All About Eve (1950) fasten your seatbelts, it’s a double-disc Criterion (Review)

Every era has one or two filmmakers who are so fashionable and so beloved that they introduce a whole generation to classic cinema just through name-dropping films in interviews. For my generation, it was the Coen brothers (and Quentin Tarantino, but since we’re not reviewing a 1970s rape-revenge film we’ll skip over him). As I’ve grown older, my taste in silent films and Golden Age Hollywood has naturally broadened out from the Coen-approved slate of screwball comedy and noir, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get a thrill of recognition every time I watch a 1940s or 1950s film that has that Barton Fink feeling. (Or Blood Simple, or Hail Caesar!, or…)

Joseph L Mankiewicz’s All About Eve, released in an absolutely packed two-disc Blu-Ray set by Criterion UK, is one of those films. It begins with a waspish voiceover from George Sanders’s gossip columnist Addison DeWitt, one which controls the action to such a degree that the film actually pauses when he wants to draw the viewers’ attention to something. DeWitt’s sophisticated drawl is describing a film awards ceremony – for the Sarah Siddons Award, a fictional acting trophy that was actually instituted for real after the film came out – and it sets the sly, ironic tone for everything that follows. During a particularly pompous speech, DeWitt reassures the audience that the speaker is an actor, so it doesn’t matter what he’s saying.

Just five years later Billy Wilder would be lambasted for “biting the hand that feeds him” in Sunset Boulevard, so why did Mankiewicz’s barbs meet with approval up to and including a Best Picture Oscar? Perhaps Hollywood felt less personally targeted by this tale of showbiz egos because it takes place in the theatre – albeit a theatre where the top talent is perpetually at risk of being snapped up by movie studios. But perhaps it’s also because All About Eve’s bitchy exterior conceals some subtle flattery. Later on, DeWitt will castigate stars who think their public want them to be down-to-earth and ordinary, accusing them of not realising the public likes stars because they’re much more interesting than ordinary people. That’s a jab, certainly, but it’s the sort of jab that feels disarmingly complimentary.

It’s strange that Mankiewicz gives the authorial voice of the film to a gossip columnist. It’s not done without irony and there is an awareness that DeWitt is hardly the kind of serious moral voice A-list movies of this era generally spotlighted, but it’s still an unexpected move from someone who was, at the time, a favourite target of right-wing gossip columnist Louella Parsons. Parsons objected to Mankiewicz’s refusal to purge the Director’s Guild of America, which he was president of at the time All About Eve was released, of left-wingers, and it all came to a head one evening when Cecil B de Mille urged the DGA to force its members to sign a loyalty oath to America.

There’s some discussion of Parsons’ campaign in the best of the disc’s extras, a half-hour documentary by Mankiewicz’s own children, who remember being shunned in the school playgrounds by children whose parents didn’t want them playing with “pinkos”. Before the famous DGA meeting about de Mille’s proposal, Mankiewicz personally lobbied John Ford to come out against the proposal, knowing that as a Republican and a child of immigrants Ford could be a winnable swing vote. When Ford began his famous speech (“My name’s John Ford. I make Westerns…”) it was right at the end of a long night. Mankiewicz was petrified as Ford began by praising de Mille’s cinema, then – ever the showman – Ford turned on de Mille, burying his scheme. As it’s retold here, it’s an incredible, tense, rollercoaster ride. Mankiewicz should have made a movie out of it – although looking at the much less political but no less ferocious backstage battles in All About Eve, maybe he did.

The title is All About Eve, but the film – with no disrespect to Anne Baxter’s excellent turn in the title role – is all about Margo. Bette Davis received the ninth of her eleven Best Actress Oscar nominations for playing Margo Channing, moving into her forties and becoming painfully aware that the young aspiring actress who used to be her fan is now her rival. Again, it’s worth comparing this with Sunset Boulevard. Gloria Swanson’s film career really had all but ended when she took the role of Norma Desmond; Davis, by contrast, had suffered some flops but was still a major name in 1950, and was blessed with one of those rare Golden Age Hollywood faces that only got more compelling as she aged. (Bogart was another) In this context, even the cruellest of her one-liners become understandable, sympathetic even – she’s a star, and as such is much more interesting than you or I. Not that she never had to worry about up-and-comers. Famously, one of the youngsters she dismisses with a curt line in the film’s big party set-piece is a new face called Marilyn Monroe.

With all this to dig into, it’s no wonder the extras are both so comprehensive and so good. There’s a 2001 episode of the American documentary series Backstory about the making of the film, which is deliriously cheesy (the voiceover characterises the film as containing “high art – low blows!”) but feels strangely right for this particular title, merging as it does light, catty triviality with extraordinary technique and passion. It would be somewhat less suitable for the last Criterion I reviewed, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror. There’s also All About Mankiewicz, a 1983 feature-length documentary by Luc Béraud made up of interviews with the writer-director, a radio adaptation of the film, promotional material from the original release and much, much more.

THANKS FOR READING GRAHAM’S REVIEW OF ALL ABOUT EVE

Louis Theroux has always been fascinated by Michael Jackson. And Graham and Aidan have always been fascinated by Louis Theroux. So it makes perfect sense – ish – to follow up yesterday’s Moonwalker episode with a look at Theroux’s 2003 documentary trying to gain access to the King of Pop at a difficult time in, frankly, both men’s careers. Join us for a discussion of all four of the men this film focuses on: the national treasure that is Theroux, the more problematic figure of Jackson, the recently disgraced Martin Bashir… and Uri Geller.

PATREON POP SCREEN

For more Music and Pop Music Chat, check out our Podcast, POP SCREEN