United States, 1950
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
With Anne Baxter (Eve Harrington), George Sanders (Addison DeWitt), Bette Davis (Margo Channing), Gary Merrill (Bill Simpson), Celeste Holm (Karen Richards), Hugh Marlowe (Lloyds Richards), Thelma Ritter (Birdie Coonan), Barbara Bates (Phoebe)
Coming out of the shadows, quite literally as the camera shots her for the first time standing against a door in poorly-lit passage leading to the back facade of a New York theater after an evening performance, Eve Harrington proves swiftly apt at winning the trust of people who would never have noticed her in the first place, so shy, wary, and polite she looks, scared of disturbing and boring folks, even if she seems eager to help them. So that evening she manages to get noticed by an elegant woman walking to the door leading to the theater’s backstage rooms – but then the lady has no choice as Eve Harrington has moved to hail her in the first place, an important point to keep in mind.
Yet Eve is reluctant to accept the woman’s offer to meet the thespian she admires so much that she goes to this theater to watch her in her new play every evening. Then she demurely stands by as introductions are made and the actress cleans off her face of the stage make-up and asks questions.
Eve eventually confides about her life – and it is moving, moving enough to mesmerize her listeners and to impress them. The play of shots and reverse shots, the close-ups on the faces shifting from one expression to another as Eve simply but brilliantly tells her narrative, the changes in the voices do not just convey that sense of getting spellbound, they uncannily suggest this intimate, heartfelt confession is also a performance put on by a confident person keen on wowing wow jaded folks – actress Anne Baxter’s performance as Eve would be all along a masterful and perceptive exploration of an outward and advertised modesty belying deeper and more sinister needs, a modesty that charms even as it bizarrely lacks an edge of diffidence and is far from preventing outbursts of quite different, disturbing emotions, a modesty that is merely a beguiling show of emotion engineered to have the greatest effect.
But as her story starts, Eve’s object of admiration, Margot Channing, is so moved that she decides to help the girl. Change is remarkably quick and deep: just one cut after this long evening when Eve entered her life the camera is busy showing Eve working as a personal assistant always available, active, and astute for the actress. She seems the faultless and highly dependable person many would love to have. The star is wowed, and so are her best friends, playwright Lloyds Richards his wife and adviser Karen, the woman Eve dared to speak to at the beginning. However, Margot’s old helper, the grumpy woman always toiling at her home and fixing details in the dressing rooms, Birdie Coonan, is far less enthusiastic, but her words carry little weight in the face of Eve’s discreet efficiency and unassuming behaviors.
But when Eve places a long-distance call in the middle of the night to allow a talk between Margot and her lover, and stage director, Bill Simpson, who is on a tour in Hollywood, without noticing her boss and out of a zeal that meddles too much in the actress’ intimacy, a crack-up appears. Margot being the obstreperous and suspicious person she is, it soon becomes a chasm during an unforgettable glitzy party turning awry. But Eve has once again made another plea to Karen, an innocent one: as Margot’s understudy must take a leave for her pregnancy and as Eve knows so well the play, why not hire her as the new understudy? Things get out of control, as Eve manages to take advantage of the flaws of her boss and her knowledge of her activities, both stage and off. When Karen plays a joke on Eve to punish her of her arrogance, stranding the actress on a country road, making her miss the train that would have brought her back to New York in time for the performance she was due to play, Eve is of course ready to stand in.
The rave reviews her performance elicits puts an end to her relationship with Margot and heralds a dubious partnership with theater critic Addison DeWitt. It is plain now to the characters and the audience that Eve has only puts on a performance throughout the story: she has been, as rightly noted by Birdie, just studying Margot in the hope of mimicking her. Now she reveals how a ruthless player she actually is; however, she finds that Addison is even more brutal and cunning; her success comes with an increasingly bitter taste.
