Freeze-Frame
The freeze-frame device has, fortunately, not yet become so common as to lose much of its essential quality of meaning the way that slow-motion did. In fact, if pressed to name five memorable freeze-frame moments in Hollywood film history, many fans and even a few buffs might have to put everything else aside to focus. Among the more famous examples are the final shot of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid which serves to underline what at the time was very much a mystery about their lives actually ended. All About Eve contains what is arguably the first truly great utilization of the freeze frame to convey meaning. It occurs very early on and the motion freezes right at the point that Eve is being handed the award that the entire movie moves toward in flashback. So great is this use of imagery that it actually works equally well on two different levels. First, it splits the film in half narratively if not in actual running time presenting us with two starkly contrasting portraits of the same woman; it is the moment when the girl next door image of Eve begins to deteriorate before our very eyes as we learn not just all about her, but more than we ever really want to know about celebrities. The image of the older actor presenting the award to Eve, frozen in time, also works beautifully on a completely different level in connection with the narration of Addison as it reminds the viewer that through the magic of memories, an entire lifetime can be relived in a single moment.
That Award
The Sarah Siddons Award that the girl next door Eve is set to accept at the beginning of the film and the much nastier and cunning Eve takes into her hand at the end also serves well as imagery that helps to underline just what sort of human being Miss Harrington really is. Really. The movie opens with receiving the award and flattery of the presenter. The rest of the film proceeds to show every underhanded trick she used to get to the point of winning that award. And then, once it is hers, what is practically the first thing she does with it? Leaves it behind in the cab as she goes home alone. But not until after Margo has told her the statue might make a suitable transplant recipient for her missing heart. And after she has left it behind, it becomes the tool by which the entire set of circumstances is poised to play out again with the only different being that now Eve is Margo and Phoebe is her Eve. And, of course, don’t forget the most important element of this particular bit of imagery: it is an award for acting which is just another name for deceiving.
Mirrors and Reflections
If All About Eve were boiled down to one question it would almost without question have to be: who is Eve Harrington? Actors are constantly struggling to present themselves as someone different on stage while forced to look at the reflection of themselves as they prepare for that task by putting on makeup. Margo looks in the mirror and see Eve as a non-threatening gushing fan and herself as getting too old. Eve looks into the mirror and see everything she wants to be in the future. And, of course, the ironic ending of Phoebe looking into the mirror and imagining herself as Eve, thus fulfilling the replication of the mirror imagery used through the movie with a sublime punctuation marking both the ending of All About Eve and the untold All About Phoebe.
A Bumpy Night
Although occasionally misquoted to fit the more familiar “it’s going to be a bumpy ride” Margo Channing’s legendary admonition to party guests to fasten their seatbelts make for not just one of the most famous quotes in movie history, but fantastically appropriate bit of verbal imagery. The appropriateness stems from the fact that this one of those movies often referred to as “wordy” meaning that it gains more power from its dialogue than from the visual side of the art of cinema. Essentially, All About Eve is a film version of a play about people putting on a play. By all rational means of measure, it should be “wordy.” And, of course, attending a play has something very much in common with needing to fasten a seabelt: you are almost held hostage in a chair for an extended period of time in which you must keep a close eye on the drama being acted out through that windshield. It’s an easy quote to get wrong because we are used to hearing “Fasten yourself, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.” What kind of person even thinks to offer such advice to prepare for a bumpy “night.” And what the heck is a bumpy night, anyway? Well, Margo Channing is no ordinary person—she is famous precisely for making melodramatic entrances and exits on and off the stage—and somehow the conventional form of the advice is far less dramatic. But Margo also recognizes that for such high drama to have it shock value, it can’t be overused. So when she decides to go all in on ramping up the drama and thereby calling attention to how famous she is for doing so—she waits until it really is a bumpy night. So what is a bumpy night? You will know it when you’ve come the other side of one.
