Charming and brutal

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

All About EveDespite of being termed "All About Eve", its barely about Eve and I mean it in as an undercooked character way that never reaches its destination until the last act and when it does it seems like makers jumped or skipped some beats. Joseph L. Mankiewicz; the screen writer and director has done some appreciative work but his sheer effort to create this character driven feature with a wafer thin script shatters the feature into bits and pieces of some good material that fails to make a definite point or even bind it all. Bette Davis is the actual winner in here that is supported amazingly by George Sanders but unfortunately one of the lead actors Anne Baxter's performance is what itches all the way through. All About Eve is your slow pill that is definitely effective in its own way but when it does, the question starts to beg whether all of it was worth or not.

Film Review: "All About Eve" (1950)One-hundred-thirty-eight minutes of black & white cinematic splendor, up in smoke and booze as medicine of choice, produced by Hollywood's Golden Era prime producer Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century Fox in season 1949/1950 engages Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909-1993), who writes and directs for the pace of a beating vulnerable heart in business that like no other needs to cope with rise and fall of individuals in the shortest amount of time. Here it is the character of Eve Harrington, portrayed by actress Anne Baxter (1923-1985), who so famously gives life to a small town girl entering the New York society of theater production company, led by the star of the ensemble Margot, with ease and experience of a true Hollywood star playing actress Bette Davis (1908-1989) and her Director-husband Bill. The tactics of Eve to become the Star covers lies, pitch-perfect servant-work for Margot as the inner company scheming of betrayal and love-interest cheat-outs reach such sophistications that only the equally ruthless critic Addison DeWitt, performed with style and dignity by actor George Sanders (1906-1972), is left to come close enough to walls-building character of Eve in a climatic hotel room scene at running time 1h 57min 00sec, where from "killer-to-killer" the future role delegation gets sorted out in a game of power for the ultimate social recognition by award, before so-called friends realize that the award is the substitute for a heart.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

