Review of All About Eve (1950) by Carl W — 06 Feb 2010

A crazy stalker-type lady worms her way into a conversation with her stalkee Broadway star, the director, the playright and his wife. She tells them her boo-hoo life story and they let her hang around to be the star's assitant. This movie is mostly about the star. Bette Davis plays the actress who isn't the worst prima donna we've seen on screen but would certainly be a handful off the stage.

The stalker begins to gently overstep the bounds of a simple assistant and the star kind of unravels. She starts fretting about her age and the replacement of the beauty half her age. Davis plays this role well, but it just spins around too long. A good 30 minutes is spent at a birthday party were she just pounds down drinks and keeps complaining about the passing time. During this party, we get a early view of Marilyn Monroe, who gives a quick and perfectly subtle comedic turn as a simple-minded aspirirng actress.

As for the stalker, I'm simply not a fan of Anne Baxter. The followers give us a perspective that Eve has an innocent sincerity about her, but Anne plays her with a stern stare and a breathy voice, in which every speech is delivered very practised and purposefull. I didn't like her at all. She didn't seem to me like she would fool anyone.

A better performance is by George Sanders, who spends three-quarters of the movie as a bit player. A theater critic who begins to champion the young Eve. He's dry and manipulative and everyone tries to keep him in their corner, if they don't quite respect him. In a film with a ton of smartly-arranged dialogue, Sanders was the one who delivers with the greatest ease, instead of reading memorized blocks of lines. His speech to Eve at the end turns the film from just a collection of manipulative efforts by hoighty toighty, wordy, self-involved artsy types. Doesn't earn the big Oscar on this blog, though.