Bette Davis plays Margo Channing, a major role in the in the film All About Eve. She is a very famous theater actress who has a very obsessed and conniving fan named Eve. Throughout the entire movie I believe Eve plays a major role in depicting Margo's fears of aging. Throughout the movie we see Margo's insecurities with aging and how this impacts her relationship with Bill greatly.
We first get a glimpse of Margo's fears of aging when Bill needs to leave to Hollywood. At this time Margo is in her forties and Bill is younger, she fears he will find someone younger. She actually asks him, if she will lose him. I think when Margo questions him he doesn't take her seriously and just jokes with her. As the movie continues
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For instance, when Bill arrives for the birthday and before he even says hi to Margo he's talking with Eve. This stirs up something in Margo, where we are able to see that she is jealous. As a viewer I was able to see her insecurity at this moment.
As an actress who is in her forties I believe Margo's biggest fear with aging was to lose roles of characters in their twenties to actresses who are in their twenties, like Eve. This was very clear when she told Lloyde that she didn't want to play Cora, a character in her twenties. She begins to explain that she's in her forties and doesn't need these roles since she'll be married. She explains that she now has a life to live.
Margo expressed her anxieties with aging in very many ways. She had fears of losing Bill to younger women, fears of losing parts to younger actresses. I think in the end people didn't take her fears seriously. I think the only time someone might have taken her seriously was Bill when they were at the audition, after Margo found out that Eve was her understudy. He kind of realized that these insecurities that Margo was having were ruining what they had, and this was when he gave her an ultimatum. At this point her fears pushed him away. I think Bette Davis' character kind of showed every actress greatest fear. The fear of not being who your character is, not being twenty anymore, having to be forty playing a twenty year
Mildred is not just self-centered, she is also unfeeling. For example she forgot to tell Montag that clarisse had died, and didn’t seem fazed at all. She is also robotic. When captain Beatty came to talk to Montag, Montag had asked her to leave the room. She did angrily, but she still did as she was told.
All About Eve is based on a story written by Mary Orr. Mary Orr wrote “The Wisdom of Eve” in the International Cosmopolitan Magazine based on real life events. After Joseph L. Mankiewicz read the story, he immediately fell in love with it because it was his way of “settling a lot scores [with the theatre]” (Crowther). He bought the rights to the movie and began casting. According to Mankiewicz, casting for Margo Channing was the hardest; after a lot of thinking, Mankiewicz chose Claudette Colbert as Margo, but two weeks before shooting began Colbert was on bed rest due to an accident during the filming of another movie. Because she was the only available actress that could play the part well, Mankiewicz selected Bette Davis as the new Margo.
The stereotypes of the elderly are influencing Mattie's life. She is telling herself not to do things because of her age, whether or not she is physically able to do them, simply because people associate age with inability and dependence upon others. Her family and friends are expecting and encouraging this dependence. Elaine and Robert, Mattie's two unmarried children, along with other family and friends, are encouraging her to be what they expect a seventy-eight year old woman to be. They talk about how she needs to get rest because she is slowing down and can't keep going as steady as she seems to think.
she does as much as she can do to fit in and act as old as possible.
Many of them were delicious in the rôle; one of them was the embodiment of every womanly grace and charm. If her husband did not adore her, he was a brute, deserving of death by slow torture. Her name was Adéle Ratignolle. (11)
Margo has run away many times in the past, and each time she left clues of where she was going for her parents to find. Instead, this time she leaves numerous clues to help show Quentin where she might be hiding. While Quentin and his friends were trying to find where Margo might be, they also learned many things about her that they hadn't known before. They discovered that she is a daredevil, they all knew Margo
The grandmother who is miserable and mean to everyone, throughout the play she played her part well. There was a time in the story where she took the candies and pretzel behind Jay 's back and him to pay for them even though he takes it. He was so upset, he wanted to leave Uncle Louie to be a gangster to help his father so he could be able to come back for them. Another humorous moment was when Aunt Bella, would constantly go to the movies, and she met an usher name Johnny there and within 10 days he asked her to marry him. She wanted to but scared her mom would say no, and saying yes to giving her five thousand dollars for Johnny to open a restaurant. This was hilarious, who in their right state of mind, meet a guy and say yes to marrying him after such short time meeting
Before they begin their trek, Eve becomes quickly furious with the man who saved her and she declares that she is "not helpless" (12). In spite of her outburst, the rest of the novel makes her out to be anything but helpful. For example, she cannot bathe without a monkey stealing her Bond street apparel. It is impossible for her to search for them naked, and to top it all off, the fearless Wade O'Mara has to save her from toe-snapping crabs before finding her pants for her. Later on Eve acknowledges her situation. "She was glad he was so tough and self-reliant, but at the same time he was so disturbing and awoke in her a feeling of being a helpless and vulnerable female" (38). She is correct. She doesn't make their dinner, the only useful thing she does is sweep out a hut and slaughter a few of the harmless insects that lived there.
