"All About Eve" vs "Sunset Boulevard"

Only because Sunset Boulevard is the correct answer to this question. All About Eve is an incredible performance by Bette Davis, and Boy George do I love that movie, but Sunset Boulevard is still better. Norma Desmond is a not-exactly-fictional character that could have been created by no one but Gloria Swanson, but it's still not a biography of Gloria Swanson; it's a performance. Her greatest. Her caricature of herself is one of the bravest things ever put on film, and sometimes one of the funniest. And to boot, the movie surrounding her is also great.

Me now says "All About Eve, but must I choose?"

All About Eve is a strange one, because by rights it should be too literary, too stagey, too much of its period, too in-jokey and not cinematic enough for me. But I've sat through it twice in the last few months and been totally engrossed each time, even though I've seen it often enough to hear the dialogue before the actors say it.

NETFLIX STAT

OTM. In addition to the cameos by Keaton, DeMille, and Hopper, Stroheim's incarnation as Max is great. It's the ultimate Hollywood Gothic tale, I'd say.

However, I love AAE. Davis is great. Ratoff and Baxter give some of their best performances. Even Gary Merrill and Hugh Marlowe can't drag this film down. Sander's Addison DeWitt is one of my alltime favorite characters, managing to be both arch and louche at the same time ("Sit down Eve. You're too short for that gesture.") and Monroe as Miss Caswell feels painfully true to life.

I have a suspicion that, in addition to their show-biz insider interest, both of these films appealed to a certain generation of women who may have felt that the war (work, rationing, men away or sometimes dead) had stolen their youth or at least some of its sparkling promise. Released in '50 when the backlash against women in the workplace was in full swing, and the cultural ideal was for women to be housewives, there's a wistfulness in both movies about lost time and squandered youth and a certain bitterness about the generational divide. Eve is a manipulative bitch and Joe Gillis is forced to choose between his contemporaries and Swanson.

even though I've seen it often enough to hear the dialogue before the actors say it.

Ha ha. OTM.

Both films are rather too clever for their own good (Sweet Smell of Success has the same problem). I give Eve the edge for its gallery of performances (no one's praised Celeste Holm much; she plays the tricky part of the goody-goody backstabbing best friend with vinegary wit), whereas Nancy Olson and whoever played Holden's boss at the studio are just disgraceful.

But I think In a Lonely Place might be the best American movie of '50.

-- gonna be a bright bright sunshiny day (fluxion2...), October 16th, 2006 11:56 PM.

The movie surrounding her is good, not quite great, which is its weakness. Swanson's performance is arguably top 5 of all time, but she sucks all the air out of the room, not to mention out of 5 other movies in adjoining theaters. All About Eve is more consistent, Davis is great but she's not burning a hole in the floor.

TS: Last Tango In Paris vs. Chinatown

Definitely Bogart's best performance, and (unconsciously) the best film about Scott Fitzgerald's tenure in Hollywood.

Swanson's performance is arguably top 5 of all time, but she sucks all the air out of the room

What about William Holden!? He probably should have won the Oscar.

Maybe I'm downplaying his performance? I can't recall anything notable about it - he's certainly serviceable in the conflicted noir-patsy role. Am I failing to give the straight guy a banana?

What a grudge match for best actress that year. Davis and Swanson may have canceled each other out.

Anne Baxter, All About Eve
Bette Davis, All About Eve
Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday
Eleanor Parker, Caged
Gloria Swanson, Sunset Boulevard

Holden, incidentally, also in Born Yesterday.

Network was the last time he used his snark, self-contempt, and intelligence to such moving ends.

What a grudge match for best actress that year. Davis and Swanson may have canceled each other out.

Baxter later admitted that she should have allowed to studio to promote her as a supporting actress. Davis' response: "Yeah, she should have."

Davis' scripts were apparently filled with copious notes mapping her character's every movement, and even rewriting dialogue. Her AAE script was practically blank.

haha True. But isn't that the point? She doesn't know how to do anything else. I mean, neither the character or the actress know how to do anything else.

