All About Eve is a 1950 drama that for nearly fifty years stood as
the lone record holder for most Academy Award nominations. At the 23rd
Academy Awards it was nominated for a total of fourteen awards, a feat
unmatched until Titanic equalled it
in 1997. The film wouldn’t be a successful as James Cameron’s sprawling, water
based epic however and won just six of it’s nominations including the important
Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. Sixty four years on and today
I watched the film for the first time to see what all the fuss is about. My
immediate impression upon completing the film was that of surprise for its
multiple nominations and victories but stepping back a little, the film
features a lot to like, not least some fantastic writing and superb acting
performances.
The film strangely shares many
themes with another 1950 release, Sunset Boulevard, and indeed the two would battle it out in eight of the
categories at the Oscar’s ceremony I just spoke of. Another film that All About Eve congers memories of is
stranger still and that is Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls.
All three movies feature stories about revered and ageing stars who are or at
least feel threatened by perkier, younger women. Here, the marvellous Bette
Davis plays Broadway star Margot Channing, a talented actress with an outwardly
sense of entitlement but who is inwardly frail and uneasy, worried for her
place in the theatre world. Her fears come to the forefront of her mind when
she is confronted with the attributes and ambitions of Eve Harrington (Ann
Baxter). Harrington begins the film as a timid and star struck young girl but
what lurks beneath her downtrodden and excited appearance is a viciously
ambitious starlet.
