[English] All About Eve

[Lyle Stebbing]

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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