Alfred Hitchcock famously observed that movies should be more than just picture postcards of people talking. Sometimes, though, dialogue is all that's needed. Joseph L. Mankiewicz's immaculately scripted
All About Eve is a case in point. There are no special effects (unless one considers Marilyn Monroe's wiggle or a scene in which a car breaks down). What the movie offers instead is some of the most coruscating one-liners ever committed to celluloid.
The top-name cast certainly know how to put Mankiewicz's words across. Anne Baxter is all doe-eyed charm as Eve, the ruthless aspiring actress who passes herself off as a little girl lost. George Sanders (eminent character actor and the voice of Shere Khan the tiger in The Jungle Book) shows his customary mellowness of sneer as Addison De Witt, theatre critic and professional cynic ("a venomous foot louse" as he's characterised) who helps push Eve up the greasy pole toward success, if not happiness. Best of all is Bette Davis, a soured but still resplendent stage diva, who takes Eve under her wing. ("I'll admit I've seen better days but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail--like a salted peanut", she tells her lover.) The plotting and double-dealing on the screen, described in Sam Staggs' , were matched by what went on behind the scenes. Davis heartily loathed fellow actress Celeste Holm who--ironically enough--plays her best friend. She fell in love with another co-star, the handsome, good-looking Gary Merrill, whom she later married. Backstage dramas are often self-indulgent and stagy affairs, but this one dazzles. --Geoffrey Macnab
Product Description
Taking the reins of power from the great actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis), the cunning Eve (Anne Baxter) manoeuvres her way into Margo’s Broadway role, becomes a sensation and even causes turmoil in the lives of Margo’s director boyfriend, her playwright and his wife. Only the cynical drama critic (George Sanders) sees through Eve, admiring her audacity and perfect pattern of deceit. Marilyn Monroe co-stars in this acclaimed classic, which won six Academy Awards and received the most nominations (14) in film history.
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