ALL ABOUT EVE

They say that talk is cheap but you wouldn't believe it listening to the pearls that drip from the mouths of the characters in this, the greatest of all the dialogue-driven comedies to have come out of Hollywood, (at the time it was nominated for a then record 14 Oscar nominations and won 6). It opens with a monologue that introduces all the leading players that is at once literate and cinematic at the same time and you know instantly that his is, above all, a movie to listen to. (What film-buff doesn't quote its screenplay ad-nauseum; gay men, at least according to "The Boys in the Band", are said to know the script by heart). And while drag queens the world over have always based their Bette Davis imitations on the character of Margo Channing, (Davis' greatest role and her greatest performance), the film is never merely camp. The acerbic wit that runs through the film always has a ring of truth to it; the characters, overblown as they are, are always recognizably human.

The acting alone is to die for. Can you believe that other actresses were once considered for the role of Margo? (Claudette Colbert?). Davis makes it her own not by acting Margo but by being Margo. I can't think of another role more indelibly suited to an actress than this. In a lesser film she might have swamped her co-stars but Mankiewicz, who wrote and directed, gives everyone equal credence.

Anne Baxter was never better than as the poisonous Eve; Celeste Holm, wonderful as the clipped, sophisticated Karen; George Sanders oozing epigrams as if from every pore as the screen's most famous critic, Addison DeWitt, (what a name!). These were career-best performances and in smaller parts, Thelma Ritter's cynical, wise-cracking Dresser, Birdie, and Marilyn Monroe's vacuous Miss Caswell, ('a graduate of the Copocobana school of dramatic art'), are just as unforgettable. In the seventies someone had the, not very bright, idea of turning it into a Broadway musical called 'Applause'. While not half-bad you still came away feeling you had seen a karaoke version of "All About Eve".