What a surprise: Joseph L. Mankiewitz's film tells Eve's story. Very straight, classic, conventional and maybe a bit long.
But who is this 'Eve'?
"The golden girl, the cover girl, the girl next door, the girl from the moon. Life goes where she goes. (...) You all know all about Eve..."
...and so on. Instead of these rather gibberish explanations of the film let me make it straight: Eve Harrington is a young girl who enters the devilish registers of the New York theatre scene. Actually when the film starts she is on the top, receiving the biggest prize what an actress can get. Everybody applauds, except two women. One of them (Karen) will be our guide, as a narrator she will tell everything / All About Eve.
The other one is Margo Channing, Eve's ideal. [fade in - flashback on - we are at the beginning of the story] Channing (the vampish Bette Davis) is the biggest actress of her age and Eve worms herself into Margo's "dressing room" immediately. Through her pliable behave Eve's theatrical career kicks high - but her personal charm sinks with the same speed. The emotions change fast around her: from pity to love then fear and hate. "Eve, Eve. The Little Miss Evil."
The story is worn and known, what is more interesting is the context, the background. The New York theater scene and its anxiously scared relation to Hollywood as some feared, unknown, far threat. At the same time it is funny that this "theater film" is one of the biggest Hollywood classics ever made. We will know everything about Eve, but the film tells even more about the known but never psychologized star-system of the fifties, or about the painful generational-shift within this system, among its stars.
From this viewpoint Bette Davis' Margo is a cousin of Norma Desmond (another icon, Gloria Swanson) from Sunset Blvd. - yes, even from the same year. Their "out of fashion" characters are Hollywood's and the Broadway's nostalgic cry on the big times. Quoting Desmond and Joe Gillis from Wilder's masterpiece is the best way to express this passing 'bigness':
Gillis: "You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big."
Desmond: "I •am• big! It's the pictures that got small!"
It seems I went far from Eve, but believe me: Eve's story is just some excuse to talk about this progression and the nostalgic feeling towards the good old times. And Mankiewitz speaks this language fluently.
If I was talking about the generation-shift in the system I shouldn't forget to mention that in this film appears a little star who will shine more and more in the next years... Marylin Monroe impersonating in this particular film and in reality as well all Mankiewitz's fears... The fears which appears best in the last shot with a thousand "Eve-clones" - predicted quite accurate what will happen / what happened in the last 50 years in Hollywood and in the star-system generally...
7/10
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