The oh-so-quotable line "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night", spoken by Bette Davis while at a dinner party, pretty much sums up the tale of ego and hubris that is All About Eve. Written and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz and based on the Mary Orr story the Wisdom of Eve, that bumpiness is also an on-target, biting thrust at the theatre industry and both a denunciation and a celebration of the temperamental nature of friendship. It's also funny, entertaining, and entrancing. In fact, if watching All About Eve once is wildly entertaining, then watching it twice becomes even more so. For then we know why all of these supposed friends have an impartial, ambiguous look on their faces at the film's beginning.
Most of the movie is a flashback that introduces us to the young Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), and leads us up to her flashy acceptance of the Sarah Siddons Award for Dramatic Achievement. When we first see her, Eve seems to idolize the "veteran" actress Margo Channing (Davis) so much that she has been to see Channing in every performance of a play entitled, coincidentally, Aged in Wood. Margo's friends, the kindly sweet Karen (Celeste Holm) and her husband, the playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe) are just as swept away by Eve's polite demure. Margo's beau Bill (Gary Merrill, Davis's offscreen lover as well) is frustrated by his leading lady's self-doubt and jealousy, which begins when Eve enters their inner circle of friends. Meanwhile, the jaded theatre critic Addison DeWitt (a deadpan George Sanders) does what he does best: he analyzes the drama as it unfolds.
All About Eve drips with subtext. Several of the characters are often frank in their feelings and intentions, and a caustic sarcasm enriches each remark or passage of dialogue. Given the film's subject matter, it should come as no surprise that it translates very much like a stage play, with extended scenes that provide rich character detail and a heightened emphasis on dialogue versus action or major events.
The cast is divine, particularly Bette Davis in her Oscar-nominated performance. Her scathing wit rarely flinches, but when her tough exterior does drop at one key moment, it is as spellbinding a piece of acting as has ever graced the silver screen. A notable cameo by the still relatively unknown Marilyn Monroe in one scene practically upstages the rest of the fine ensemble, an omen of the success that was just around the bend for her. Mankiewicz, who astonishingly won the best director trophy over Billy Wilder for Sunset Boulevard and Carol Reed for The Third Man, keeps everything grounded and simple.
A narrative voice-over is used throughout the entire movie. It's a reminder that All About Eve is, ultimately, a story, and a very good one at that. We watch several characters behave in an unkind manner, but we grin mischievously at the antics. As is the case in real life, some of the friends bounce back and even manage to forgive each other for the way they've acted. Then again, some of them don't.
