:All About Eve:
Now here’s a classic I truly did enjoy. I watched All About Eve in my teens one night with my mom but I remembered very little of it beyond Bette Davis’s famous line: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night” as she gets bombed during a birthday party she’s throwing for her boyfriend and let’s all of her diva angst hang out, effectively making a room full of people (including Marilyn Monroe in her first significant role) as miserable as she is. And it is so much fun to watch.
Bette Davis was just wonderful in this film, playing an aging Broadway star who is already self-conscious about the very real limitations that older female stars are faced with, even today, and who is then ruthlessly manipulated by a much younger siccophantic ingenue who seeks to displace her both in her personal and public lives.
Interestingly, Davis married co-star Gary Merrill after they each left their current spouses and divorced him 10 years later saying that they had each made the mistake of marrying the other person’s character from All About Eve and not each other.
David missed out on the Best Actress Oscar because in an instance of life imitating art, co-star Anne Baxter insisted on being nominated in the Best Actress category up against Davis instead of as Best supporting actress. The votes were split and a third party one. Such a shame.
This is a film I would watch again, it has real staying power. It’s sexy, dramatic, powerful, and beautifully acted by a powerhouse cast. I can easily see how it would win awards as a Top Film in any type of listing where film quality is the deciding factor and if you’re looking for a good night tucked into your favorite chair with a glass of wine and a bowl of popcorn I recommend this one.
Wikipedia reports that: Praised by critics at the time of its release, All About Eve was nominated for 14 Academy Awards (a feat unmatched until the 1997 film Titanic) and won six, including Best Picture. As of 2015[update], All About Eve is still the only film in Oscar history to receive four female acting nominations (Davis and Baxter as Best Actress, Holm and Ritter as Best Supporting Actress). All About Eve was selected in 1990 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry and was among the first 50 films to be registered. All About Eve appeared at #16 on AFI‘s 1998 list of the 100 best American films.[5]
:Sunset Boulevard:
William Holden and Gloria Swanson star in this film noire classic that filsmite.org propositions for best picture of 1950.
Betsie watched this one with me and caught that the costume designer was Edith Head, a leader in that field. Betsie was a seamstress before she became a librarian and she still sews prolifically. We enjoyed some of the excellent costuming.
It was a good movie, with great plot twists and acting that I both genuinely enjoyed and found genuinely creepy. But I still wouldn’t re-watch it and that’s still my personal “tell.” It was good but in a head to head contest, in my opinion Eve is the winner even though “Sunset Boulevard” edged it out in the AFI’s Top 100 list.
Also, it doesn’t fall into a “category” that particularly appeals to me – it’s not a drama, not suspense, not action, it’s “film noire.” There was definitely a story line and a “feeling” to the movie, but it didn’t have so much going for it that I would have heaped all the accolades on it that Wikipedia so concisely bestows upon it. It’s about Hollywood and the life of stars so I have to wonder if it’s done so well on these lists because a lot of the people making the decisions about “the best” movies are movie-type people and want to see themselves reflected in the listings. The same could be said about Eve but I think that movie does a better job of standing on its own.
Wikipedia reports that: Praised by many critics when first released, Sunset Boulevard was nominated for eleven Academy Awards (including nominations in all four acting categories) and won three. It is widely accepted as a classic, often cited as one of the greatest films of American cinema. Deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the U.S. Library of Congress in 1989, Sunset Boulevard was included in the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 1998, it was ranked number twelve on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 best American films of the 20th century, and in 2007 it was 16th on their 10th Anniversary list.
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