[English] All About Eve

[Skidmore, Kathy L]

Yes, "masterpiece" IS overstating it somewhat. However, it's worth reading some of the discussion threads on IMDB to look at the gender issues...particularly as Mankiewicz saw them. More good discussion starters there, too.

Sent from my iPad

On 10 Dec 2013, at 3:54 pm, "inhouse" <inhouse at mira.net<mailto:inhouse at mira.net>> wrote:

Goodness me Lyle; hope you feel better now.  But a seriously great way to start a discussion.


From: english-bounces at edulists.com.au<mailto:english-bounces at edulists.com.au> [mailto:english-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Lyle Stebbing
Sent: Tuesday, 10 December 2013 2:09 PM
To: VCE English Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: [English] All About Eve

I have been bemused by the fact that several students I tutor have been authoritatively told by their teachers that “All About Eve” is a “masterpiece”. I’m wondering on what criteria this judgement is based and to which canon of cinematic “masterpieces” the film belongs. Certainly it’s not included in “Sight and Sound’s” list of the best hundred films ever made. Is it, like other American films that have been on the list, given this status simply because it’s old, it’s in black and white and it’s spoken in English?  I can see that the film has historical interest as a reflection of its society’s prevalent ideology regarding gender. But its “critique” of Hollywood stardom, celebrity culture and competitiveness is really just a vehicle for the old argument that a career damages a woman’s femininity and natural role in life. It is specifically female careerism and competitiveness that the film targets. The central claim is this:  Funny business, a woman's career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. There's one career all females have in common - whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And, in the last analysis, nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed - and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a - a book full of clippings, but you're not a woman.  How tediously reactionary is that? Margo finds “real” success when she gives up her career and marries. Those who don’t see the light but pursue roles outside marriage will be punished, the film’s assures us. I can’t see that it has many other virtues, either. The film’s celebrated “wit” is very heavy-handed; the script is weighed down by “clever’ one-liners and allusions designed to show off its “cultured” credentials but which undermine its realism. The cleverness of a middlebrow studio film with pretensions to being highbrow. And its visuals – camera work and editing - are pedestrian and dull. Rather than a film as text this is a filmed screenplay. I can see that teachers might want students to study this film as a text that so obviously embodies and endorses the cultural biases and values of its time. But to insist on it being viewed as a masterpiece with “classic” status tends to preclude real analysis and discourages students’ from critiquing it.  It’s understandable that the film would be judged a classic inside Hollywood by its own self-regarding standards (and Oscars are hardly a sign of real worth) but it seems to me that some teachers encouraging students to equate cinema with the American film industry and themselves reinforcing Hollywood’s cultural domination.


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