Caustic slicing acid tongue

All about Eve 1950
Hailed as the film with the best screenplay ever written, it is indeed sheer pleasure to watch all the stars rattle off their lines with great finesse. For their effort, this flick starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter as the main characters was feted with 14 Oscar nominations, a commendable never repeated until 1997 with Titanic. Many of their lines are evergreen and are oft-repeated, like "put on your seat belt, it is going to be a bumpy night!"
Almost all the lines are melody to the ears, some incisive laced with loads of sarcasm, others with comical double meaning word play. Even Marilyn Monroe who had a minor role delivered her witty lines very well.

The interesting thing about the movie is the blurring of real life and reel life in the lives of the actors and the role that they were supposed to act. Well Bette Davis, who was a fading star then and got the role after the original actress hurt her back, was just being her in the film as a primadonna pushing her weight and ego around just because she can.

It starts with Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) being honoured as a new refreshing stage actor. The story of her ascent to fame is later told in flashback.
Eve was an ardent fan of Margo Channing (Bette Davis) who was seen at the theatre for all of Margo's plays. She was brought in back-stage to be introduced to Margo by play-writer's wife, Karen. The seemingly humble and soft spoken is easily liked by everyone and starts working as Margo's efficient helper.

Margo Channing

Margo is actually very insecure as she just turned 40 and her fiancee, Bill Samson, a director is  8 years her junior. She is afraid that she may stay unmarried and her success would dwindle pretty soon. 

Monroe(centre)

Eve slowly shows her true colours as she cunningly gets herself appointed as her uunderstudy, gets Margo to be absent from a performance, act Margo's part at a performance, get all the city reporters to write a rave review of her performance and even try to seduce Bill (Margo's fiancee, but he refused) all with the intention to becoming a great actress. In the process, Eve creates animosity between Margo, her fiancee, Karen and her husband. She even manages to snatch the new role planned for Margo.
After all this is over and Eve wins the accolade, we find another novice entering Eve's dressing room to duplicate all of Eve's antics. Well, that is showbiz for you, everybody is there with a knife just to stab you when show your back to them!
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/All_About_Eve

Film noir in Malaya

The letter 1940

After hearing about Betty Davis and her eyes in Kim Carnes' song since the 80s, I finally got the chance to see a full length feature film with Davis as the leading star. The movie is set in a pre-Independence Singapore where the colonial masters were calling the shots and the humble natives were just humble servants. Well, the servants had the last say at the end of movie.
From the outset, we can make out that the whole setting is staged. There were not anywhere near the Far East but all the coconut trees did the trick.
It was a bright moonlight lit night at a time when the weary bodied natives were resting after a long day's work on their hammocks in the compound of the Crosbies' bungalow when the sound of multiple gun shots pierced the tranquility of the night.
A man stumbles out of the main door of the bungalow, obviously after being shot at and falls over the stairs. A lady follows him and empties the contents of her gun repeatedly till it runs out of bullets. The head butler recognizes the as Mr Hammond.

The shooter, Leslie Crosbie (Betty Davis), summons him to contact her husband, Robert, who was working in another plantation. In the next scene, Robert, a British police inspector and Stacey, a family friend and an attorney sympathetically try to obtain the history of the chain of events that transpired.

Bette Davis

Leslie coolly narrates how an old friend of the family, Hammond, made an unannounced surprise visit at night after a few drinks and started passing ungentlemanly remarks. When he forced himself upon her, she shot him to protect herself.

The closely knitted British community there are all sympathetic to her plight and are out to support her. Stacey acts as her defense lawyer. In the course of preparation of her case, Stacey's assistant, a local native, who has made big as a attorney himself, approaches him with a discriminating letter. The letter allegedly was written by Leslie inviting Hammond to come over as her husband was out of post. In reply, Leslie confided that she did write to him to help her buy a gun as a birthday present for her husband.
As the evidence could incriminate Leslie, the letter which was now in Hammond's wife's (a hateful evil looking native girl), is retrieved for a token of $10,000.
The case goes on and Leslie is acquitted and everybody is happy. That is when the real drama starts. Robert thinks that he had enough of Singapore and wants to start life new in a new plantation in Sumatra. When he realizes that his life savings had been used for the purpose of the letter, Leslie finally tells him the whole truth. Leslie, a bored housewife, who was always left to herself by her busy plantation manager husband, started a love affair with Hammond. It had gone on for some time till she heard news of his marriage to a local girl. During the last rendezvous, he wanted to end the affair but she was too deeply rooted to let go, ended his life instead.
The Crosbies initially decide to forgive and forget but then realized that the past kept on haunting them. on one tropical night, Leslie walks out of her safe haven and is fatally stabbed by the scornful widow of Hammond conspired by the head butler. The end.
Another film noir, this time set in the pre-Independent Malaya. Just like John Garfield and Robert Mitchum whose appearance makes them perfectly cut for film noir, Betty Davies with her expressive eyes and eyelids makes her the perfect female counterpart for this role.An interesting thing that I noted in the movie is that only one sentence was uttered in Malay (apa buat uncle?). During the rest of the film, the natives were speaking Cantonese (not native to Singapore) and murmurs of a incomprehensible gibberish language.