Joseph L. Mankiewicz
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The film pays loving tribute to actresses and that genre of movies familiarly called "women's films" and Almodovar has merged three -- Bette Davis in "All About Eve," Gena Rowlands in "Opening Night" and Romy Schneider in "L'important c'est d'aimer" -- into a buoyant homage to the female sex, "women who act" and "actresses who have played actresses."
Paying homage to cinema legends with a script that overtly references "All About Eve" and "A Streetcar Named Desire," the director has created similarly memorable heroines of his own.
As she gradually regains the will to live through her involvement with the lives of others (including her son's favourite stage diva Paredes), Almodóvar piles on the coincidences, contrivances and twists so that the film succeeds best as a beautifully crafted, semi-ironic melodrama (it cleverly alludes to - and integrates - All About Eve, Streetcar..., Capote, etc).
At the movie’s start, Manuela and Esteban watch All About Eve together on television.
I guess it represents a significant advance in his career, giving us a kinder, gentler, more soulful Almodovar who makes a lot more references than usual to other movies: All About Eve and A Streetcar Named Desire especially, but also (in terms of the story's point of departure) John Cassavetes's Opening Night.
He is watching TV with her and the movie "All About Eve" is on, which encourages him to write in his pad "All About My Mother."
Knives Out (2019)
Directed by Rian Johnson
influenced by Sleuth (1972)
Plot Characters Visuals Themes
Occasionally, a high-concept take on the whodunit will make a splash, as in Joseph L Mankiewicz’s adaptation of the cat-and-mouse two-hander Sleuth (1972), Sidney Lumet’s version of the mind-screwy meta-mystery Deathtrap (1982), or Johnathan Lynn’s manic screwball cult phenomenon Clue (1985).
He happens to be in the same business as the character played by Olivier in Sleuth, a successful crime novelist.
In a prominent place is a lifesize jolly-sailor dummy in homage to Sleuth, the play starring Lawrence Olivier and Michael Caine (and later, the film starring Caine and Jude Law).
Johnson’s found the perfect old house in Massachusetts to set his murder mystery; he’s stacked it with props that directly reference, and may even be, the props from Sleuth (1972), which was also one of my favourite twisty movies as a kid; he’s engaged a fun-loving ensemble of glitterati; and then there’s his subversions, spins and extrapolations, none of which I’ll reveal, save one: the poster may imply a true ensemble, but this film has a protagonist and a star, and that’s Ana De Armas (who you hopefully remember fondly from Blade Runner 2049 as Ryan Gosling’s AI girlfriend).
The biggest drawback of Johnson’s Knives Out is its over-fondness for and insistence on paying respect to Agatha Christie-type mysteries (with the oddly exotic Blanc-Craig a stand-in for Hercule Poirot), Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth and so forth.
The Michael Caine/Laurence Olivier “Sleuth” contains a joke about “a passing sheep rapist” that’s tonally and thematically similar to this movie’s reference to a character “joylessly masturbating to pictures of dead deer.”
Black Swan (2010)
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
influenced by All About Eve (1950)
Themes Visuals Characters Plot
This eye-popping, inspired and often-demented (in a good way) cross between “The Red Shoes” and “All About Eve” channels horror maestros David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma and Dario Argento.
Darren Aronofsky's bizarre and brilliant Black Swan might remind you of many other movies, from All About Eve to David Cronenberg's The Fly.
It’s an all-or-nothing effort from the auteur, as reminiscent of The Red Shoes as it is of All About Eve and Mulholland Drive (not to mention the earlier works of Cronenberg, Argento and Polanski).
You can pick out all the references in this movie to other movies, not only "Red Shoes" and "Caligari," but also, for starters, "Phantom of the Opera," " All About Eve ," "Repulsion," and Aronofsky's own dreamy-druggy freak show " Requiem for a Dream ."
To put showbiz competition in All About Eve terms, every Margo Channing must have an Eve Harrington.
You turn it into a psychological thriller with the catfighting backstage elements of "All About Eve."
However, the teacher/student dynamic soon turns sour, resulting in a bitter rivalry that echoes All About Eve (1950).