Who can name another Swanson talkie besides Airport 1975?

The Odienator deconstructs AAE:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010/10/eve-of-destruction-60-years-of-all-about-eve/

You're too short for that gesture.

Celeste Holm has passed away

Very Academy of Dramatic Arts!

RIP Celeste. I knew her first for this (w/ Lesley Anne Warren):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27K6nlVEdSc

In the segment of "The Clock" I saw last night, Rex Harrison has a cruel/funny monologue about time, adapted by Mankiewicz from a play (and Jonson's Volpone) as The Honey Pot (1967).

"My agent didn't want me to do 'Eve.' Can you imagine?" Holm told the Associated Press in 1997. "He was afraid 'Miss Normal' would get caught between two cats, Bette Davis and [co-star] Anne Baxter."

Holm, in fact, didn't get along with the legendary Davis.

As Holm often recalled, when she walked on to the set the first day of shooting and said, "Good morning," Davis responded by saying, "Oh … good manners."

"I never spoke to her again — ever," Holm said.

good acting, ladies and gentleman

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/nyregion/love-and-inheritance-celeste-holms-family-feud.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

As Holm often recalled, when she walked on to the set the first day of shooting and said, "Good morning," Davis responded by saying, "Oh … good manners."

"I never spoke to her again — ever," Holm said.

Kind of side with Davis based on the reaction.

Based on others' accounts of Davis, it doesn't seem like an isolated incident.

C.H. does a mean hog call in this interview:

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/15/156810156/oklahoma-actress-celeste-holm-dies-at-95

and yeah, that legal fiasco is a wowzer. (tho hardly unique it seems)

I have yet to hear a story about Davis where she's doesn't come across as an insufferable bitch.

Anyway, RIP CH.

wow, sunset boulevard

like a nylon lemon peel

so I went to this queer experimental film fest yesterday and saw 3 shorts, made across 39 years, that spun off of AAE:

http://nyulocal.com/city/2013/11/18/local-went-there-mixnyc-film-festival-gowanus/

get the titles? Aged in Wood, Remembrance, Footsteps on the Ceiling?

I wish Sotosyn and Eric had been there.

The voice-over on SB numbs me after forty-five minutes. Stop talking and use the fucking camera.

depends what you're shopping for. SB is messier and that's compelling. I like AAE a lot too. xp

Mankiewicz basically used the camera to record actors talking.

Lots of images stick in Sunset Blvd! The chimp funeral, the leering shop assistant, Norma under the projector beam in her screening room...

I like SB too but it's a film requiring Gothic corn but stuck with a director who remains a writer at heart, and a writer whose cynicism is, as usual with cynics, a hard-boiled kind of sentimentality.

and Holden looks beautiful in it! you want an image that sticks? The camera following Holden pulling himself out of Norma's pool. I think Wilder himself had a hard-on.

"It was all very queer. But queerer things were yet to come..."

Wilder is not a cynic.

Mankiewicz is also a writer at heart for God's sake.

it's a film requiring Gothic corn

so, Andrew Lloyd Webber?

I can accept Mankiewicz's almost as limited range as a filmmaker because he's directing a film about The Thee-a-thuh. As you wrote, put the camera down and let the actors run with their awesome lines.

The one bit of visual eloquence I remember in AAE takes place in the third act: when Addison follows Eve into her hotel bedroom to yell at her some more while the camera discreetly lingers by the door. Tarantino must have seen it and approved.

You don't think the last shot of the movie was at least aiming for visual eloquence?

Sure! No doubt we can find others.

I wouldn't call the last shot eloquent so much as "apt" but that's a quibble.

we must mention that AAE was also turned into a Broadway musical (starring Lauren Bacall) circa 1970

el·o·quent
ˈeləkwənt/Submit
adjective
clearly expressing or indicating something.

Charles Strouse vs. Andrew Lloyd Webber

Nobody answer that.

