Starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter, it received 14 Oscar nominations, of which it won six statuettes thanks to the story of a young actress who resorts to seduction, betrayal, and lies to succeed on Broadway.
%20before%20'Titanic'%20and%20'La%20La%20Land.jpg "The record of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950) before 'Titanic' and 'La La Land")
The story of the film is engendered when the story The Wisdom of Eve, by Mary Orr, who was the secretary of the actress Elisabeth Bergner, falls into the hands of Mankiewicz, to which the director gives enough doses of irony, sharpness, and sarcasm to capture to the spectator, supplying him with small information pills so that, only in the final footage, he resolves the entire plot.
Young Eve (Anne Baxter), a budding actress eager to succeed on the stage, manages to enter a select group of stage actors and become the best friend of the renowned and veteran actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis), all a lady of the New York scene.
Her ambition and her envy end up transforming her to the point of betraying her peers in her rise to fame and success. She seduces, praises, absorbs, or dazzles, but she also despises and lashes out at anyone who hinders her goal.
Writers, directors, producers, and her own colleagues are in her sights. Only a sharp and cynical theater critic, Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), first intuits, and then discovers, what is hidden behind Eve's kind appearance.
The film, whose premiere in the United States marks its 70th anniversary this Tuesday, is so attractive both for what it shows the viewer on the big screen and for what it hides behind it.
%20before%20'Titanic'%20and%20'La%20La%20Land-1.jpg "The record of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950) before 'Titanic' and 'La La Land")
Proof of the latter is that the well-known American film writer Sam Staggs published Stripping Eve (“All about Eve”, 2000) twenty years ago with the explicit subtitle: “Everything that happened behind the scenes in the most poisonous movie of all time ”.
And what happened behind the scenes, as Staggs narrates in his book, and was left bare is, for example, the torrid romance that Bette Davis and Gary Merrill lived from the first days of filming -her boyfriend in the film-, who In the words of another of the film's protagonists, actress Celeste Holm, "since they fell in love, Bette didn't care if the rest of us were dead or alive."
The relationship between Bette Davis and Celeste Holm, who didn't even look at each other when they left the set, was also exposed, or George Sanders' wife, also an actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, forbade him to speak or look at Marilyn Monroe, who had a small role in the film as Miss Claudia, Addison DeWitt's mistress.
Once released, the film was a critical, public, and award success. Everyone liked it, from the most recalcitrant critics of the time to the ordinary spectator. All About Eve won the award for best film, Director, and Actress (Bette Davis) by the New York Critics Circle and the highest number of Oscar nominations in history, 14, only equaled so far by Titanic (1997). ) and La La Land (2016).
It is also the only film that has achieved full nominations for its four actresses, two for the main role (Davis and Anne Baxter) and many others for supporting roles (Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter). None got it.
In total, he won six golden statuettes, two of them for Joseph L. Mankiewicz (director and screenwriter), which established him as the best director of the moment, since the previous year he had won the same Oscars for A Letter to Three Wives.