It also brings to mind “All About Eve” and the origins movie “Maleficent.”
In another, better sense, it's a reference to The Devil Wears Prada and All About Eve in its uncompromising excoriation of how powerful women will exploit the labour of other women who work for them in self-defeating, patriarchally-defined cycles.
Cruella limns how Hollywood has learned all the wrong lessons from the 1950 powerhouse film All About Eve.
Estella’s strategy is half All About Eve , half Mordred marching into Camelot to dethrone King Arthur.
Here arrives the most pressing point: In whatever ways Cruella is a wonky origin story for a Disney villain we’ve come to love and fear, the film is more accurately (and quite pleasingly) a Devil Wears Prada -meets- All About Eve redux, with Emma Thompson delivering award-worthy work chewing scenery in the Miranda Priestly role of Baroness.
Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)
Directed by Olivier Assayas
influenced by All About Eve (1950)
Themes Plot
There are certainly purposeful echoes here of hothouse, inside-out, binary inter-female theatrical dramas like Persona and All About Eve.
For those who like their references more domestic, we get a touch of All About Eve from the impending collaboration between Maria and a hot mess of an actress played by Chloë Grace Moretz.
A variation on the All About Eve theme that hinges primarily on the emotional and psychological effect aging has on a vital, successful actress, Clouds of Sils Maria is an engaging, if rarefied, inside look at the private world of a star.
Updating the 1950 classic "All About Eve," Assayas makes a lot of the movie feel on-message.
The aging actress has always been a deliciously potent subject for movies, from Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard" to Margo Channing in "All About Eve" and way beyond.
Another of the festival’s best selections—and the last screened for the press—was Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Maria, a playful and captivating hybrid of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Joseph Mankiewicz’s All About Eve, and quintessentially Assayas-esque meta-mischief.
Eszterhas and Verhoeven probably thought they were making a New Age "All About Eve."
More specifically, as has been widely observed, it's All About Eve with strippers and a much more caustic sense of nihilism (which is actually pretty impressive, given Eve's sterling nihilism credentials): wide-eyed innocent, Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) arrives in Vegas looking to be a Star! and gets her chance under the mentorship of grande dame Cristal Connors (Gina Gershon), the headliner of a major new topless revue.
It's " All About Eve " with some new touches: The star doesn't break a leg, but gets a compound hip fracture, and is philosophical about her fate because her lawyers negotiated a big settlement.
Unimpressed that Joe Eszterhas cribbed copiously from All About Eve and 42nd Street, viewers don’t even stop to address the notion that he and Paul Verhoeven—who most of the auteurist crowd have given a pass to by this point, but it doesn’t matter because Showgirls exists outside of and beyond auteurism—are directly commenting on these star-is-born pipe dreams and their culpability in force-feeding the American Dream to an audience of pop junkies.
And though much has been made about how extensively researched "Showgirls" is, its entire dramatic shape is lifted from previous films, with great chunks of everything from Eszterhas' own "Flashdance" to "All About Eve" to the Busby Berkeley-choreographed "Forty-Second Street" periodically crashing down on the proceedings like boulders.
In this licentious "All About Eve" fable, nude dancer Nomi Malone (newcomer Elizabeth Berkley) elbows and scratches her way to the top of the nudie heap, while stripper queen Cristal Connors (Gina Gershon) alternately tries to keep her down and seduce her.
Her All About Eve-esque relationship with Emma Stone’s Abigail is at the crux of The Favourite.
Often satirical, “The Favourite” also grasps the complexity of circumstantial, patriarchy-defined enmity among females, obliquely bringing to mind everything from “ The Women ” and “ All About Eve ,” to “ Mean Girls ” and " The Handmaiden ."
Hell, a similar plot transpired in the Oscar-winning drama, All About Eve!
Set in the court of Queen Anne during the early 1700s, with jaunty dollops of classical music playing in ironic counterpart to all the low-minded chicanery, the movie is “Barry Lyndon” meets “Dangerous Liaisons” meets “All About Eve,” with blood flourishes lifted from Peter Greenaway.
