Fleapit revisited:All About Eve.

"If there's nothing else, there's applause. I've listened backstage to people applaud. It's like - like waves of love coming over the footlights and wrapping you up. Imagine, to know every night that different hundreds of people love you. They smile, their eyes shine, you've pleased them. They want you. You belong. Just that alone is worth anything" - Eve

I've watched the 1950 film All About Eve (directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, based on a story by Mary Orr, and shown recently on BBC2 and the iPlayer) a couple of times before and it's long been one of my favourite films. Black and white, dialogue heavy (very clever and witty dialogue too), and over two hours long, it's probably not for everyone but I love it.

Margo Channing (Bette Davis) is a huge Broadway star and she's been a star since she was four years old. But now she's forty years old (that's not even that old but these were different times) she's starting to feel insecure about ageing, her career, and her relationship with director Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill) who's a mere slip of a lad at 32.

Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) is one of Margo's biggest fans - she watches her play every single night - but she's ambitious herself and soon she uses Margo's friend Karen Richards (Celeste Holm) to ingratiate herself into Margo's social circle which includes Karen's husband Lloyd (Hugh Marlowe) - a successful playwright, producer Max Fabian (Gregory Ratoff), and Birdie Coonan (Thelma Ritter).

Slightly removed from this group, but in the same business, is the "venomous fishwife" of a theatre critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) and there's also a small appearance from a young Marilyn Monroe who hadn't become anything like world famous yet. Addison DeWitt and Karen Richards take turns narrating events while also being key players in a story with some very smart plot twists.

Despite her fame and wealth, Margo is forever moaning and never grateful. She calls her fans "juvenile delinquets" and "mental defectives" yet Eve wins her over with a sad back story and Margo starts to feel protective towards a younger woman whom she sees, initially, as a "lamb loose" in the "big stone jungle" of New York.

Margo's lover, Bill, wants to go to Hollywood and make films and Margo worries that once there he'll find a younger woman. Birdie, though, is suspicious of Eve's intentions and it's no spoiler to say that she is not wrong in that suspicion. Soon, Margo herself begins to turn against Eve but is Eve playing her, is Margo jealous or even paranoid, and how will it play out for both Eve and Margo?

Margo is self-destructive enough as it is but how deep does Eve's ambition go? How far would she go to advance her own prospects? This we will find out via a story that takes in a virtuoso understudy performance, a car mysteriously (or not) running out of gas, a spurned advance, a vitriolic newspaper review, the Sarah Siddons award ceremony (which wasn't a real thing back then but now, inspired by this film, is), some dramatic scallion chomping, and some good old fashioned blackmail.

It's an ensemble piece but it's headed up by at least four very good female performances (all four leading actresses were nominated for an Oscar) and it's a joy to revisit from time to time. An enjoyable satire on the cut throat world of show business and though the clothes and the interior decor may have dated, some of the attitudes on display and the harsh realities of that world sadly haven't. In seventy-four years!