You know, sometimes I talk about movies on this blog and I even have an on-going (much-neglected) list of what will eventually be my 100 Great Films but it's pretty rare that I pick a film and talk about it in length. All About Eve is one that is so good and so important I think it merits just that sort of post. All About Eve is a scathingly accurate and unromantic picture of how women in the West were viewed in the mid-20th century (and sometimes stil are by certain people).
Bette Davis plays a 40 year old aging star named Margo Channing. Eve, played by Anne Baxter, is an ardent young fan who manages to slip herself into Margo's life and becomes her personal assistant. The first time you watch the film all your attention is on Eve who seems so loyal and dedicated to Margo it's almost creepy (i.e. What's she really up to, eh?)
But the second time you watch it you notice just how complex and fascinating Margo's character is. Horrified of being upstaged by her young understudy, Margo is haughty and proud but also insecure and vulnerable. Don't be quick to dislike her because of her vanity and obsession with youth. She knows that the impossible is what's expected of women in the world she lives in and her despair at ever being able to live up those expectations of perfect, age-less beauty is very real and very poignant.
The problem with Margo is pretty well summed up by an accusation slung at her by Lloyd, the playwrite in whose play she stars in: "There comes a time that the piano realizes that it has not written the concerto,". And that's the harsh, ugly reality of women in the 50s, especially women in film and theater: they were pianos on which the writers, directors and producers played and as one aged and got a few nicks and scratches on it, they could be replaced with newer, younger versions. Margo's pain is the pain of someone realizing how disposable she is in such a world.
In the film, Margo eventually gives up and retires from the theater world to play the wife role to her man, but ironically in real life for Bette Davis, it was the opposite. She had something in common with Margo; in 1950 people thought she, too, was all washed up as an actress. Until she made this film and her career did a 180. From that point on, she became the commanding screen presence she's remembered for today.
So is this honest portrayal of 1950s sexism enough to say that All About Eve is a feminist flick? I think so. The older women in the film are very conscious of their getting the short end of the stick and they don't accept the adage to "age gracefully", quietly exiting stage right as the next line of to-be-objectified women rises up front and center to replace them. They are angry that their worth in a society so obsessed with youth and beauty has gone down simply because they've gotten older. Never is Margo's talent as an actress put into doubt. It's all about the packaging. And it's not just actresses that have to/had to live with this. Margo's best friend, Karen, a housewife, also has the youth/beauty standard to live up to. When her playwrite husband (the same one that lobbed the "you're just the piano" jab at Margo above) tells her that her cynicism is "something [she's] acquired since [she] left Radcliffe!" she retorts "The cynicism you refer to, I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys!"
This is a very harsh film that is uncomfortable at times to watch, especially if you're a woman and you wish things were more different from that era instead of just slightly different. For all the misty-eyed romanticism we see of the 1950s, this is a film filled with painful truth and accuracy and that, for me, makes it one of the best.
Well done, well said, and well analyzed.
Posted by: Anna | Monday, June 25, 2007 at 11:12 AM