There are few pleasures in movie going greater than listening to the script for All About Eve as written by Joseph Mankiewicz taking inspiration from the story "The Wisdom of Eve" by Mary Orr and then performed by the movie's cast headlined by Bette Davis acting in the central role of Margo Channing. At once arresting with its cynical observations run-through with startlingly insightful thoughts on the make believe world of the theater, the film is a genuine pleasure no matter how much time passes from when it was first released in theaters.

As one of the legendary productions of Hollywood's golden age, and certainly one of the jewels in the crown of one of that age's most renowned studios, 20th Century Fox, All About Eve is art projected at 24 frames a second. In just over two hours running time a tale of opportunism, entertainment, deceit and the struggles of growing older are put on display with truly terrific narrative devices rarely used for greater impact than within Mankiewicz's film.

Opening with an awards ceremony celebrating the actress Eve Harrington (Ann Baxter), Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), noted theatrical critic and soulless hanger-on to the world of artifice and performance, informs us through his first voice-over that Eve's rise to prominence was anything but the triumph of talent over circumstance. Instead Eve's journey from anonymity to superstardom is the stuff of legend insofar as it exposes the unnatural competition, petty opportunism and overall emptiness of the entertainment industry. DeWitt's remarks and indifferent feelings punctuate this point and bring about an understanding of fame's cost but also the way it's achieved that is anything but idealistic and pure.

His revelations of Eve, as told through freeze frames, frequent voice-over narrations and a wraparound structure containing the central story told in flashback, is that she's everything fame requires but nothing the myth of celebrity suggests. She's not particularly sweet, good tempered, kind or humble. Nor is she untalented, lazy, misguided or dim. Always ambitious, fortunately young and easily allied with circumstance to benefit her goals of wealth and celebrity, Eve is a climber without restraint or conscience.

She is nothing more and nothing less than a manipulative sycophant who attached herself to the star of Margo Channing, her most obvious role model for having already achieved the kind of success Eve herself clamors for from the word go. By absorbing Margo's tendencies and by capitalizing on her contacts Eve gradually becomes first her confidante and friend and, eventually, her competitor, successor and enemy. In this journey she's aided at certain critical junctures by Addison's unusual influence and sense of timing, though never without paying her pound of flesh since Addison is self-serving from a seemingly endless supply of stories and lesser personalities to grind through his mill of gossip and intrigue.

Of course there are other parties involved in this shifting battle for career success and professional dominance as waged between Eve and her defensive nemesis Margo. There is Margo's boyfriend, the theater and film director Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill), Margo's longtime friend Karen Richards (Celeste Holm) and her husband, the playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), who, together, introduce Eve to Margo in the first place. Then there are several characters who fill out the seams between mentor and usurper including the theater and movie producer Max Fabian (Gregory Ratoff), starlet Claudia Casswell (Marilyn Monroe) and Margo's right-hand Birdie Coonan (Thelma Ritter), herself a retired vaudevillian with a reflex approach to judging human nature.

Concluding the film's action and linear storyline by returning to the awards show bookend first introduced at the beginning of the film, Eve receives her comeuppance at the hands of Addison who alone knows the truth of her newly crowned star. In short order, he is the one who knows, "all about Eve", and it's his revelation that fully demonstrates the cynical quality of show business as Eve falls victim to her very own minion in the form of another sycophantic wannabe named Phoebe (Barbara Bates) in the film's end.

Summarizing All About Eve in this way, though, fails to offer complete remarks concerning its genius. Without ignoring the contributions of the film's composer Alfred Newman, its cinematographer Milton R. Krasner, editor Barbara McLean and the production design team of George W. Davis, Thomas Little, Walter M. Scott and Lyle R. Wheeler, it's easy to gloss over the writing and narrative structure to instead focus on performance.

The most famous relationship of the film is the pairing of Anne Baxter and Bette Davis in the central roles but there is more to enjoy than the struggle between an aging star and her limelight-addicted upstart. Layers of relationships dot the film with a commanding vocabulary of interrelated lives including Eve's reluctant alliance with Addison to the difficulties of a static marriage between Karen and Lloyd. There is also the simultaneous expression of love and exasperation by Margo and Bill that repeatedly considers the levels of trust, distrust, ease and disease shared by people whose lives are always in a state of negotiation and change.

