All about Eve - a typical melodrama?
.... I don’t want it to come after me.” Then there is Lloyd Richards, the husband of Karen and a playwright and author of Margo’s current hit. It is only little to say about him apart from that he is loyal to Eve nearly until the end and does not care much about his relationship to his wife. There is a cynical critic Addison DeWitt who has a part of an impartial obserever but is important not only because he tells the audience like an omniscient/principal narrator the most important things about Eve but because it is him who sees through Eve from the beginning, Addisson DeWitt is witty and self-confident but he is also vulnerable because when Eve laughs about him, he becomes very angry and slaps her imloring her never to laugh at him again. He is also the only one who stands by her although he knows all the truth about her. All these characters mentioned above are rather important for the film. They all are associated with Eve and they all are telling the story about Eve from their point of view. 3. Eve’s relationship with others Eve – Margo: The relationship between these two people is quite difficult, probably the most difficult relationship in the movie apart from that of Eve and Addison DeWitt. In the beginning Eve seems to worship Margo Channing. When she first meets her, Eve behaves as if she were Margo’s big fan. After hearing Eve’s story, Margo sees how lovely and naïve Eve is and gives her a job as her confidential. Margo has “protective” feelings for Eve. Perhaps Eve reminds her of herself when she was young or it is because she has no own children. Eve does everything for her, works “night and day” and takes it upon herself to do even things that she is not meant for. For instance, she seems to know everything about everyone and even organizes Bill’s birthday party. First, Margo is pleased but gradually she realizes that there is more than just a simple admiration and that Eve, possibly, is envious of her career. She catches Eve while she is admiring herself in the mirrow with Margo’s stage costume which Eve is carrying like an award. Then Margo notices (not without the help of her houskeeper Birdie (Thelma Ritter)) that Eve is studying her and is obsessed with her. Birdie, who seems to see through Eve, tells Margo how Eve does all these: “I tell you how, like, like she is studyin’ you, like you was a play or a book or a set of blueprints. How you walk, talk, eat, think, sleep.” Slowly, Margo begins to hate Eve and all her positive feelings towards Eve vanish and are replaced by hostility and jealousy. It goes so far that she wants to get rid of Eve by trying to convince Max Fabian (Gregory Ratoff), the producer of the play, to give Eve a job. Eve does not change her attitude towards Margo, at least not obviously. Although she becomes Margo’s understudy and later famous and although she reveals her true face, she never publically shows how she really thinks about Margo. And only her deeds, like the attempt to seduce Bill, speak against her. Eve-Karen: Karen is the first person who takes Eve to her heart, who does not see for a long time how Eve really is and who tries to help her as much as she can. Karen is taken by Eve’s charm, shyness, helplessness and loveliness. She sympathizes with Eve from the beginning and although Margo is her friend she does a lot to help Eve to achieve her aim, but only until Eve shows her true colours. With some tricks Karen even helps Eve to become Margo’s understudy (what is quite difficult because Margo never needs an understudy. “Margo just doesn’t miss performances. If she can walk, crawl or roll she plays.”) and than create the circumstances for her where Eve has the possibility to give a performance. Although Karen does so not to annoy Margo but to help Eve, because she thinks this is all a “harmless joke”, she is repaid as Eve tries to “steal” her husband. She is bitterly disappointed as Eve tries to blackmail her in the ladies room. Now she sees Eve’s true face, but unfortunately she cannot undo what she has done. Later she suffers from her guilty conscience. Eve, first, seems to like Karen but in the end it is clear that she only wants to take advantage of her and to exploit her like she does with everyone else. First, she tries to manipulate Karen (succesfully, as we can see from the “harmless joke”) and then she asks her to convince Lloyd that she should play Cora in his new play (a part, actually, meant for Margo) and after Karen disapprove of this she threatens her. After all she tries to destroy Karen’s marriage and to take her husband away. Eve and Bill: When Bill meets Eve in the beginning, he does not notice her at all and ignores her. Thus he does not keep her name (“…this what’s-her-name…”). But later he is also taken by her and tries to defend her during Margo’s outbursts. He always refers to her as to “a kid” and only after Eve’s attempt to seduce him and then Eve’s interview where she exposes Margo, Bill also seems to see who Eve really is. Eve and Lloyd: As everybody Lloyd is carried away by Eve and her charm. This remains nearly until the end, even after the others see the truth about Eve. Lloyd works together with Eve, is always on her side and and she gets him to do whatever she wants or asks him for whether it is during the night or at any other possible moment. Eve and Addison DeWitt: The relationship between Eve and Addison DeWitt seems to be very complicated. Addison is the only one who knows exactly what is going on from the start though he does not show it directly. He tries to question Eve and to collect as much information as he can before he confronts Eve with all the facts. For examle, after Eve’s first superb performance Addison visits Eve in her dressing room and asks her questions about the story she has told everybody about herself in the beginning. He asks her about her past, her husband, the Shubert Theater in San Francisco where she allegedly first met Margo, and although Eve is very evasive, the viewer has a feeling for Addison knows much more than he says. And only later he confronts Eve with all he knows about her starting with her true name (Getrude Sleczynski) to the fact that there is no Shubert Theater in San Francisco ect. But inspite of all this Addison stands by her and continues to support her. He thinks: “We deserve each other”. Maybe he really loves her because sometimes knowing everything about a person helps to understand her, and moreover Addison probably discovers their resemblance. Eve also needs Addison because he is very influential and can help her. Besides that he is the only one who knowing the truth stands by her. He is her only friend and she needs his support and his connections. Moreover, he could very easily harm her and her reputation with all his knowledge about her. He can deprive her of everything she has obtained and Eve would never allow of this. 4. Dealing with social problems/ Woman’s Career resp. Position “All About Eve” deals with such problems as the world of theater, acknowledgement, woman’s position, career and personal relationships. The world of theater is a kind of frame of the story, maybe not the main problem but the background of the plot. The movie shows that the world of theater is not so perfect, so glorious, inaccessible and unimpeachable as it seems. This domain is also overshadowed with intrigues, jealousy, envy and bitter fights. The best example is Eve who is willing to do eveything for fame and glory. For many people theater is something for that they would do or sacrifice everything. A protégé of Addison DeWitt and a so-called actress Miss Casswell (Marilyn Monroe) comments on sable which Birdie carries on her arms while passing by: “Now there’s something a girl could make sacrifices for” and she certainly means much more than just this sable. Already in the beginning Bill Sampson warns Eve for theater and tells her how it really looks like: “Listen junior. And learn. Want to know what the theater is? A flea circus. Also opera. Also rodeos, carnivals, ballets, Indian tribal dances, Punch and Judy, a one-man band - all theater. (…) It may not be your theater, but it’s theater for somebody, somewhere… It’s just that there is so much bourgeois in this ivory green room they call the theater. Sometimes it gets up around my chin.” Later Bill explains to Eve what is necessary to be a good actor or actress. Such a person must work really hard and be an ordinary one because it means “to give so much for almost always so little.” Eve is willing to do everything because this “little” as Bill calls it is all she has ever dreamt of: “So little. So little did you say? Why, if there's nothing else, there's applause. I've listened backstage to people applaud. It's like, like waves of love coming over the footlights and wrapping you up. Imagine. To know, every night, that different hundreds of people love you. They smile, and their eyes shine. You've pleased them. They want you. You belong. Just that alone is worth anything.” And later when Karen becomes clear what a kind of person Eve really is, she asks her if she would do all these things “just for a part in a play” whereupon Eve replies: “I would do much more for a part that good” and Karen and the audience can finally see Eve’s true face without guessing what a kind of person she really is and how strong her wish to become famous really is. Theater is like a swamp that stucks in and obstructs the view to more essential things. DeWitt also comments on the “theatre folk”: “We’re a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theatre folk. We are the original displaced personalities.” The next important point is woman’s position and career. We can see two women who are striving for a career: one, younger woman, Eve, who as mentioned above would stop at nothing to reach her aim and another older woman, Margo, who has long since reached the same goal and who has become a famous and well-known actress. Maybe once Margo was like Eve and wanted to do everything for a career. Probably that’s why she has no children and no husband with 40 years. For Margo acting is or maybe has become through the years the only way to fill out the emptiness in her life and she refers to acting as to something that she has done “just because she had nothing to do with her nights”. And after entrusting herself to Karen it is obvious that all she really wants is a husband and a family. While talking about woman’s career the viewer can see that Margo has realized what is the most essential thing in the life of a woman: “Funny business, a woman's career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. There's one career all females have in common - whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And, in the last analysis, nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed - and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a - a book full of clippings, but you're not a woman. Slow curtain. The End.” Furthermore the movie deals with a problem of growing old, especially for an actress who has always been beloved and admired. It is very difficult for Margo to realize that she cannot be a star forever and that there is someone who is younger than she, who becomes also so beloved and who “replaces” her. Margo certainly suffers from her “paranoic insecurity” as Bill calls it. During the film we see a lot of moments where Margo has to fight with herself and has a lot of outburst because of this, starting from her attacks on Eve in the course of Bill’s birthday party to her revelation to Karen in the car where she admits that she was unjust to Eve and that she is jealous of Eve because she is young, feminine ect. She is afraid to become old and unattractive to Bill (what she tells Lloyd in the kitchen at the same party), she is afraid to lose him what is obvious from the scene on the railway station in the beginning where she anxiously asks Bill if she is going to lose him. And although Bill assure her that she is wonderful and he loves her, she only calms down after they both decide to marry. But then she seems to become peaceful and contented. 5. Equipment (music, prospects, diologues, symbols) The music (by Alfred Newman) does not play an important part in the film. It is used not in all but in some important moments like in the beginning and the end (at the banquet in honour of Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement) or while Eve is telling her sad story and during Bills birthday party (e.g. when Margo asks to play the same sad music again and again what reveals her inner feelings although the occasion is a happy one). A peacful music can also be heard during an argument between Margo and Karen at the same party as a contrast to the unpleasant scene. Most action are taking place inside closed room. Very seldom the characters are shown outside and if they are then only for a short moment. But this is not very important. More significant are the dialogues and the symbolic background. The dialogues play the most important role, probably even more than gestures and mimic. They have this unforgettable power that gets under one’s skin and touches the depth of the soul. There are phrases that can be used in our everyday-life like “Fasten your seat belts- it’s going to be a bumpy night” and statements that could be correct for all of us. The taking of the characters is mostly big (close-up) to show their faces and therefore their feelings more clearly. Moreover the movie is full of symbols. For instance, in the beginning the Sarah Siddons Award is shown in front of blooming flowers. This could be a hint to a “blooming” career of an actress and at the same time we should not forget that all flowers wither like the career what we are actually shown in the end. A lot of scenes are taking place on the stairs and this could be a possible symbol for ...