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Summary: Addison DeWitt: "You're too short for that!'
Review: The above line, spoken by George Sanders' DeWitt, is just one of the many that populate the most enjoyable listening experience ever done for film. Amazon has a quote page that just hits at the surface of the abundance that are true gems. "Eve" is the only American film that works so well as an audio presentation because of the snappy dialogue and magnificent delivery from all its participants.Everyone raves about Davis, Baxter, Sanders, Holm, Ritter, and a then-unknown Monroe; but one cannot deny that this film was the apex for Gary Merrill and Hugh Marlowe. The two actors would never appear in a film of such greatness again. Where is a Joseph Mankiewicz today when you need one?
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Summary: Fire and Music!
Review: All About Eve is one of the greatest pictures of all time. My personal fav. It soars through a tale of a bright eyed star climbing the ladder to success while the others watch her as she manipulates her idol, the writer, the director, the wife, and the critic. Bette Davis is wonderful as the famous broadway star Margo Channing. Anne Baxter has dignity and grace as she portrays the manipulative Eve. George Sanders does his oscar winning perfomance of Addison DeWitt the critic which will charm you forever. Celeste Holm is great as the wife of a playwrite Lloyd Richards who is greatly played by Hugh Marlowe. Gary Merill does an extremly exceptional job with his performance of Bill Sampson the director boyfriend of Margo. Joseph L. Mankiewicz is a master of blending a story in with the dialouge which is some of the best found in film full of wisecrack remarks and plenty of double talk. What was once just a script turned into a mass of fire and music.
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Summary: Evil and Sarcasm at their best!
Review: In All About Eve we have before us the talents of 6 principles and several supporting actors! In opera we had the two main divas Renata Tebaldi and Maria Callas, I would have to say that Davis and Crawford fit those two descriptions but in the theatre and movie world. In All About Eve we have Bette Davis who is as brill iant in this movie as the great actress Margot Channing. One could compare her performance to Callas's Tosca or Lucia! Acting truly at its greatest! As far as I'm concerned no other actress could have given so magnificent yet so smooth and vulnerable a performance as that of Davis's Margot Channing. The movie may be named All About Eve in title but its really all about Davis' talent charisma, and originality of style. Anne Baxter of course was suberb as the canniving Eve Harrington. One could compare her to Mirella Freni in opera. Beautiful and talented yet not quite the diva Davis and Crawford were in their prime. Baxter has taught me a lot about what lonely, insecure people will do to get what they want. Yet if we really analyze Eve Harrington's behavior we can not really hate her because we see how deep the insecurity and pain run in this woman's life. Perhaps we could characterize it to be a defense mechanism.Simply put its only a theory. George Sanders is deliciously sinister, and commanding as the theatre critic Addison Dewitt as he helps to launch Eve Harrington's career while he puts Margot Channing's career in jeopardy with the use of his "poisoned pen". The other principles , Celeste Holme, Gary Merill, Gregory Rattoff, Hugh Marlowe, Thelma Ritter as the cantankerous "Brooklynite" Birdie who along with Addison Dewitt is wise to Eve Harrington's "false" humility. Great movie, great script,brilliant characters, all in a "black and white movie". Avrice, Greed, betrayal, ambition, talent, and disloyalty at their most evil!
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Summary: Lousy DVD
Review: I can't imagine anyone spending $20 to $29 on this DVD when it offers absolutely nothing you can't find on a video. The only extra is a two minute interview with Bette Davis which shows her promoting the movie to an interviewer. The DVD itself is shameful: spots and speckles galore. Hardly a remastered print. My copy, taped five years ago from American Movie Classics is twice as good as this DVD. Why weren't any of the surviving cast and crew interviewed? Celeste HOlm is still very much alive and kicking. What's depressing is that all of Bette's classic movies are being reissued to DVD in the same mode: $25-$30 and absolutely nothing extra. Turner should take a lesson from Universal which is doing a magnificent job re-issuing all of its horror classics on DVD: on the "Dracula" DVD alone you get three complete movies (the original, the Spanish version, the original with a new film score), interviews, a history of the movie's creation, etc. Bette Davis fans certainly deserve more than an absurdly priced DVD which is inferior to the video.
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Summary: Fasten your seatbelts, you're in for a bumpy ride!
Review: Bette Davis is perfect as aging movie star who takes newcomer Anne Baxter under her wing. Little does Bette know that Anne is only too happy to walk all over Bette as the former climbs the ladder of success. -- This is Hollywood looking at Hollywood; with all it's glamour, back stabbing and the insatiable desire to be on top. The story line as well as the acting are dated, but even today you can have a grand 'ol time with this entertaining classic! Look for a young Marilyn Monroe in a bit part as a party guest!
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Summary: Classic NY Theatre comedy
Review: Biting, satiric comedy of the New York theater world. Bette Davis is aging stage actress Margo Channing who finds her career (and her romantic life) threatened when "adoring" fan Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) worms her way into a job as Margo's assistant. Seems Eve has plans of her own for her future and they may include Margo's next stage role and her fiance. Incredibly witty script by director Joseph Mankiewicz is acted to the hilt by all, especially Davis and Baxter and, in standout supporting roles, George Sanders as a bitchy critic and Celeste Holm as Margo's loyal, long-suffering best friend.
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Summary: Bette Davis, Bette Davis, oh why are you so great?
