Delayed Reaction: All About Eve

The Pitch: Bette Davis promises it's going to be a bumpy ride...and it is.

Like most people, I assume, I watched All About Eve and one thing became undeniably clear: This is Showgirls but from Gina Gershon's perspective. Of course, while Showgirls opts for the austere Las Vegas setting, All About Eve settles on the trite world of Broadway. All the boobs and sex in Showgirls is taken away, and all that's left is the Hays code-approved witticism of All About Eve. Rather than the Showgirls cast full of Golden Globe and Emmy nominees*, All About Eve shoves a bunch of Oscar winners down the audience's throat. It's unfair to even compare the films, but such is the state of my mind.

*All coming from Kyle MacLachlan.

All kidding aside, All About Eve is pretty great. Somehow, this was my first Bette Davis movie. After Feud, I had to fix that and wanted to start with some of the great movies rather than going straight to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Davis and Anne Baxter are really good in this. I'm having a hard time coming up with another film that pulled off double nominations for Lead Actress at the Oscars [that were both deserving of the nominations]. What's crazy is that Davis, Baxter, and Gloria Swanson (in Sunset Blvd.) were all nominated that year and none of them won. The puts a lot of expectations on Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday if I ever see it.

I haven't seen enough films from the era to be certain, but it seems that Hollywood got reflective in the 1950s. All About Eve is about the theater world the way that MASH was about the Korean War: technically, yeah, but we all know what that's a stand in for. And it was the same year as Sunset Blvd., perhaps the most cutting commentary on Hollywood's short memory for aging stars. By the 50s, Hollywood could start calling their early icons 'legends' and screenwriters really took that to heart.

There's plenty more to dissect about All About Eve, but this'll do for now.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend