Review of All About Eve (1950) by Uditha D — 22 Dec 2011

All About Eve might as well be the best of its type I've seen so far: a satire on theater to almost comedic proportions. It's true that the final message in All About Eve was kind of shocking and exploitative.

But you can't deny the sophisticated charm it has throughout its entire duration. All the main actors in it - including the biting Bette Davis, smoothly venomous Anne Baxter, suave George Sanders, and the naively simple Celeste Holme - gave really credible performances, and as for the dialogue, it was simply strung up with so many wonderfully memorable lines.

But in the end, the theme it underlay - that the theater (or art in general, for that matter), like most of the corrosive by-products of capitalism in general, too is riddled with exploitation, ambition, and in the end, a never-ending cycle of lust and power-grabbing.

After all, the ending was reminiscent of such a cycle, was it not? In conclusion, I would say that All About Eve is to theater what Sunset Boulevard was to Hollywood and Network was to the media - a smoothly done, charming satire that will undoubtedly endure for ages to come, not just as a classic, but as an exceptional gemstone.