her first starring role. But DeWitt, well, he’s got something to reveal too – it turns out that he’s been doing some looking into Eve’s past, and he knows that her entire story is a lie. Not only did she never see Margo in San Francisco, but her husband didn’t die in the war – in fact she was in New York following being chased out of Milwaukee for having an affair with her boss. Addison DeWitt points out that the tables are turned, and now it’s he that owns her.
Hello. My name is Sacheen Littlefeather.
Nonetheless, Eve and play both do incredibly well, and back at the bookended awards show, it is Eve who takes home the bouquet and trophy. Already jaded, she declines to join her new beau DeWitt at a post-awards party thrown in her honor, instead opting to return to her hotel.
I call it The Untethering
But when she gets into her room, she finds that she is not alone – there is a young woman by the name of Phoebe who has snuck into her room. Phoebe plays a familiar role, the young star-struck kid trying to make herself useful to the award-winning actress, but like Eve, she just can’t conceal her ulterior motives. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The end.
Great movie! Not much to say, really. There seemed to be a feeling from the crowd that Phoebe’s appearance at the end was a bit gratuitous, but for me, that’s the touch that really makes the film. It’s the Circle Of Broadway. Life goes on, and if nothing else, you now get to wonder if Margo herself connivingly weaseled her own way in to Broadway as an unrequested protégé, just as Eve has and Phoebe intends to, with no consideration of the destruction left in her own wake. Answer the question however you like.
Cinema 1544: The As-Official-As-It-Gets Site 