The Favourite, a combination of All About Eve and Barry Lyndon, begins in the court of Queen Anne ( Olivia Colman ).
The arrival of Abigail is when this movie takes an All About Eve turn.
At one point, the film decides to drive home the underlying inspiration, Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950), in an off-the-cuff reference to the refurbished Candy Black all aglow like Marilyn Monroe in the Bette Davis classic—but while the leading ladies from the referenced footnote are also arguably unlikeable, Davis and Anne Baxter fashioned a compelling statement about women in the performing arts whereas The Stand In ends up feeling like some of the empty-headed Melissa McCarthy-style physicality primed comedies of nonsensicality it’s paying homage to.
The Stand In should be a by-the-numbers twist on All About Eve , an evil twin kind of comedy caper.
On paper, it’s a decent, even hilarious-sounding premise: a “Trading Places”-meets-“All About Eve” comedy of sorts that switches around the lives of a megastar and her stand-in, to dissect fan entitlement, class divergence, the supposed shallowness of the film industry and all the female-specific struggles they culminate in.
Spicer could’ve gone any number of directions with his script, from a cynical “All About Eve”-style scenario, through which Ingrid learns from and eventually surpasses her idol, to the violent horror vibe of a movie like “The Fan,” where Taylor winds up in physical peril.
It boasts some notable titles: “All About Eve” (1950), “Strangers on a Train” (1951), “The King of Comedy” (1982).
The Neon Demon (2016)
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
influenced by All About Eve (1950)
Themes Visuals Plot
Think "A Star Is Born" meets "All About Eve" and "The Valley of the Dolls" – except in this case, all the girls want to be models, not actresses.
Danish auteur Nicolas Winding Refn tosses “All About Eve” into the blender with alluring moodiness and bloody malice in this rapturous, sometimes ingeniously inane, tale of superficial nihilism and the obsessive pursuit of perfection.
The film’s most enigmatic image — a symbol consisting of three triangles on an otherwise black screen — may remind you of another shot of Jesse admiring herself in a three-way mirror, which in turn may take you all the way back to “All About Eve.”
Refn, working with playwrights Mary Laws and Polly Stenham to build the script from his story treatment, moves through a familiar string of plot points transposed from All About Eve and a host of newcomer starlet narratives.
Enduring as “All About Eve” has proven with its musings on stardom, there’s nothing about the jealousy-fueled ruthlessness on display that flat-out makes us gasp.
Perhaps they've seen All About Eve or Showgirls , and have figured out how these things usually end.
Still, those looking for backstage drama, maybe something more akin to Herman's brother Joe's All About Eve , will be disappointed.
Mank's life is artfully sketched in as older brother to "All About Eve" writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (an outstanding Tom Pelphrey) and the father of three with "poor Sara" (Tuppence Middleton), the wife who must put up with his "suicidal drinking, compulsive gambling and silly, platonic affairs."
For those who know nothing of the man, his legacy, or his equally prolific family members (including younger brother Joseph L. Mankiewicz, screenwriter and eventual director of All About Eve , Suddenly , Last Summer and Cleopatra ), the script does a fine job of formatting his idealism and eventual nihilism of the scribe.
And his kid brother, Joe, who directed and wrote “All About Eve,” would go on to be the better-known Mankiewicz.
As time went on his reputation was eclipsed by his kid brother, Joseph L., who as a writer, director and producer would helm some of the most distinguished movies of the mid-century: “All About Eve,” “Guys and Dolls,” “A Letter to Three Wives,” “Julius Caesar,” “The Quiet American,” etc.
His relationships with his brother Joseph (the much more successful movie director behind “All About Eve” played here by Tom Pelphrey), and with fellow screenwriter Charles Lederer (who essentially invented the screwball comedy and is played here Joseph Cross) provide additional pieces to the puzzle of the mercurial man and the tumultuous age in Tinsel Town.
If it reminds you of "All About Eve" or "The Devil Wears Prada," that's okay because those are good movies for filling time between catastrophes.
The cinematic pairing of a middle-aged female achiever with a younger female assistant and/or protégée has its grand-mama in that juicy 1950 drama about the New York stage, All About Eve .
