Absolutely. Ritter is what makes Pickup on South Street an ownable for me.
All About Eve is possibly the most quotable movie ever. Until maybe Repo Man. Okay, and Gilda.
**
Margo:** Bill’s thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he’ll look it twenty years from now. I hate men.
**
Addison DeWitt: **What do you take me for? Eve Harrington: I don’t know that I’d take you for anything.
Margo Channing: Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.
Margo Channing: Everybody has a heart - except some people.
**
Lloyd Richards:** What makes you think either Miller or Sherwood would stand for the nonsense I take from you? You’d better stick to Beaumont and Fletcher! They’ve been dead for three hundred years! Margo Channing: ALL playwrights should be dead for three hundred years!
He makes a convincing arguement to the movie’s merits. I went from ambivalent about the movie to thinking it is actually quite good based on lissener’s arguments.
Though we complain today about the lack of good movie roles for older actresses, it’s worth remembering that when Bette Davis played the ungracefully aging and about-to-be replaced Margot Channing she was all of 42 years of age. (Maybe 41, depending on exactly when the movie was filmed.) That means she was the same age then as Robin Givens, Calista Flockheart, Monica Bellucci, Viveca A. Fox, and Annabella Sciorra among other past-their-prime-time players today.
Aged recluse Gloria Swanson, playing Norma Desmond in only her second movie role in 16 years, was an ancient 53. The crone was the same age then as the following wrinkled grandmother types are today: Pat Benatar, Mary Steenburgen, Janice Dickinson, Cyndi Lauper, Kathie Lee Gifford, and Amy Irving.
We’re much better today than in the Golden Age at allowing women to stay attractive longer and competing for parts at ages unimaginable to the moguls.
Almost a zombie, but I’m resurrecting to report that I did rent AAE (I wonder if astro did?) and - no suprise to anyone - it most certainly is well worth seeing (twice!) and deserves its classic status.
I was left with a couple of questions. I expect they do not have “real” answers, but I’m curious what our experts think:
First, about the narration: In between Karen’s opening flashback and Addison’s closing one, the story has to come from a mixture of Margo’s POV and Karen’s. Most of these POV shifts aren’t set up with voice-over, which is most notably absent when it comes to Margo. Is this intentional? Were the film-makers trying to keep Margo distant from the audience? As I recall, she never “talks” to the audience from the present. There are one or two brief VO lines which sounded like Margo’s voice to me - just before or during the party scene, IIRC - but at that point I was confused because I assumed it was still Karen’s flashback. Did I miss something, or were we just expected to follow along intuitively and not worry too much about who was “telling” the story?
Second:Why did Karen have to tell Eve about her scheme with the car? It seemed like Karen just wanted to give Margo a dose of humility by forcing her to skip the show. But if that’s the case, why not let Eve find out when everyone else did - when Margo didn’t show up? Since Karen made a point of calling Eve ahead of time, it seemed that Karen wanted Eve to take advantage of it. If so, that makes Karen’s deception a more serious betrayal of her friendship with Margo than I had thought.
Finally: Did Eve and Lloyd really have an affair? If not, what did Eve hope to achieve by leading Addison to believe this was true? If they did have an affair, are we to assume that Eve reluctantly broke it off as Addison commanded, and Karen accepted Lloyd back with open arms? And are we also to assume that Eve has become Addison’s blackmailed sex-slave, or is she merely a non-sexual comrade-in-slime?
I’m sure due to the production code, this last question had to remain ambiguous. But, story-wise, what makes the most sense?
It’s a 56 year old movie, I think we’re a little beyond spoiler tags…
Margo had VO narration in the scene where Eve moves in after Bill leaves for the coast. There really aren’t any other scenes that need to be set up by her narration.
She didn’t have to tell Eve, but since it was going to be Eve’s first performance she would understand enough about actresses to know she isn’t going to want to go on stage cold.
