All About Eve (1950)

Release date: 1950-10-27
Country: USA
Language: English|French
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Production Co: Twentieth Century Fox
Genre: Drama
Rating: 8.2/10
Length: 2h 18min

Storyline

Eve (Anne Baxter) is waiting backstage to meet her idol, aging Broadway star Margo Channing (Bette Davis). It seems innocent enough as Eve explains that she has seen Margo in EVERY performance of her current play. Only playwright/critic DeWitt (George Sanders) sees through Eve's evil plan, which is to take her parts and her fiancé, Bill Simpson (Gary Merrill). When the fiancé shows no interest, she tries for playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), but DeWitt stops her. After she accepts her award, she decides to skip the after-party and goes to her room, where a young woman named Phoebe has sneaked into her room and fallen asleep. This is where the "Circle of Life" now comes to fruition as Eve will get played like she played Margo.

Plot Keywords

man slaps woman, character name in title, title spoken by character, famous line, based on short story, meta film, theater, older woman younger man relationship, reference to william shakespeare, in medias res, broadway manhattan new york city, stage door, actor, husband wife relationship, fan the person, trenchcoat, reference to shakespeare's hamlet, reference to clark gable, drinking, drink

Short Review

Never has a film, both in story and in technique, been brought more closely to the stage than All About Eve... Its appeal and its success depend almost entirely on gesture and conversation.