#28 ‘All About Eve’
Ambition in Heels, Bitchcraft in the Wings
All About Eve (1950) is a martini-dry, backhanded love letter to the theatre—and a high-heeled takedown of female ambition so laced with wit you almost forget it's blaming women for wanting anything. On the surface, it’s a film about stardom, betrayal, and backstage drama. But peel back the clever dialogue and dramatic lighting and you’ll find a cautionary tale dressed as empowerment: trust no woman, and if she’s talented, definitely don’t trust her.
Bette Davis is Margo Channing, a 40-something Broadway star who drinks too much, feels too much, and monologues like she’s being paid by the syllable. She’s magnificent—sharp, vulnerable, imperious—and for all her fire, the film makes it painfully clear she’s a woman at the end of her shelf life. Her greatest crime? Aging. Her punishment? Being stalked, flattered, and slowly replaced by a younger, hungrier version of herself in kitten heels.
That version is Eve Harrington, played with porcelain menace by Anne Baxter, a masterclass in faux-innocence and quiet manipulation. Eve appears backstage with a sob story and dead eyes, slowly worming her way into Margo’s dressing room, social circle, career, and man. And the film loves this dynamic—pitting woman against woman, talent against legacy, youth against experience—as if competition is the natural state of female existence.
Eve doesn’t just want success. She wants it without aging, without waiting, and without apology. And in this film, that makes her monstrous. Her ambition is treated not as understandable or inevitable, but as predatory. She’s not driven, she’s demonic. Margo, meanwhile, is redeemed not through fighting back, but through softening. By the end, she’s basically handed her crown to the next generation like a weary, weepy Miss America. Grow old gracefully, the film says, and maybe—maybe—we’ll still let you attend the party.
Let’s not forget Addison DeWitt, the acid-tongued critic who operates like the film’s Greek chorus and its puppet master. He’s the one who sees through Eve and controls her fate, and the film treats this as justice. A woman overreaches, so a man reins her in with threats and power. Classic.
And then there's Karen (Celeste Holm), the nice, “good” woman who exists to reflect Margo’s humanity and Eve’s treachery. She’s kind, supportive, and utterly disposable. A reminder that in this world, women come in only three flavors: saint, star, or snake.
Yes, the dialogue sparkles like a diamond with a grudge. Yes, the performances are iconic. But All About Eve is not feminist. It’s anti-feminine. It dresses up its misogyny in pearls and powder, but at its core, it’s a paranoid fantasy about women who want too much—and the social necessity of cutting them down.
4 out of 5 broken heels
(One for Bette Davis, aging like dynamite. One for George Sanders’ delicious venom. One for the script, dripping acid in every direction. One for Thelma Ritter, because obviously. The missing fifth star? Swallowed whole by the film’s fear of what women might do when they stop apologizing.)
