"Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!" -Margo Channing, All About Eve (1950)

1950 All About Eve

I love this movie and watch it periodically.

Bill and Margo.

This is Bette Davis at her finest (except for maybe Dark Victory) as fascinating, larger than life Margo Channing -a theater megastar struggling with the difficulties inherent in being an aging actress.  She struggles with the fact that, while extremely successful, and in a happy relationship with her director (their real life relationship translated into great on-screen chemistry), she is no longer the young ingenue that she was.  Her confidence is shaken by this, and she takes it out on those closest to her, raging and moping in turn: "Infants behave the way I do, you know. They carry on and misbehave - they'd get drunk if they knew how - when they can't have what they want, when they feel unwanted or insecure or unloved."

Margo worries that her career will flounder, and that her boyfriend, Bill, will lose interest in her, despite his reassurances.  It is especially sore for her because Bill is eight years younger than her: "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."

She is briefly distracted and consoled by the adulation a young woman, Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), a professed uber-fan of Margo, who wants nothing more than to wait on her hand and foot and idolize her.  Before too long, however, Margo begins to notice that Eve is not quite what she seems.  With great subtlety, Eve begins edging her way into Margo's life (her career, her friends, and her relationship), and her conniving nature becomes increasingly apparent.  Birdie, Margo's assistant, notices strange behavior in Eve: "[It's] like... like she's studying you, like you was a play or a book or a set of blueprints - how you walk, talk, eat, think, sleep... "  At first, all the other characters think Margo is being paranoid, and that this is just another sign of her insecurities.

Only the devious journalist, Addison DeWiitt, fully recognizes Eve's true character, and takes her under his wing: "That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability. But that in itself is probably the reason: You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also our contempt for humanity and inability to love and be loved, insatiable ambition, and talent. We deserve each other."

Increasingly, however, as Eve begins to grow bolder in her voracious appetite for fame, Margo's friends realize that Margo may have been right.

My favorite part is when Eve finally makes a move for Bill, and he smoothly rejects her, stating "I'm still in love with Margo.  Haven't you heard?"  When Eve persists, he casually tells her: "Don't cry. Just score it as an incomplete forward pass."

"Nice speech, Eve. But I
wouldn't worry too much
about your heart. You can
always put that award
where your heart ought to be."
-Margo to Eve
(with Addison DeWitt)

The movie is full of intrigue and twists, the characters are engaging, and the ending is satisfying, when the appearance of a new character hints that things are about to come full circle.

Just writing this makes me want to pull it out of the shelf and watch it again.