Revisited All About Eve very recently and got floored once again. I remain on high from that film. There's something about the film that really crawls under my skin and I don't have a clue what it is.

I adore the onion-layers of the film, on the surface - the grand display of hysterics and the best dialogues of all cinema. Underneath all that plus the glorious deceit, scheming, and bitching lies the fear of loneliness and aging. I never noticed that before as I always got swept away by the film's most magnificent wits, performances and bitchiness. Last viewing, I was emotionally struck by another layer revealed - the fear of aging and loneliness that is, so gorgeously subtly expressed in from the Broadway title to Bette's dialogues during a car break down on a wintry country road.

Someone told me that there is a lesbian angle to it. That layer I've not discovered yet.

And it has my favorite movie script of them all. Line after line, just perfect, martini-dry. The ending still so ever creepy, how the mirror multiplies to the world of Phoebes we are currently living in. The film will never grow old.

Any fan of All About Eve here?

I also caught Stardust (documentary movie of Bette Davis' life and career) on TCM a couple of nights ago. It was pretty good and I was exhilarated to see Charles Pierce as one of the guests. Not sure if I agree with his comment saying Bette Davis' performance as Margo is not campy but she plays a campy lady. Whatever that means but surely Margo, being a Broadway diva, is a very theatrical character, just not campy.

I was just thinking last night about how great that last fifteen-twenty minutes are-- the wind up and pitch result in one of the most satisfying if not the most satisfying endings in all of film. George Sanders totally kills it and the terminally underrated Anne Baxter outshines that sun of suns, Bette Davis, in every scene.

On a side note, I read Sanders' brilliant suicide note last night and man, that guy just straight-up killed at life (so to speak)

I'm a huge fan of the film, and of Joseph Mankiewicz in general (certainly has his flaws, but a master of voiceover narration). It's one of those films that I find myself quoting a lot (but usually just in my head to myself). I wish that the "husband" characters were drawn a little bit better, but it may just be that Gary Merrill and Hugh Marlowe were dimmer lights than George Sanders, Bette Davis, Thelma Ritter, et al. After all, Gregory Ratoff does a great job with his little part, and Kirk Douglas played the husband-to-end-all-husbands in Mankiewicz's A Letter to Three Wives.

The tagline for the poster of All About Eve is: "It's all about women... and their men." Women first, men next. Women reign the stage of All About Eve , leaving men in the sidestage. The blood flowing through the film is women's fear of becoming lonely and old - no longer the spotlight of worthiness and desire. So with that said, the "husbands" may not be as dramatic or fleshed out as the others, it's all because they are basically decent and caring folks, looking kinda bland next to the acerbic, cold-blooded DeWitt. I love the "husbands", they are so nice and modern - none of the macho or sexist attitude, which is really refreshing to see in old movies.

So much more to say about the film.

Haven't seen Letter to Three Wives, will check it out.

Thanks to Michael for guilting me into finally seeing this. What was I waiting for? Must be the most acerbic movie about ambition outside of SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, and more nuanced than that brilliant picture.

Agree with domino, too, that the last twenty minutes are insanely good. Eve's acceptance speech thanking the cast of characters of her life and their reactions -- while making you feel one way at the film's opening -- now do a 180-degree turn as you grasp the emptiness of her words, the hollowness of it all. And Sanders' "you belong to me" speech is as subversively sadistic as anything I've ever seen. I kept seeing precognitions of Fassbinder here -- Petra von Kant, sure, but Maria Braun, Veronika Voss, even Fox and His Friends -- I told Michael, I'm just in a state of shock after seeing it.

Incredibly powerful movie. I can't wait to see it again.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz, sad to say, had never really been on my map. Lots to discover.

If you need a next step, you probably won't be disappointed by the Barefoot Contessa, which is somewhat transparently Mankiewicz's attempt at capturing a similar audience. Sure it's not quite in the same league, but it is great fun and Edmund O'Brien earned his supporting actor Oscar too

Thanks domino. I was just checking out the IMDb for Joseph L. Mankiewicz I'd missed.

Netflix instant viewing has:

Cleopatra
Julius Caesar
People Will Talk
A Letter to Three Wives
The Ghost and Mrs Muir

Netflix instant used to have Barefoot Contessa and Suddenly Last Summer. Maybe they'll come around again.

TCM runs some of his films often. Worth checking out are his adaptations of The Quiet American (much better, I think, than the recent version with Michael Caine) and The Late George Apley, based on the novel by the once popular but now completely forgotten John P. Marquand. I thought that I would love People Will Talk, since it was made right after Eve and stars Cary Grant as a gynecologist, but I hated it. Unbearably earnest and heavy-handed. Also completely unfunny.

I guess I'm in the minority in that once Bette Davis is off-screen for good in Eve, the movie is over for me. Maybe it's a testament to Anne Baxter's talent, but I dislike her character so much that I don't even care what happens to her at the end.

Matt, don't you like Celeste Holm? She's such a fascinating bitch but in a more subtle way than Margo, Eve and Birdie. I loooove her VO when she's alone in her apartment, complementing what to do next with her scheming plan. Her words still rattle in my mind.

What about the ending - from Addison's confrontation crippling Eve for good to Phoebe in the mirrors - no Bette but it can't be "over" for you, no?

And of course in all this is Bette's show. In my opinion, her greatest film, her most crowning performance.

jesus the mexican boi - very interesting that you brought up Fassbinder. I thought the same if only Fassinder could be this funny.

All About Eve has to be Almodovar's favorite film, he has already referenced to this film a few times in All About My Mother, the title itself a very obvious example. But I think Bad Education is really his All About Eve. Gael Garcia Bernal's character is a brother to Eve - both are nasty and like Matt said earlier, dislikeable and also glide through sexualities back and forth. But that leaves room to develop feelings for the real victims - Margo and the real Ignacio.

And also very interesting how both films have such fun "sidekick" characters that slip in and out way too soon - Birdie in All About Eve and Paquito in Bad Education. I keep waiting for them to return and I always say that there are movies waiting to be made just for those characters.

Some read more than Mankiewicz claims he intended in Eve embracing the young woman who makes the call to Hugh Marlowe as they walk up the stairs afterward.
But my bet is on Eve doing whatever necessary to further her plan.

I agree with Domino that Baxter makes this film. The chemistry between her and Sanders is outrageous. Rossellini should have cast Baxter opposite Sanders in Viaggio in Italia, but then he would have had a comedy, or more likely a murder mystery, on his hands.

I think Baxter is magnificent, playing the naively good but preposterous girl of 50's melodrama. But Davis is an actress that cannot be topped, playing a character with much more depth and complexities than Baxter.