All About Eve (1950) | The Film Spectrum. Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz Writer: Joseph L. Mankiewicz (screenplay), Mary Orr (story) Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck (20th Century Fox) Photography: Milton R. Krasner Music: Alfred Newman Cast: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill, Marilyn Monroe, Thelma Ritter, Hugh Marlowe, Gregory Ratoff, Barbara Bates, Walter Hampden, Randy Stuart, Craig Hill, Leland Harris, Barbara White The Rundown Introduction “The show must go on.”
Bette Davis was Hollywood royalty, so respected that she was named the very first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The film was fittingly released the same year as Sunset Blvd., where Billy Wilder cast just as cynical a lens on the film industry. Plot Summary Based on “The Wisdom of Eve,” a Cosmopolitan short story and radio play by Mary Orr, the film opens at an awards show honoring Broadway star Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) with theater’s highest honor, the Sarah Siddons Award.
Screenplay All About Casting. Critics' Picks: 'All About Eve' - NYTimes.com/video. Film Notes - All About Eve. All About Eve (American, 1950, 138 minutes, b&w, 35mm) Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz Cast: Bette Davis . . . . . . . . . . Margo Channing Anne Baxter . . . . . . . . . . Eve Harrington George Sanders . . . . . . . . . .Addison De Witt (Narrator) Celeste Holm . . . . . . . . . . The following film notes were prepared for the New York State Writers Institute by Kevin Jack Hagopian, Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Pennsylvania State University: Calling ALL ABOUT EVE "the best film ever made about the American theater," which it certainly is, may be putting this delicious, loving, bitter film into too tiny a frame.
For brilliant, irascible Joe Mankiewicz, ALL ABOUT EVE was one of a clutch of stylish and thoughtful films he wrote and directed for Twentieth Century-Fox in a remarkable six year period. ALL ABOUT EVE was based (as were many dramas in Hollywood's golden age) on a magazine story, Mary Orr's 1946 Cosmopolitan tale, "The Wisdom of Eve. " All About Eve: An Analysis | Metonymy. To: Professor Koschmann From: Rebecca G. Agee Date: 6 December 2009 All About Eve: An Analysis Writer/director Joseph L. All About Eve garnered six academy awards, including that of Best Picture of 1950.
In the following paper I will be using the theories and ideas proposed by Metz[2], Mulvey[3] and Doty[4] to conduct a critical analysis of All About Eve. Mulvey’s “male gaze” concept, from her seminal work “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,”[7] is a critical contribution to feminist theory. Working from within the realm of queer theory, Doty supports the notion of a “female gaze”[11]—one that establishes and emboldens (what appears to be) the forgotten power of the female spectator and the female protagonist. If, as Metz writes, “Thus film is like the mirror”[13]then All About Eve is a Lacanian funhouse of mirrors.
The first instance of mirror-presence is in Margo’s backstage dressing room, where she and her friends first meet and ‘get to know’ Eve. Seen.[18] [1] Mankiewicz, J. All About Eve: Screenwriter. Legendary producer, screenwriter, and director—you'd never guess that Joseph L. Mankiewicz's first film job was translating intertitles (those title cards used in silent movies to explain the action) from German into English. Hey, somebody had to do it. Mankiewicz was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on Feb. 11, 1909, where his father was a Professor of modern languages at a prep school there. Considering the snide remark about Wilkes-Barre in All About Eve (Bill calls it "backward"), we doubt he liked it very much. But a love of languages must have run in the family. After college, he worked in Berlin translating and writing movie subtitles. In 1929, 20-year-old Joe left Germany and graduated from translating to working with his older brother Herman, already a successful screenwriter who won an Oscar in 1941 for writing the screenplay for Citizen Kane.
Mankiewicz started out writing dialogue at Paramount, then moved on to producing at MGM. …It didn't work out. Studstudy: All About Eve (THEMES) The theme of identity is explored through the film. “All about Eve” demonstrates how one’s identity can be masked and kept hidden through the various versions of Eve. The audience is able to witness how quickly Eve transforms from a furious actress strangling her wig viciously to being calm and collected after hearing Addison’s knock on the door. The director uses the lighting and shadows to suggest to the audience of Eve being two-faced through bringing her from the shadow of the alley to a harsher light and then back in the shadow. Though Eve declares to Karen “I wish I'd never met him [Addison], I'd like him to be dead”, she shamelessly comments to Addison few minutes later of how “I confide in you and rely on you more than anyone I've ever known!”
And “I need you more than ever”. Addison’s exposure of Eve Harrington’s name actually being “Gertrude Slescynski” gives proof that one’s true identity can be kept hidden and covered by a fake identity. VCE All About Eve - Summary Notes. All About Eve ACMI booklet. All About Eve: views, values and critical scenes - English Works. Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1950’s melodrama All About Eve provides an insight into the qualities needed to succeed in the star-studded world of the theatre.
In particular, the main protagonists, Margo Channing and her ‘carbon copy’ Eve Harrington, are portrayed as flawed characters because of their single-minded pursuit of fame and fortune. Whilst Margo eventually recognizes the folly of her dreams in a 1950s socially-conservative chauvinistic world, Eve emerges triumphant but discredited due to her wily, manipulative streak. By drawing similarities between Eve and the ruthless and hard-hearted critic, Addison de Witt, Mankiewicz suggests that such characters are corrupted by fame. However, unlike Addison, whose views stem from a position of social advantage, Eve is personally and professionally diminished by the pursuit of fame. The melodrama provides an insight into the pretentious and ruthless world of the theatre. Eve cultivates her feminine charm and a façade of humility. Who is Margo? Key Quotes. Allabouteve1950 films. Film Study - All About Eve - English.