That Addison should want Eve at all strikes me as the height of absurdity, because Addison comes off as gay. I don’t think Eve ever had sex with Lloyd, because a) Eve is a lesbian and b) if she’d had sex with him she would’ve lost her “lost lamb in the forest” veneer. And technically she never said that she was having an affair with Lloyd or really even intimated it. She said that he was leaving Karen and that they were in love, not that they were having an affair.
Lloyd and Karen reconciled, hence Lloyd’s line at the Siddons banquet about “service above and beyond the call of whatever.” Addison used Eve as arm candy; what better woman to have on his arm than a woman of beauty and great talent?
At the end of the party, (1:02:45) when Karen and her hubby leave, the camera deliberately pans and zooms on a painting that hangs in Margo’s apartment. I can’t identify the painting or the meaning of the shot.
I’ve always wondered exactly what did happen between Lloyd and Eve. All we see is Eve’s previously unseen friend luring him over to their home with a “she’s so sick” phone call. The next thing, Eve is telling Addison that Lloyd came rushing over to see her in the middle of the night to declare his love–which is an obvious lie, given the scene we’ve just seen, so how much of what else she tells Addison is also a lie?
She does say distinctly that they didn’t have sex (quote from memory): “We sat and talked. I want a run-of-the-play contract.” i.e., she’s holding out for marriage. I tend to think this is true, but given Lloyd’s shamefacedness at the awards ceremony and the line you just quoted, I suspect something, if not actual sex, did happen.
BTW, in the short story this film is based upon, Lloyd does leave his wife for Eve.
Zebra: If someone else doesn’t answer your question beforehand, I’ll have a look at this scene on my DVD when I get home tonight. I think it might be the portrait of Sarah Siddons (the same one the awards statue is based on); I have noticed it on the wall in the stairwell in other shots during the party scene.
I dont’ think it is supposed to be her. There is a woman in the painting but there are two other figures as well. They almost look like a ‘devil’ and ‘angel’ on her shoulders telling her what to do. Anyway, why the shoot of her then?
I have the whole blowjob theory of Eve. After she gets turned down by Bill and Addsion overhears, Addison comes in and starts telling her a big lesson on life in the theater about blowing your own horn. Then they say blowing your horn about six hundred times and the next day they’re best friends. Then when Karen is talking to Lloyd later and he says Eve came over to apologize, Karen’s like, “yeah on her knees I’m sure.” But I don’t think Karen is the type to throw that type of accusation around if she didn’t know what she was talking about. She has a lot of class and I think she knows her husband. I think Karen’s right and it’s acutally the fact that he’s going to stab Margo over a blowjob that pisses her off more than the blowjob itself. I just get that vibe from the whole conversation. So then down the line when Eve’s telling Addison that she and Lloyd only talked the other night, I think the reason she’s so sure Lloyd’s going to leave Karen is that she blew him, but that she can’t tell Addison that because on some level she knows he’d laugh in her face and ruin her delusion. People like Eve lie to themselves first and that’s how they get away with such outrageous lies. She was screwing around with a brewery boss to get by before and she had no problem dropping her lamb act for Bill. She would have done whatever he wanted if he’d been game and he sure knew it and judged her for it. I don’t think Eve held out because I don’t think Eve succeeds on smarts as much as she succeeds on the pure outrageousness of her own self delusion. She thinks something insanely out of the question will happen just because she wants it to, and then it does because nobody can imagine a person could have the balls to expect it if it weren’t sensible to expect.
I don’t know what that painting is when they go downstairs but I always notice it and thought of it as a picture of a queen to make you think about two seconds ago when Margo tells Eve to stop treating her like the queen mother. I don’t know what the picture is but I think of it like the moment to think about how this is Margo’s last night being the supreme queen.
The painting is definitely a copy of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ portrait of Sarah Siddons as The Tragic Muse. Seen here. Sarah Siddons being the namesake of the (at the time) fictional award given Eve at the start of the film.
And for funsies, here’s Bette Davis en tableaux as the painting.