Friedan spoke of the "problem that has no name" — the demand of society that women give up the agency they had been demanded to accumulate to lubricate the wheels of the war machine with their factory work. No longer required as servants of warfare, they were supposed to be content with reclassification as unpaid and dependent family worker, because enough of "their men" had returned from abroad. As Smedley Butler so cuttingly detailed, war is a racket. When a racket moves an entire society then the sexes are going to get caught up. Hollywood, the propaganda vehicle in those days, needed to dress up the shabby role of "happy little housewife". And so, one sees slickly corrupted presentations of Friedan's problem. You see, feminists like Friedan also were part of the trap. Instead of being able to fully comprehend that egalitarian gay relationships are not a threat to the foundation of society (e.g. its war profiteering and other machinations), even those who recognized the problems inherent in withdrawing the newly-found agency of women had to decry them in order to put a nice sheen on the "institution" of heterosexual marriage. Why? Because they didn't understand that only a small percentage of people are gay enough to want serious gay relationships in the first place. Think I'm joking? The former PM of Australia stated with a straight face that same-sex marriages, if legal, threatened the extinction of humanity! The "logic" was that same-sex relationships, presumably because they're more egalitarian, were so attractive to most people that they would abandon heterosexual relationships that are about reproduction (for taxes and other resources). There are several failures of logic and examples of ignorance in the Howard claim but the bottom line is that All About Eve uses that very viewpoint as its foundation for dramatic conflict.The fight against the dreaded gayness causes all things to take place in this film. Eve's relentless hollow pursuance of stardom is due to her vapid lesbianism. She has no heart and seeks to put an award there. She and the gay man (critic) who she conspires with are "killers". In fact, she's not even fully human. She has a "feverish little brain" like a rat. She studies people, mechanically, like a serial killer — rather than a natural and warm woman who is interested in true love, what Margot transforms into. Lesbianism is just trickery, as when she and her lover conspired.Margot, the quintessential harpy of Greek myth, is tamed by a younger man. This flip in the gender roles is part of the cleverness of the trickery happening. The common assumption, that younger women belong with older men, is reversed, a seeming improvement for female agency that comes at greater cost — her career. That loss of career, not accidentally, comes with her affirming that older women should leave the business because they're not beautiful enough anymore. Gone is the Margot who doesn't care how young the woman in the part is because of her talent and ferocity. Replacing her is Grandma Channing, who will somehow remain enchanting to the younger man once she has given up all the feminine wiles that made her enchanting – like her fantastic acting and her grande dame exaggeration. Bill sees into her true heart, though — the soft warm fuzzy one that stays in the kitchen to bake muffins.Heterosexism has the word sexism in it for a reason. Almost no one uses the word for reasons, too. In this film, it is the tool for the promotion of sexism. The film's poster said it is about "women and their men". It's about the role of women now that their men are back from the abroad. That role is definitely not to be "strong women" who will be corrupted by lesbianism and the resulting feminist demands. It won't be to leave men floundering, bereft of female companionship, forced into the arms of other men — seeking art rather than child rearing. Make no mistake. The gay male character is purposefully put right next to Marilyn Monroe to make a point. His sophistication is shallow and self-defeating. Leads to a blind alley. By contrast, a virile red-blooded heterosexual man knows just how to treat a lady. The film is so slick that even Ebert was oblivious vis-à-vis that entire narrative is based on repudiating homosexuality (female agency being one of its symptoms) in favor of patriarchal heterosexual marriage. He gabbed about Channing as being a "universal type" and merely focused on mechanical aspects of filmmaking. People have been conditioned in the modes of seeing the world according to heterosexual patriarchal imperative. Also willful blindness? How any thinking viewer can miss obvious bits like Eve and another woman conspiring together and holding each other's bodies while doing it... Of course she was a lesbian! And, of course it's amusing to her for a gay man to claim that she's his property. It's amusing for a gay man to try to possess a woman in a patriarchal way. The perversion of the scene is obvious and intentional. Film cleverly lays out the Friedan problem in pretending that it's only a problem if one is gay. Reaffirms inferiority of feminine brain, when it comes to the Machivellian requirements of running the world; also shows gay man trying, and failing, to live up to duty as a man (woman under his control).Davis is wonderful, despite these themes. She was in love with "Bill" then. The writing is cute with cutting sophistication. I can't escape from all the clichés, stereotyping, and backward beliefs it promotes. Example: Plain folks have common sense to see through nonsense artsy types are tricked by. Although he wrote that Hollywood "needed to drop its vendetta against them", the best Mankiewicz manages to do in this film is not have gays kill themselves (i.e. the Children's Hour). It just shows that all that their "hearts"' desire is folly.

When I think of a great drama film, this is just about what comes to mind. A shy and naive theatre fan Eve (Anne Baxter) gets the chance of a lifetime to meet her idol, Margo Channing (Bette Davis). Through a few happy coincidences she ends up as Margo's assistant and proverbial lady-in-waiting. But slowly Margo starts to feel jealous towards this quiet and unassuming young lady with many hidden talents.All About Eve is above all else a beautifully acted film. There's only about ten characters in the whole film, but the group's inner dynamics, frictions and squabbles make the two and a half film feel at least an hour shorter. That's how interesting, dynamic and engaging the story and the characters are. Baxter and Davis are both brilliant in their role, although I do like Margo's character arc a bit more. She starts out almost as a Disney villain, lounging on a divan and smirking at Eve's sweet urge to please. But slowly something shifts and you start looking at her with sympathetic eyes. Whereas with Eve the journey is almost backwards.In general All About Eve is one of the better character studies I've seen in a while. To think that they manage to create two such complex women and make their individual journeys so fulfilling, believable and mutually supporting. Not to say the rest of the characters aren't good - they are - but this is clearly Baxter and Davis's show.Not really anything more I'd like to say. It's such a good film that the only thing I can say is that you should see it.