“All About Eve” without the ferocious, greedy ambition — also fine.
Prickly and exacting, but also appreciative and generous, it’s at odds with the All About Eve treachery and rivalry narrative that is the more usual Hollywood angle on this kind of female dynamic.
To borrow from George Sanders in All About Eve, the minutes fly like hours.
Well, Antin did bother with a plot, presumably to give the bewigged star something to do besides sing and prance around in tight outfits, assembling scenes from hundreds of previous idolmaking features, using gummy “Showgirls” tribute/theft (itself a reworking of “All About Eve”) glue to hold it all together.
Which is why, one fateful night, she overcomes the objections of Tess (and the connivances of her own personal “All About Eve” schemer) to belt out a song that wows the audience.
Ali gets an All About Eve-ish rival in Nikki (Kristen Bell), who doesn’t appreciate all the attention the new girl is getting.
Babylon (2022)
Directed by Damien Chazelle
influenced by All About Eve (1950), The Barefoot Contessa (1954)
Characters Themes
Writer Elinor Glyn, reporter Adela Rogers St. Johns, and the later-era Louella Parsons are inspirations for the character along with All About Eve ‘s Addison DeWitt.
In a merciless monologue, the great Jean Smart’s columnist Elinor St. John—call her an amalgamation of Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, and All About Eve ’s Addison DeWitt—tells him as she sees it: the party is over, in the identical way it will one day be over for every A-lister that would come after him.
Babylon is going to have to be a dazzlingly original production indeed to make it stand out in comparison with, say, Singin’ in the Rain , The Barefoot Contessa , Chaplin , Blonde , The Bad and the Beautiful , The Big Knife , A Star Is Born (any of the four versions), The Day of the Locust , The Loved One , Mank , Once Upon a Time in Hollywood , Barton Fink , Postcards from the Edge , The Last Tycoon or Beware of a Holy Whore , to name a random few.
In this moment, one gets an All About Eve vibe from the narrative (especially when Jessie takes a picture of Lee taking a picture), and it could have gone in that direction many times were it not for Lee’s open embracement of Jessie’s aspiration to become the next great war photographer (just like another Lee with the last name of Miller, who, yes, also comes up in conversation).
The story of Cleopatra, the most famous queen in the history of the world, has been irresistible to filmmakers throughout history, for all the obvious reasons; indeed, it was Fox's second film of that title, following a long-lost 1917 film starring Theda Bara in the title role (an intervening film also titled just Cleopatra was made at Paramount in 1934, with Claudette Colbert; many other films primarily or incidentally about the Ptolemaic queen came out in several different countries along the way).
Cleopatra’s royal entertainments for Marc Antony are her version of the Goldwyn Follies, with showgirls in revealing costumes prancing through absurd set pieces.
Brad Pitt is so miscast as Achilles that he brings to mind sword-and-sandal debacles like 1963's "Cleopatra."
Still, there is a vocal contingent that believes that Joseph L. Mankiewicz, despite all of his achievements, stands in the shadow of his older brother, Herman J. Mankiewicz, the screenwriter who collaborated with Orson Welles on Citizen Kane.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz and his brother Herman (co-author of "Citizen Kane") were responsible for many of the finest scripts ever produced.
Mankiewicz (1909-1993) came from a family of writers; his brother Herman wrote " Citizen Kane ."
According to some cinematic lore, Mankiewicz was competing with his brother Herman who wrote Citizen Kane, another narrative about grand dreams and great failures, and All About Eve was a response to this.
Many critics have noted that the only aspect of All About Eve that prevents it from being mentioned in the same breath as Citizen Kane and Sunset Boulevard is the pedestrian nature of its visuals.
At one point or another, The Game reminded me of three past movies: the Laurence Olivier/Michael Caine classic, Sleuth; Martin Scorsese's wildly offbeat After Hours; and the improbable-but-fun Malice.
Those who enjoyed the convolutions in David Fincher's The Game will find that Sleuth offers many of the same pleasures without the most obvious drawback (blatant manipulation of the audience).