Review: And god she is. The Best actress ever, in the best screenplay ever. If I had one thing to say about "All About Eve", it would probably be about Bette Davis. There's nothing else to say. If the film had been less witty, less wise, it would still be a classic because of her performance. She just put herself right on the showcase and and did it. She never wondered, or feared anything. She pushed everybody out to make her way, and changed herself into an instrument for Margo Channing. There's no doubt that Bette Davis was very like Margo Channing in real life. But that just adds to the character, she knew she was Margo Channing, and used it to push the boundaries further to what and actress could do, to what was the limit of what was tolerable or not. But she didn't mind that, and look how it paid off at the end. Never, and I insist on never, is there a moment in the film where you don't believe here. Not a second, not the blink of an eye. It is the perfect performance. And the movie has everything else as good as Bette Davis. When you think of Thelma Ritter, or Celeste Holm, or Marilyn Monroe, or George Sanders, or even Hugh Marlowe, in this picture, they're all astonishing. The dialogue is so brilliant you just can't help to wonder, how long can a writer take to write this? A month? A year? A decade? I don,t know, but it every word in it is placed there for a reason. That's "All About Eve". Every bit of it is carfully put in the perfect ensemble, surrounded by Bette Davis. And to say that Claudette Colbert was suppose to do it...
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Summary: No good deed goes unpunished
Review: "All About Eve" excels on so many levels it's hard to keep track of them all. It won eight Oscars and was nominated for 14 (a record that wasn't tied until "Titanic"). It has been called "The bitchiest film ever made." It's probably one of the most literate films ever made, too, with references to "paranoic outbursts," Fort Sumter and the dramatists Beaumont and Fletcher. (It's unlikely that its screenplay could be produced today.) The story of how an innocent-seeming young ingenue slowly worms her way into an older actress's heart and takes her career away from her is now fifty years old but is as fresh as if it were filmed yesterday. The performances are outstanding across the board, and feature Bette Davis as star Margo Channing, Anne Baxter as usurper Eve Harrington, Celeste Holm as Eve's best friend, Thelma Ritter as Eve's live-in companion, and Marilyn Monroe in a small role as Miss Caswell, "a graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art." This is a film to treasure and to enjoy over and over. There is also a brand-new book devoted to the movie: "All About 'All About Eve'" by Sam Staggs.
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Summary: "You can always put THAT where your heart ought to be"
Review: This film is an example of the superb writing talent that Hollywood boasted before the 80's and 90's (when American filmgoers became addicted to special effects and vulgar physical comedy). Whereas the film was one of the most successful of 1950, chances are today even with the Best Picture Oscar under its belt, 50% of Americans would probably lose interest halfway through. The casting is perfect - there was no better choice for Margo Channing than Bette Davis (by the way - stage actress Tallulah Bankhead thought the character was a sendup of herself, and granted, there are shades of Tallulah in Margo). And if I had one wish, it would be to have George Sanders's deep, snide voice - you can just hear the sarcasm dripping in every line he speaks. Some feel that "Sunset Boulevard" lost Best Picture to "Eve" because where the former directed its animosity toward Hollywood, the latter took exception with the theatre; yet after viewing the film several times, it becomes apparent that "Eve" aimed its barbs at all forms of media (stage, screen, television, and even newspapers - the party scene alone sufficiently skewers the glamorous yet empty side of Hollywood and television). It makes one think - just how real ARE these actors and actresses we see on the screen, and how exactly did they get where they are today? The acting business is certainly one of the most competitive, and I can't imagine they all got where they are by being sweet and gentle. By far, the lion's share of praise belongs to Mankiewicz, who had just won an Oscar for "A Letter to Three Wives" and not only directed this masterpiece but WROTE it (and before simply dismissing such an accomplishment, I dare you to compare a script of this film to any of today's film scripts - 90% aren't NEARLY this tight or fluid). Just one thing - toward the end, what exactly happens to Thelma Ritter's character? She just kind of vanishes, and yet she's one of the most lovable characters in the film. I think it would have made a nice touch if Mankiewicz could have given her a chance to get a couple zingers in on Eve at the end, too. But that's light criticism - this film is one of the most flawless Hollywood films ever made and, if you haven't treated yourself to it, by all means, do so immediately.
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Summary: THE ULTIMATE IN ACTING
Review: How many movies nowadays have excellent, witty scripts of the first order? A few. How many movies have actors who give the most bravura performances all the way around? Very few. How many movies are extremely and exceptionally marvelous productions all the way around? Maybe a few. But how many movies have all three? And as brilliantly collaborated and formed together as Joseph Mankiewicz's "All About Eve"? I can only begin to quote the brilliance of the movie in summary: "The Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement is perhaps unknown to you. For those of you who do not attend the theater, listen to unsponsored radio programmes, or know anything of the world in which you live, it is perhaps necessary to introduce myself. My name is Addison DeWitt. I am a critic. This is Karen Richards. She is the wife of a playwright, Lloyd Richards. Margo Channing is a star, a true star. She never will be anything more or anything else. As you can see, the minor awards have already been presented, for the duty of those individuals is to erect a tower so the audience can applaud a light shining on top of it. And no brighter light has ever dazzled the eye than Eve Harrington..." In flashback, Karen (Celeste Holm) recounts meeting a stagestruck fan of her best friend Margo Channing,(Bette Davis at her eccentric best) a respected Broadway actress. The girl introduces herself as Eve Harrington (maliciously and marvelously played by a young Anne Baxter), and wastes no time cozying up to Margo, to the disgust of her maid, Birdie (played with bitter sarcasm by the great Thelma Ritter). Margo is charmed by Eve, allowing her to come stay with her. But when Eve also starts cozying up to Margo's successful director boyfriend (Gary Merrill) Margo gets a feeling of foul play.... To find out "All About Eve", see this great dramatic gemstone. It won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Sound Editing, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Supporting Actor (George Sanders in his cynical role as the acid DeWitt) and Best Director. And be warned: "FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS. IT'S GOING TO BE A BUMPY NIGHT."
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