All About Eve
Sep. 4th, 2012 05:48 pmI finally got to watch All About Eve the other night. So much fun.
My favourite part of the movie is for once not the gay bits. Of course I loved the delicious eroticism of Harrington's obsession.
I loved how Baxter overplayed Eve's devotion, the single-mindedness of her chest-heaving yearning to bang/be Margo.
But it was something else that really got me. For the first half of the film Gary Merrill's Bill Sampson has basically been swanning around, all superior and annoying and sexist. He leaves Davis's Margo after they have a shattering fight about her insecurities; Davis is just magnificent when she tells him, heartbreakingly, that she can't let her surrender to him because the terms are too high. In that moment, in her fear, her insecurities are all she knows. They're who she is.
Then Eve starts twisting the screws and Margo freaks out and Bill runs right back to her. The second he reads about Eve exploiting the very insecurities he decried he runs right back to Margo because he knew how devastated she would be. He appears in her living room and gives her a massive, passionate, comforting hug.
Then he says stupid 50s man stuff, but fuck it, it's romantic as HELL, and it's so necessary, such a restorative fillip that gives us the strength to go with Margo right through to the end, because he REALLY LOVES HER, HE REALLY REALLY DOES, FUCK YEAH! \o/
My favourite part of the movie is for once not the gay bits. Of course I loved the delicious eroticism of Harrington's obsession.
I loved how Baxter overplayed Eve's devotion, the single-mindedness of her chest-heaving yearning to bang/be Margo.
But it was something else that really got me. For the first half of the film Gary Merrill's Bill Sampson has basically been swanning around, all superior and annoying and sexist. He leaves Davis's Margo after they have a shattering fight about her insecurities; Davis is just magnificent when she tells him, heartbreakingly, that she can't let her surrender to him because the terms are too high. In that moment, in her fear, her insecurities are all she knows. They're who she is.
Then Eve starts twisting the screws and Margo freaks out and Bill runs right back to her. The second he reads about Eve exploiting the very insecurities he decried he runs right back to Margo because he knew how devastated she would be. He appears in her living room and gives her a massive, passionate, comforting hug.
Then he says stupid 50s man stuff, but fuck it, it's romantic as HELL, and it's so necessary, such a restorative fillip that gives us the strength to go with Margo right through to the end, because he REALLY LOVES HER, HE REALLY REALLY DOES, FUCK YEAH! \o/