The film is the meticulous and clever portrait of a social climber, relying on a mix of hypocrisy, chutzpah, stunning patience, and cold-blooded calculations to impose herself upon the milieu she is targeting. Eve comes up first as an intriguing character that moves but increasingly the odd feeling her first meeting with Margot and her clan left proves right. Baxter’s voice and attitudes carefully evolve to reveal how fake Eve is and makes her ugly nature chillingly clear – her talk in a restaurant’s restroom with Karen is a shocking revelation, although not entirely surprising at this point, as she confidently tears off her mask and practically blackmail her interlocutor. If the first part of the narrative turned her into a perfect illustration of the verbal phrase “to ingratiate oneself into others’ favors”, the second part elevates her as an epitome of careerism.
But the dialogue she has later with Addison leads her to a dead end: for the first time since the beginning, she cannot resist the assault of someone else; she cannot stand up, pace, or just sit to put on her favorite performances. Instead the camera relentlessly captures her lying on a bed, crying and yelling. As falls go, this is a cruel one, without any compassionate or redemptive touch, The utter wickedness and faultless lucidity of Addison would prevent it, articulating the depressing moral truth about Eve (after his tirade gave the audience all the missing pieces about the real past of the nascent star) – although it is clear, and has always been, she is a gifted actress. But talent is here woefully dissociated from honesty and fairness.
For all her sarcastic words, unforgiving epigrams, histrionic outbursts, and smug behaviors, her bigger-than-life persona, her amazing flaws, in spite of the forceful and abrasive moments of the performance by Bette Davis that would define for many the character, Margot Channing is a truly fragile and poignant character. Hers is not just the tale of a person cheated by another but of an aging actress and woman, unsure of what comes next and whether love is still part of the bargain. Her famously ferocious tirade against Lloyds after Eve managed to take part in the audition of a young actress, who is dismissed in favor of Eve, is followed up by another quarrel with Bill, though it is run on a far more nuanced and complicated gamut of acting; the long, anger-filled sequence on the stage ends up with a rarity in the film’s camerawork: after Bill leaves the place, enraged by Margot’s stubborn fears and gripes, she collapses on a bed; her sorrow is captured in a long shot taken at a very high angle, fully using the depth of field that takes up all the stage. The art of Davis, whose talent wonderfully extends to expressing with a few gestures and a carefully soft, raspy voice all the deeply stirring emotions grabbing her character, meets the art of director Joseph L. Mankiewicz: the image and the moment powerfully convey the fear and the pain shaping Margot’s solitude.
The rivalry Eve imposed on her after manipulating her feelings is a horrid experience but it turns out to be a maieutics of sorts. Slowly the uncontrollable and unassailable character learns to cope with unpalatable truths and unsatisfactory choices, and the scathing attacks of DeWitt as he tries to bolster Eve’s beginnings on the stage are no small contribution – remarkably, that incident leads to another deeply moving feat of camerawork, as Bill rushes at Margot’s home to console her; once again, the camera moves back from the actress and the depth of field is used to magnify the sentiments playing on the set, here the love of Bill for Margot. What Eve cannot imagine happens: Margot makes the choice of changing her career and marrying Bill; she embraces maturity, no longer seeks to compete with any actress and vows to be a woman in full, that is in love and in charge of household. There is a time for ambition and there is a time for life.
This portrait of the theater world is unforgiving from the start, as the film opens on a pompous professional ceremony that would give Eve a much-coveted prize: it brings to mind the solemn and smug ways of many other public accolades, like the Oscar night, and emphasize how artists can be blind to the shortcomings of a seemingly gifted colleague (Eve’s story is actually a long flashback narrated while the ceremony goes on by Addison, who is responsible for her success story, and Karen, who is responsible for letting her enter the show business at the beginning). The final images are even more scathing and merciless: they capture another young woman, Phoebe, who seems to ingratiate herself into Eve’s favors, a repetition of Eve’s story but now to her detriment. When Phoebe is cheeky enough to try stealthily on her body the evening coat of Eve and admires herself in the mirror, her image is multiplied in a dizzying, irrational way, a symbol of a never-ending fight for fame and a never-ending flow of would-be actresses and actors to Hollywood and Broadway while the power of television and mass-media starts to arise. This is the final, witty, visual flourish of a highly sophisticated mix of drama and comedy offering great lines and awesome scenes showcasing an outstanding cast as well as smart shot compositions and a smooth editing.