All About Eve

"All playwrights should be dead for 300 years." If you can come up with a line like that, the script you are writing is probably one of the greatest scripts of the 20th century. And it is.   

There's a lot to be said for movies about theatre (from The Producers to Bullets Over Broadway to Venus In Fur, there's that carefree playfulness about them - besides the fact that they are all monstrously well-acted), but All About Eve is one of the absolute best. However tired you are and however much red wine you have consumed over the evening, it has so much to keep you wondering, and probably guessing. Bette Davis's irresistible stare and devil-may-care genius; George Sanders's stylish cynicism; Marilyn Monroe's unassuming appearance in three short scenes. 

Unlike the slightly overrated Sunset Boulevard from the same year, there is nothing contrived about All About Eve. It's too cynical to be contrived. I wonder what took me so long. 

The last shot is of course iconic, and properly chilling, but Joseph L. Mankiewicz's screenplay (adapted from Mary Orr's short story) is what did it for me. The complexity is staggering, and clearly there is nothing dated about this 1950 take on critics and celebrities. '1950' is irrelevant. A truly ageless film.