All About Eve

 Last night BBC4 showed the classic 1950 movie All About Eve. It's a film I've seen before – at least twice, I think – and each time I was duly impressed, but it was only last night that I realised just what an amazing all-round masterpiece it is. The performances of all three principals – Bette Davis as ageing Broadway star Margo Channing, George Sanders as kingpin theatre critic Addison deWitt, and Anne Baxter as Margo Channing's scheming nemesis – are each perfect in every detail. Much of the acting is done by Bette Davis's and Anne Baxter's wonderfully expressive eyes, registering every tiny nuance of emotion. George Sanders's method doesn't make much use of the eyes, of course, but his is a powerhouse performance, a perfect blend of suave urbanity and veiled menace. And the script – well, the script (by the director Joseph Mankiewicz) is so good, so tightly written and so pitch-perfect, it would have made a fine film even without acting of this calibre. 
  As is often the case with films that seem so perfectly cast that they could never have been otherwise, All About Eve could have looked very different. The role of Margo Channing, so perfect for Bette Davis, was originally intended for Susan Hayward, and among others considered for the role were Marlene Dietrich, Gertrude Lawrence, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford and Ingrid Bergman. The part was actually given to Claudette Colbert, but she had to pull out because of an injury – and only then did the finger of fate finally swing round to Bette Davis. Similarly, Anne Baxter was only given the role of Eve after the first choice, Jeanne Crain, fell inopportunely pregnant. Making a film, even a masterpiece, is a tortuous process, and no one really knows what the end result will be until it's up there on the screen. 
  All About Eve was released in 1950 (and won a clutch of well deserved awards, including six Oscars). That same year also saw the release of another classic film about an ageing actress, Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard – and at least one other masterpiece, Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. It was quite a year...