The last two lines of this speech are very dramatic. Eve has such a great love for Adam that she could endure anything as long as he would be by her side, but she would be nothing without him. However, this creates a paradox. One may ask, if Eve loves Adam as much as she professes to, then why put his life in jeopardy just to make her own suffering more bearable? The answer, of course, goes back to the selfishness that has pervaded her entire speech. These lines stand out because of the spondees at the end of both of them.
Noted in Yvonne Tasker’s Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema, Goldie Hawn says this about women's role in the film business “There are only thee ages for women in Hollywood: Babe, District Attorney and Driving Miss Daisy” (1998, p. 3). While Haw...
smart in order to defeat her. She is still controlled by her programmers. However power is not the only thing the movie tries to express about gender roles. It is very important to note that while EVE is an extremely strong and vicious robot, she is completely dependent on her programmer for instructions. In relation to this, Springer explains that this representation of eve as dependent and naïve, but intelligent is just the basic depiction of females in society(Springer). Instead, throughout the movie, EVE is this evil presence that seeks to destroy but the way she looks is very sexually appealing. EVE is a sexually appealing not only in the way she looks, but the way her body is designed. It is inevitable for men to look at eve and not
Theories concerned with ageing are constructed in an attempt to objectively satisfy the inquiries that arise after studying ageing and to provide evidence based clarifications. In the context of this essay, they allow troubleshooting regarding issues around the type of support would be expected to be needed by Betty and her son. Bengtson et al, (1999) accepts the potential pragmatism of the theories nevertheless he argues that they can be generalised and unimaginative. The controversy regarding theorising ageing becomes especially relevant when they are applied in isolation failing to address that “the science and positivism are severely limiting… for understanding aspects of ageing.” Bengtson et al (1999)
...he book Quentin came to the realization that he forgot to think of Margo as a person. Rather, he believed her to be a perfect human with no flaws, and ultimately this proved to be false. Margo turned out to be a normal girl struggling to find her true identity in a harsh societal culture based on making snap judgements. Overall, the life lesson learned is that people are not paper, they have added dimensions to them that serve as never ending complexities that we can only partially discover. It was said in the story that, “Imagining isn’t perfect. You can’t get all the way inside someone else...But imagining being someone else or the world being something else is the only way in” (Green 299). Sometimes, you have to try to walk in someone else’s shoes to really take a closer look at who they are.
All About Eve, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1950 cinematic masterpiece, featuring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter. In which, this film is about the life of an aging actress, Margo, who is introduced to a young fan, who is not what she seems. Throughout this film Mankiewicz writes witty dialogue for all the characters, which adds to the comedic aspect of the film. Therefore, this is one of the most genius parts of this film, where the audience can clearly see the banter back and forth between the characters. Although this film's plot can contain one cliche tropes, it was the first of this kinds, since most modern films just regurgitate those classic tropes. In addition, Bette Davis provides an extraordinary performance as Margo, which is not different
In conclusion, Eveline is a very captivating character. She is a women trapped in a vicious circle of abuse and is forced into a totalitarian state of mind. This abuse makes Eveline become a very passive person and creates an existential vacuum. She longs for a simpler time when her family life was better and when her father wasn’t so bad. She lives in the past through her memories and continues to try to keep a promise made to her mother on her deathbed. Her life is changing so much, yet she stays the same. By living in the past and being afraid of change, the anticipatory anxiety sets in. She wants to leave but her fears keep her trapped. She, much like that picture and harmonium, is fading and broken.