Never without choice words, comic timing and the teeth of tragedy each of these combinations spin around one another to expose the constructed nature of make believe. The theatrical tradition is specifically skewered but so is the motion picture industry with a number of "in" jokes, some of which refer to the film's producer Darryl Zanuck while still others refer place names in Hollywood and the ritual bicoastal lives of stage actors clamoring for the greater commercial rewards of Los Angeles.

Reportedly Zanuck originally envisioned Marlene Dietrich in the part of Margo Channing with Jeanne Crain as Eve Harrington and José Ferrer as Addison DeWitt. Mankiewicz's early choices for the same part included Claudette Colbert and Gertrude Lawrence although the cinematic record clearly shows that Davis won the part and made it one of the all-time great showpieces for any actress working in American movies.

The net effect of this background the resulting expression of All About Eve is the fact of its being a treasure of world cinema. Arguments against it would necessarily be restricted to short-sighted considerations about the aesthetic criteria associated with black and white movies, the requirement of watching the film with considerable attention so as not to miss the use of language and perhaps even undue emphasis on the occasionally ineffective rear projection outdoor scenes. Ignoring these points, however, yields a movie experience very close to being an epiphany.

Unlike certain years when the Academy Awards race is decided between a series of acceptable though unexceptional titles, 1950 was a remarkable time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences saw fit to give All About Eve the Best Motion Picture award but it very easily could have gone to one of a couple of other titles as well. Billy Wilder released Sunset Boulevard and received a movie of the year nomination alongside the productions of Born Yesterday and Father of the Bride. King Solomon's Mines was also nominated for Best Motion Picture and though it was far outclassed by its more literary competitors it was still a valid entry in the year-end awards derby.

History also reveals that the Academy avoided giving Oscar nominations to at least three other titles that have since been considered exceptional works. Rules of the Game, The Third Man and Adam's Rib were all released to varied popular interest and acclaim in 1950. Of the three Rules of the Game has been lifted into the pantheon of great American movies while The Third Man and Adam's Rib have been assigned likable places among the genre classics of Hollywood's golden period in the immediate post-War moment.

I mention these points of context to emphasize the strength of certain pictures released in competition for box office dollars and critical adulation in 1950 but also to point out that All About Eve was considered the very best of its vintage. More to the point, subsequent years have only sweetened the regard for Mankiewicz's film that won six Oscars from among 14 nominations while containing some of the greatest dialogue ever written for sound movies.

Years later, and with the melancholic nod of certain filmmakers who sometimes homage masters of the form in their more contemporary back stage dramas and inside-show business exposes, they are almost always forced to run through the plot points and characters developed in All About Eve. Thus the film has also achieved a certain kind of immortality. It focuses on an aging star's hysteria with losing her looks and her place within a career that depends on surfaces, youth and disposable performers. But it also takes the perspective of inveterate insider Addison DeWitt who always survives ever-changing circumstances to see Margo eclipsed by Eve and then enjoy the anticipation of seeing Eve's stardom eroded by Phoebe, if not the next wannabe starlet or the next.

Such cynicism is often used to give depth and weight to stereotypical characters and enliven otherwise conventional circumstances. This is because it's an easily understood trope for creating good and evil polarities while telling a story. But cynicism is rarely the overall tone of a film, nor its purpose.

Mankiewicz uses cynicism in the person and character of Addison who is the film's narrative fulcrum although he is not meant to negate the magic of show business or the very real pursuits of fortune and fame that plague artists like Margo, Eve, Bill and Lloyd. Instead Mankiewicz infuses the film with its cynical theme as a method for criticizing the false sentiments that under gird our entertainment industry. Fortunately this same facility, experience and expertise used to criticize show business is itself a kind of brilliance for which we bow our heads.

As a summary statement concerning All About Eve it should be remembered for being a behind the scenes look at stardom and the live theater. That we can also interpret it as an expose of the relationships, cross-purposes and ambitions that create entertainment, not to mention the very magical dialogue employed to this end, means it's something more than a good movie. In fact, it's one of the singular films every given the Academy Award for picture of the year and it is this final point that has cemented its place in history.