All About Eve

As well directed as it is, All About Eve remains a writer's picture. It starts like a drippy soap about personal sacrifice and the stage and then quickly opens into a full portrait of Broadway life, and then some. Aging star Margo Channing has doubts about her attractiveness - do her friends and fiancé love her, or the bigger-than-life persona she acts on and off-stage? The writers and directors are concerned about simply making a living and worry if working in Hollywood will compromise their talent. Their personal get-togethers turn into 'scenes,' and their fondness for cynicism is matched by an ironic susceptibility to phonies who talk a good line. Machiavellian critic Addison DeWitt agitates the situation, friendless but always in fine company.

Innocent, organized and devoted, Eve Harrington turns out to be a master games-player, worming her way into the good graces of the Broadway clique and eventually clawing upward by deceitful means. She's a type everyone has met, the usurper who leapfrogs the merit path by exploiting a personal relationship, or who bags a plum assignment by intimidating key people. Eve manages to charm Margo's best friend Karen into both an introduction and a job. When Eve's devotion raises Margo's suspicions, Karen takes up 'the kid's' defense. In the confusion, Eve is able to separate Karen from her better judgment, Margo from her fiancé and her high roost, and secure her own status as a sensational stage discovery.

There are many stories about killers like Eve Harrington, but few as sophisticated as this. Nailing down Eve's exact crime isn't so easy, as on the surface she merely allow others to help her. Eve's basic deceit is to manipulate her associates with the aim of taking her benefactor's job. That's certainly how business works. In Horatio Alger terms, Eve's ambition to rise quickly to the top generally meets with approval. Birdie Coonan (Thelma Ritter) is soon deeply suspicious of the liberties Eve takes with her intimacy with Margo. As soon as she sees an opening, Eve is in like a shark. And before she can be stopped, she finds the opportunity she's been waiting for.

Realistically speaking, Eve is herself victimized by the bigger fish DeWitt, who knows her through and through and proposes a 'dangerous liaison' between them as a price for his support. Cynics need love too, it seems. One wonders if this is how Adolf Hitler got started.

Perhaps the biggest contribution of All About Eve is that it codified the behaviors and practices of the theatrical version of the "killer." I don't know if the stage is more cynical now or not. A friend who went to New York to be a costumer told me that in her case, utter ruthlessness and the using of others was the norm. When I hear the same stuff repeated with kids backstage at High School plays, maybe the truth is that it has always been there. As suggested by its title, All About Eve zeroes in on females as the root of all evil.

Celeste Holm carries the intrigue of the show well, especially in those scenes where she realizes she's allowed herself to be compromised by her own sentimental instincts. Likewise, George Sanders puts several levels of disguise into his acerbic critic. Deeper than the simply misanthropic Waldo Lydecker of Laura, Addison DeWitt is driven by his own intellectual distance from the rest of humanity. DeWitt recognizes and worships Eve's superior gamesmanship apart from sentimental considerations because he's rationalized all relationships into a cynical Darwinism. One gets the feeling that Addison DeWitt and Hannibal Lecter could carry on a perfectly sincere conversation.

The thankless roles are those given the supposed leading men, Gary Merrill and Hugh Marlowe. Merrill is better than okay but not as convincing as a dynamic director should be. This is Marlowe's most charming and sensitively played screen part, and the only one Savant's seen where he shines. He's effectively Nixon-like in Day the Earth Stood Still, but his parts in things like Night and the City and Garden of Evil don't attest to any particular versatility.

Fox's DVD of All About Eve has a stunningly transferred picture and clear soundtrack and is a pleasure to watch, seeming much shorter than it actually is. Alfred Newman's score mixes bombast with a few sinister notes seemingly lifted from the sinister main theme of his Leave Her to Heaven, suggesting the evil lurking in the avaricious female heart. Milton Krasner's B&W lensing looks great, even in the second scene Savant remembered, a pitiful rear-projection shot of Baxter and Sanders walking down a sidewalk. It is so poorly coordinated, they look as if they're roller skating.

The main extra is an AMC Backstory piece on the film that probably contains a lot of interesting information. But Savant didn't get far enough into it to find out - like many of those docus, its takes too long to get beyond the superficial. Other short text essays in the special features menu are easier to digest. Also included are newsreel excerpts, interviews from the time with Davis and Baxter, a restoration comparison and a trailer.

Informative commentaries are provided by Celeste Holm, Christopher Mankiewicz and two filmbbok authors, Kenneth Geist and Sam Staggs. There's so much to read about All About Eve in bios of Davis, Mankiewicz and others that the prize of this DVD is just the excellent rendition of the film itself. Fox may have been poky bringing out the riches of its vault, but the quality of their releases is worth waiting for.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, All About Eve rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: AMC 'backstory' docu on the film, text extras, trailers
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: January 7, 2003