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All About Eve

All About Eve

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: OVERRATED AND TALKY
Review: I enjoy Bette Davis movies. I enjoyed this one. The DVD transfer is great. However, compared to some of the other 'classics' Bette was in I find this one to be overrated. The film is overly long with talk galore. The cast is great. But I for one always feel let down with the payoff. I think Eve should have gotten what she deserved more than she did. I think Margo should have had more guts to see through her, the way Thelma Ritter as Birdie did right from the very beginning. As for this being Bette Davis' finest hour, I beg to differ. How can one honestly compare "All About Eve" with "Now Voyager", "The Old Maid" or "All This and Heaven Too" which are my three favorite Bette Davis pictures. I don't even think Davis deserved an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in this movie. Supporting maybe as she is missing from the picture for long periods. Judy Holliday won the Oscar that year but the one who really deserved the Oscar was Gloria Swanson for her performance in "Sunset Boulevard". Bette, by this time, had made so many enemies in Hollywood by her erratic, bipolar behavior that no one wanted to vote for her. Anne Baxter deserved the Best Actress nomination because she went all through the picture.

This picture is a good picture but I don't rate it among my top five Davis pictures. It is overrought and as I said, I like to see evil characters get their just deserts....and this doesn't happen in this film. I get mad every time I see the scene with Bette, Celeste Holm and Hugh Marlowe in the car with Holm sabotaging Bette and keeping her from getting to the theater.

As I said, the payoff for this movie disappoints me. But this is just my opinion. The movie is good, not excellent and certainly doesn't rate five stars from me. If you want to see the quintessential Bette Davis try "Now Voyager" or "The Little Foxes". "Now Voyager" features Bette at her most beautiful, while "Foxes features her at her most evil.

"All About Eve" pales in comparison. Plus, the film is much, much too long!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great movie
Review: It sounds cliche to say, "Not enough stars," but that's exactly the way I feel about this film. I've actually seen every Bette Davis movie ever made, but this is by far the best. With a mind-blowing plot and a brilliant cast, you can't go wrong with ALL ABOUT EVE. Anne Baxter is at her best here (she was did less well in movies after this) and the rest of the gang is perfectly matched. With a "What goes around comes around" theme, ALL ABOUT EVE may just be the most perfectly made movie ever.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: They just don't make 'em like this anymore...
Review: A wonderful movie with stellar perfomances from all involved. It revived Bette Davis' career and the part of Margo Channing fit her well. Also, the on screen chemistry with she and Gary Merrill was helped by their off-screen romance. Ann Baxter is luminous and puts in one hell of a performance as the backstabbing Eve. If you've never seen this film, you are in for a wonderful treat. It's one of those movies that you are sorry to see end, because you wish you could have the experience of seeing it again for the first time all over again.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Best of the Best
Review: A Triple-S movie (three suicides in the cast--Marilyn Monroe, Barbara Bates and George Sanders), All About Eve has enough dirt to satisfy even the heartiest appetite. A record 14 Oscar nominations for the cast and crew, it is as wicked and sophisticated as they come, with Bette Davis at her eye-popping, cigarette-swinging best as Margo Channing, Broadway's leading diva. Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington is deliciously calculating as the up-and-coming actress who moves in on Miss Channing, first ingratiating herself with Miss Channing, and eventually replacing her. The supporting cast is equally fine with George Sanders as "that venomous fishwife" Addison DeWitt, Celeste Holm as Margo's long-suffering best friend, Karen Richards, and an ethereally beautiful Marilyn Monroe as Miss Caswell, "a graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Arts."

Joseph Mankiewicz's script and direction are superb, with dialogue so crisp and poisonous, it makes you wonder where script-driven movies have gone. Chock full of quotable lines, fabulous New Look costumes, and sheer irony. So thick and rich you'll be tempted to eat it with a fork but use a spoon to get every drop.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "The title is NOT 'All About Margo'!"
Review: While one actress claws her way to the top, another succombs to the horrors of middle-age. Starring Thelma Ritter.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Don't miss this masterpiece of film-making!
Review: This is the rare perfect combination of an excellent script, and a great director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, (who both wrote and directed,) and an unmatched cast.

A fascinating look at the New York theatre world, the film concerns the conflicts of an ambitious young actress, (Anne Baxter,) and an established star, (Bette Davis.) This perfect gem of a movie is a high point in the careers of everybody involved.

An insightful and literate script, top-notch performances and a first class production resulted in the film winning several well-deserved Oscars in 1950. One of the great films of all time.


Rating: 5 stars
Summary: All about everything
Review: Of course, All About Eve is more than a chick flick even though the men, Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill) as Margo's beau, and Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe) as a writer (and husband of Margo's best friend, Karen, played by Celest Holm) headed for Hollywood, take a back seat to the main action which is the playing out of the eternal power struggle between (take your pick: they all fit psychologically): youth and age, the daughter and the mother, the bride and the mother-in-law, the upstart and the established talent, the new and the old.

Bette Davis is excellent of course, and the role fits her like a glove. But what transfixed me as a child was the contrast between the wholesome good looks of Anne Baxter and her sneaky treachery. Could someone so pretty be so bad? I may have wondered who I would have preferred for a mother, Davis or Baxter, and perhaps have come away not knowing. For Bette Davis the luster had gone from those famous eyes, and so it was only natural that her character Margo feared the loss of love from men. Even that I understood as a child. And in Baxter, youth would be served and perhaps she could be forgiven the lies because time does not stand still for anyone, especially it does not stand still for a starlet.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: 2 DIE 4!
Review: Discovered Celeste Holm while watching "Broadway: The Golden Age" and had to see this movie. I am a total Broadway junkie and am now discovering a whole new world of old stuff thanks to the Golden Age movie. Celeste RULES! And holding your own with Bette Davis is serious!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: All Time Classic
Review: 20th Century Fox is one of the best film studios to preserve its old films. Their film archives are extensive, and well known for the outtakes, bloopers and trailers that are frequently used in documentaries and cable TV.

The DVD version of "All About Eve" does not have any outtakes or bloopers, but is still rich in other surplus materials. The DVD has an audio commentary from Celeste Holm, one of the actresses in the film. There are also 3 different coming attraction trailers, as well as a few Fox Movietone Newsreels or raw footage from the Movietone newsreel archive of award ceremonies related to the film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Betty Davis Eyes
Review: Academy awards flew for Joseph L. Mankiewicz's homage to the "Theatre," All About Eve. His script is brilliant all the way to the last revelation. Betty Davis and young Anne Baxter play it to the hilt. Are they overacting? Well, they do play stage creatures, and Davis' swish thrills the gay community to this day. Does all the serious talk about the "Theater" seem like a snapshot of another age? Yes, nobody cares about stage plays anymore, but let's not forget that the 20th Century was a golden age of playwrights, Shaw, O'Neil, and Miller. The intellectuals took playwrights seriously because the other mass entertainment, film, would not give the thinking person the meat of life: ideas or taboo subjects like sex or racism. True, melodrama ruled Broadway, but those funny New Yorkers took it seriously. Hell, the ruminants still go to Cats.

Betty Davis eyes - how wonderful she was as the aging star, Margo. "Fasten your seat belts because it's going to be a bumpy night." That's Betty's classic line when she figures out her sweet little understudy Anne Baxter is a scheming megalomaniac trying to suck the older actress dry. George Sanders in his greatest cad persona has Anne Baxter's number, while the cast is done in by the protégé. Love this film. Should watch it once a year.



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