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Actress Davis, who submits to deliberately harsh lighting, unflattering camera angles and messy makeup, gives the picture's showiest role what may well be the best performance of her career. A thoroughly convincing theatrical first lady given to spats, rages and drunken maunderings, she commands sympathy and even admiration for a character whom the audience is prepared to hate. The sensitively modulated playing of Anne Baxter, one of Hollywood's most versatile performers, makes Eve everything she should be, counts heavily in the movie's effectiveness. Actress Holm does another expert job, Thelma Ritter is a delight as a sour theatrical maid and Gregory Ratoff plays a harassed, muddling producer as if he were born to the part.
The picture is less fortunate in its leading male characters, both in writing and performance, except for the drama critic, played to cruel perfection by George Sanders. Mankiewicz has plastered him with several labels that suggest Drama Critic George Jean Nathan (e.g., fur collar, cigarette holder, lordly disdain for Hollywood), but he has taken the precaution of naming Nathan in the dialogue to keep the similarity purely coincidental. The role is a witheringly vicious portrait of a clever snob, fully as poisonous as Eve and even deadlier.
Whether or not it lives up to Producer Zanuck's award-winning hopes—or really prompts exhibitors to shut their doors to latecoming customers—All About Eve should please moviegoers who value the kind of grownup, pithy entertainment all too seldom found in U.S. films.
* Whom Actress Davis met for the first time during the shooting of All About Eve, married after the picture was finished.