Fall 2014 #16: All About Eve (1950) - Joseph L. Mankiewicz

I did it!! Oh god it feels good to finish a film bucketlist, because it means I get to make a new one!

The last film on my list is Best Picture Winner All About Eve. The story was originally a true anecdote told by actress Elisabeth Bergner, then written as a short story by Mary Orr, and finally written for the screen and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. It tells the story of Eve Harrington, a renowned Broadway actress winning a fictitious theatre award, and how she climbed the social ladder to achieve her dream of fame and fortune.

After seeing Eve receiving her award, the story flashes back to the day the main characters meet Eve Harrington. She has spent weeks seeing every performance of the famous Broadway actress Margo Channing, and now the writer’s wife, Karen Richards, wants to introduce Eve to her idol.

The incomparable Bette Davis plays the egomaniac diva, Margo Channing. An aging Broadway actress, Margo is constantly obsessing over how others perceive her and how she’s going to remain in the spotlight. To her, Eve is an innocent little nobody who is in for a rude awakening in the theatre world she so desires to be a part of. So Margo takes Eve under her wing, making her her assistant, agent, secretary, and friend.

But things take a turn! I don’t want to give away too much, but the film is an entertaining look at the relationships between women in the workforce, how building one up means tearing another down, and how theatre is especially designed for this ruthless competition.

Margo’s obsession with age is constant, as she eventually reveals herself to have recently turned forty, while her boyfriend (who is also her director) is only 32. Her bombastic attitude and abrasive reaction to everything relating to her persona is at its peak when Eve starts to encroach on both her professional and personal lives.

Also every scene where Margo is drinking is amazing. But the film is also a lot deeper than its story about theatre prima donnas and the malevolent critics who make or break them. Its release less than a decade after World War II has created for some incredibly interesting interpretations on what it means to be a woman in America.

Many have argued that Eve’s invasion of everything Margo holds dear is a metaphor for the attack on traditional American values: women trying to assume agency in a patriarchal society, homosexuality encroaching on traditional heteronormative values, COMMUNISM! It’s all hinted at with the audience being left to decide which side they support. 

I don’t know what to make of the LGBT reading of the film, since in 1950 any vaguely homosexual character is innately the antagonistic force in the story, while Eve to me is more of the generic woman trying to conquer an extremely unwelcoming and sexist industry.

Speaking of female empowerment! Marilyn Monroe appears about halfway into the film for no reason.

I’m going to be completely honest and say that I have never once seen a film with Marilyn Monroe in it… which is saying something since I’ve seen every episode of Smash!

But I was actually shocked at how much Marilyn shines on camera. Like it’s unthinkable that someone could steal a scene from Bette Davis, but I literally couldn’t take my eyes off her when she was on screen.

Iconic. Anyway the film is an impressive study on the power of theatre and performance in our lives, and how becoming the person we dream of being can mean sacrificing everything others believe about us. It almost reminded me of Birdman, the way it intertwined film and theatre and the way different walks of life view different types of artistic creation.

The film was nominated for a record fourteen Oscars (a feat not accomplished again until Titanic 47 years later. It won Best Picture, and is still the only film ever to have four actresses nominated. It currently is #98 on the IMDb Top 250 and #28 on the AFI 100 Films list. And that’s all folks! Stay tuned for my Summer 2015 Moviecation List!

Fall 2014 #4: Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961) - Blake Edwards

This may be the second time in my life that I’ve been tricked into thinking a movie is about breakfast when it’s really not. I mean… at least this time a character actually does EAT breakfast, and to give the movie’s credit it IS at Tiffany’s.

I guess I don’t know why I thought this was some weird movie where Audrey Hepburn throws elaborate breakfast parties, and I assumed her character’s name was Tiffany because I know nothing about jewelry.

Instead I got to see an amazing love story between Holly Golightly (played by Audrey Hepburn) and Paul Varjak (played by George Peppard). 

Holly Golightly is the eccentric socialite that embodies New York City in all of its classiness, elegance, and uncontainable energy. She regularly throws parties, knows all of New York’s richest men, and makes $100 a week by unknowingly exchanging coded information between an incarcerated mobster and his lawyer (which I’m assuming in 1961 is enough to afford a nice one bedroom apartment in Manhattan).

But Holly is not all that she seems, and the film gives off the idea that Paul is introduced as a means of rescuing her from her past and her own self-destructive future. I loved seeing Audrey as the independent woman, but somewhere along the way, Paul’s love for her becomes the only thing that’s going to save her from herself, and I don’t know how I feel about that.

I mean he REALLY loves her.

And the more Holly begins to be consumed by her past and her obsession with acquiring a rich husband, the more Paul becomes the “male protagonist” destined to save the damsel in distress. For example.

I had seen this gif here a million times, and I always thought, “Cool, what a nice feminist speech about how women are not objects to be owned by the men that love them.”

But Paul does rescue her from herself, and he does prove that her belonging to him is the best thing for her, because it means she will be loved and respected. It’s a weird dichotomy that I don’t know exactly how to interpret, the line between a woman needing a man’s love to complete her and a woman having the ability to decide that the man who loves and respects her is where she should be because she deserves to be loved and respected. 

Either way, Breakfast at Tiffany’s won two Oscars, for Best Score and Best Song. It’s a classic in every sense (despite the negative depiction of women and the offensive caricature of Japanese Americans). Also, Audrey has gone on the record saying it was one of her most challenging roles, since she was an introvert trying to play an extrovert. It’s also important to note that Truman Capote, who wrote the novella on which the film is loosely based, demanded that Marilyn Monroe be cast as Holly Golightly, but Paramount refused.