Kinda intriguing that the musical's producers could only buy the "Eve" short story rights, until Fox changed their mind very late in the game. Applause! has no Addison DeWitt, but a producer (played by the newly dead Robert Mandan) and a gay hairdresser.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applause_(musical)

Charles Strouse vs. Andrew Lloyd Webber

― I Never Promised You A Hose Harden (Eric H.)

salted peanut vs cocktail

you're all braver people than me as i cannot choose between either of these movies

noted

https://variety.com/2019/legit/reviews/all-about-eve-review-gillian-anderson-lily-james-1203139714/

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6709-all-about-mankiewicz

my main problem with Eve is... Eve.

It takes way too long for these theatre sophistos to wake up to her agenda, Thelma Ritter aside.

Marilyn doesn't quite nail her "unhappy rabbits" line, but it's still a good one.

there's a CC supplement on "the real Eve" in which the fur really flies via audio tape

Often I ask if Anne Baxter plays Eve as a lousy actress who persuades people who wanted persuasion.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/sunset-blvd-star-nancy-olson-wilder-holden-why-she-walked-away-stardom-1290825

91!

I watched All About Eve for the first time last night and, alarmingly, did not like it very much. I'm not at all happy about this.

yeah examine your values

do better

Sunset Blvd is definitely the winner with the sound off.

(it's a MOVie after all)

yeah examine your values

haha!

In my defence, I did watch Sullivan's Travels for the first time tonight and was moved by it.

as in the late husband's portrait's moving eyes

you don't know me.

I'm not sure I've ever seen "All About Eve," tbh, for no particular reason, but it's been on my short list of movies to watch with my daughter. In this case I'm wondering what we will *both* think, in real time.

Sunset Blvd obv but I love the packed cast of Eve. Monroe is very funny. Though whenever I see George Sanders now I just think of Psychomania. He didn't have to die! They're both good!

i suspect film-y types are required by law to prefer sunset blvd, and it probably is the better movie, but i'd rather watch all about eve again, it's just a blast.
― J.D., Tuesday, October 17, 2006 2:24 AM (thirteen years ago)

i still feel this way!

I like morbs' post that "Sunset is the most fun vampire film of its era."

Time to watch ABE again, this rainy night in front of the fire.

all babout eve

Still hesitating b/w accepting the tension b/w Wilder-Brackett's sketch of Norma vs what we see on-screen.

New book about Sunset Boulevard looks like it might be interesting.

Would it be interesting as Sam Stagg's book?

Maybe. Still have to read that one.

The girl who comes in at the end of All About Eve to presumably be the new Eve Harrington was so good looking - Barbara Bates - and sadly she suffered from depression and took her own life in 1969
She would have been 100 one month ago..

she was gorgeous and obv played queer

I love SB unreservedly, even went to see it on the big screen for the 70th anniversary screening a few weeks ago. I’ve never seen AAE but this thread is making me want to.

Nice tidbit from Stephen Sondheim's Look, I Made A Hat when talking about the genesis of Passion:

At the time (around 1960) Bert Shevelove and I were toying with the notion of transforming Sunset Boulevard into a musical. We had actually sketched out the first few scenes, so when I found myself introduced to Wilder, the movie's director and co-author, I plunged right in. Blushingly, I allowed as how I was a co-author of West Side Story and Gypsy and now had an interest in adapating his movie. "But you can't make a musical out of Sunset Boulevard," he snapped. Startled and dismayed, I assumed that what he meant was that the rights were not available. I was wrong. He continued, "It has to be an opera. It's a story about a dethroned queen." Instantly, I recognized that he was right and relayed the story to Burt and we abandoned the project; I had no desire to write an opera, which is a form I resist.
Years later, shortly after Sweeney Todd, the notion came up again: Hal Prince wanted to produce and direct it, with a book by Hugh Wheeler, starring Angela Lansbury. Again, I balked. As the subsequent musical by other hands proved (for me, at least), Wilder was right.

Joe Mankiewicz woulda celebrated a birthday!

“Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke.”

lol

According to one often-told but later discredited anecdote,[37] actress Mae Murray, a contemporary of Swanson, was offended by the film and commented, "None of us floozies was that nuts."

^^ that quote for the title of the March U.S. politics thread