Bette Davis makes a cutting line sound as though it has cost her something. We value the hurt beneath her precision most of all: even at her fiercest, she can make an unreasonable woman worth caring about.
Fi1m perspective
Margo Channing snaps back, and the hurt is still audible beneath the joke. In All About Eve (1950), Bette Davis makes this difficult woman someone we want to keep listening to. We laughed at her cruelty and then worried about her, because Davis leaves the insecurity audible beneath the insult. That is where we rate her highest: she lets us see why someone behaves badly without insisting that we excuse it.
The early ingénue parts gave way to the breakthrough of Of Human Bondage (1934), with Davis as Mildred Rogers. The Letter (1940) was one of her collaborations with director William Wyler. Now, Voyager (1942) gave her Charlotte Vale, a part that drew on her ability to suggest vulnerability beneath a determined manner. These are useful companions to Margo: the clipped voice need not mean that the person using it feels secure.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz makes particularly good use of that precision in All About Eve. Her delivery is exact enough to land the joke, but never tidies away Margo's sensitivity to the people around her. Beside her, Anne Baxter's Eve Harrington can look a little too visibly intent on being wide-eyed and attentive. Davis makes Margo's vanity feel less rehearsed, and considerably more painful. The film's flashback structure can be stiff, but Davis keeps us interested in Margo when the storytelling feels formal.
Those precise consonants and large, expressive eyes also carry a risk: we can start waiting for the familiar Davis effect rather than listening to the character. Her melodramatic performances do not always avoid exaggeration. The later move into horror, including What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), brought that risk closer to self-parody. It is a limitation worth admitting without treating every forceful line as a fault. Start with All About Eve before going in search of the more extravagant performances.
Biography
Bette Davis, also credited as Ruth Elizabeth Davis, was an American actress of film, television and theatre. Born on 5 April 1908 in Lowell, Massachusetts, she began her career in Broadway plays before moving to Hollywood in 1930. Early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful, but she joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and went on to appear in nearly 100 films.
Davis is known for her roles in All About Eve (1950) as Margo Channing, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) as Baby Jane Hudson, Now, Voyager (1942) as Charlotte Vale and The Letter (1940) as Leslie Crosbie. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice and received ten nominations for acting. Davis died on 6 October 1989 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.