As to why the camera lingers on it, I don’t think it’s too terribly significant. It’s in the shot and the shot has to end, so the camera holds on it for a few seconds before the fadeout.
And on the topic, can anyone explain why the only truly clunky line of dialog is supposed to be funny? When Lloyd, Margo and Karen are driving to the station Lloyd skids on some ice. They admonish him to be careful and he says he has no intention of getting in an accident. Margo says “It isn’t important whether you do, we are wearing long underwear.” And everyone chuckles and I’m like buh?
As I understand it, the ladies would be embarrassed if there were an accident and they were discovered wearing long underwear by the ambulance attendants. Kind of like the way your mother (in the general sense) always said you should wear clear underwear in case you were in an accident.
Not LOL, okay, but I think that’s the point of the joke.
I’ve just rewatched the party scene, and it is indeed the Siddons portrait that the scene closes on. Maybe it’s just meant as a shout out to the Siddons Award ceremony that frames the film?
Heh. Fair enough. I figured the OP hadn’t seen it, so…
After what Otto and others have said above, I doubt that Eve and Addison had a sexual relationship. The “blowing your horn” talk was just Addison showing Eve that he recognizes and appreciates her ambition. And I don’t see what benefit either of them would have gotten from going that far. Whether Eve or Addison are gay I think is open to interpretation, although there doesn’t seem to be any other reason for that shot of Eve and her “roommate” walking up the stairs embracing. Eve certainly makes a great beard for Addison, and if they are not sexually involved, their “friendship of convenience” will be more stable. At the end of the movie, at least, it’s pretty clear they have no sexual interest in each other.
I thought that was pretty racy when I heard it - did the censors get whooshed? However, I don’t think Eve and Lloyd had done anything at this point. Karen is just trying to make a point that Eve’s intentions are not innocent, and Karen is furious that Lloyd is falling for Eve’s flattery.
I don’t think so. I agree with Miss Mapp that Eve’s tactic with Lloyd is much more subtle. Her brazen come-on to Bill didn’t work, and she can tell Lloyd is too good a guy to fall for a cheap lay. Lloyd won’t leave his wife for a hussy, but he will for a beautiful, talented, flattering, submissive woman who only wants to bring life to his brilliant work.
I do think Eve succeeded, to some extent, in getting Lloyd to fall for her, and probably planted the seed in Lloyd’s mind for him to leave Karen (thus the guilt he shows at the awards ceremony), but they wouldn’t have done anything seriously sexual at this point. Maybe kissing.
I think the joke about having an accident and long underwear is supposed to be if you get startled and pee yourself or whatever you happen to do when you get startled, that’s worse in long underwear. It seemed logical to me but when I stop to analyse it I don’t know why that would be worse than in normal underwear.
I didn’t think Addison gave Eve a lesson on blowjobs on himself or anything. I don’t think they would have had any kind of sex when they were getting along but I don’t really see him as gay, either. I just think of him telling her to be more low with men as an extension of how he tells her to stop pretending to be more modest. A lot of the reason I think Eve did stuff with Lloyd is my image of Lloyd. I don’t really see him as the type to fall for Eve in a marrying way. I see him as falling for her in a purely mistress way. I think he loves Karen most. He’s a real blank slate though. I thought he mostly looks dumb. But not dumb enough to leave Karen.
I have to admit I love Addison most and I don’t care if that makes me a bad person. I like him more every time I see the movie. I like to think about how much he must have assumed Eve was aware of all along. Like she should have known he knew the truth of her past. He’s the one who has the biggest fall when he realizes she’s nuts. However I speculate about him I guess I think he has too many issues for sex and that what he wants from Eve is an equal and sex would screw that all up. But I kind of think he would like it if she would succeed using sex against Lloyd, but hates that she’s convinced herself of marriage to Lloyd because it’s stupid and even if it were likely, it would be the end of all fun so she’s stupid to want it.
