All About Eve is a movie that no one should ever try to remake. Because they will fail spectacularly.
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While its premise has been recycled time and time again--Showgirls, anyone?-- the original is best left untouched. It would be impossible to recreate the scintillating dialogue from writer-director Joseph Mankiewicz's script, one of the best Hollywood has ever churned out. And Bette Davis left shoes too big for any actress to fill in her career-defining role as Margo Channing.
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As All About Eve came out over 65 years ago, most people today have probably never seen it on the big screen, which is how it was meant to be seen. As part of its ongoing Big Screen Classics series, Turner Classic Movies is bringing Margo and co. to theaters across the country for two days only, March 5 and March 8.
If you've never seen All About Eve, or you've never seen it larger than life, now is your chance--and you should take it because this film is required viewing not just for cinephiles, but lovers of queer culture.
Aside from the cornucopia of brilliant, catty one-liners drag queens have been quoting and referencing for decades, All About Eve also boasts some delicious queer subtext. The character of Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) and her obsession with Margo is almost overtly sapphic, while the acid-tongued critic Addison DeWitt (Oscar-winner George Sanders) sets the bar, then drinks at it, for bitchy queens, both on and off screen.
It's rare for a film to still hold the public's imagination 67 years after it first premiered, but with La La Landrecently tyingAll About Eve's record 14 Oscar nominations and renewed interest in Davis with Ryan Murpy's Feud: Bette and Joan, the time is ripe to raise a toast to the film, its star, and their enduring legacies.
You can buy tickets here or at your local participating theater. Click here to find a list of theater locations. And just so you know what a treat you're in for, here's Margo on a rampage after finding out Eve has been busy stealing her thunder behind her back.
