All About Eve

This is one of those movies that took me by surprise. When I saw it for the first time a few years ago it just blew me away. I figured it would be another one of those old boring movies. It kind of starts out that way but changes quickly. It has some of the snappiest dialogue and Bette Davis is amazing in it. 1950 was a year of great movies with All About Eve, Sunset Blvd., and Harvey but I definitely think this deserved best picture.

All About Eve is pretty much what it says it is, a movie about Eve. Its about her rise from lowly poor girl to award winning theatre actress. The path she takes to get there is one of manipulation, black mail, and back stabbing. She uses everyone she meets to her own advantage and seeks out anyone that can help her make it to the top. The person who can get her to the top fastest is the aging actress Margo Channing played by Bette Davis. Eve (played by Ann Baxter) connives her way into Margo's life and while pretending to be a modest assistant does everything possible to become a star herself. One of the movies many themes is the place for aging actresses in theatre. This is interesting because this is still a topic discusses in Hollywood. Seems like at least a couple of times a year there is at least one magazine that has an article about roles for older actresses. Entertainment Weekly constantly talks about this. Another timeless theme in the movie is the lure of fame and success. Eve is a person willing to do anything for fame. And the movie ends with her heading to Hollywood to pursue a film career. If this movie was made today there would have been a sequel already about her exploits in film. Actually I am surprised that they never did make a sequel.

The movie had 14 Oscar nominations and won 6. The only other film to have 14 nominations was Titanic in 1997. It had 4 nominations for its actresses the most of any movie. Two for Best Actress(Ann Baxter and Bette Davis) and two for Best Supporting Actress(Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter) and didn't win any. How Bette Davis didn't win Best Actress is beyond me she gave an amazing performance, and I think Thelma Ritter had some of the best lines and should have won supporting actress. It did win best screenplay and best director for Joseph L. Mankiewicz his second year in a row winning both categories and becoming the only person ever to win back to back directing and writing awards(he won both awards the previous year for A Letter to Three Wives).
Ranks up there as one of my favorite movies to win best picture.

Other facts
Voted number 16 Best Movie of All Time by AFI in 1998 and dropped to number 28 in 2008
Voted number 21 Best Movie of All Time by Entertainment Weekly
"Fasten your seat belts it's going to be a bumpy night" (one of my favorite quotes from the movie) voted number 9 best quotes of all time by AFI
Bette Davis performance was voted number 5 of all time by premiere magazine.
Marilyn Monroe has a small part in one of her first roles on screen.