All About Eve crystallizes the signatures of Mankiewicz's mature style – witty, sophisticated and irresistibly quotable dialogue; flashback voiceovers splintered into multiple and frequently contradictory points of view; a fascination with abusive social behavior transformed into a perverse game of shifting masks and uncertain role-playing. A stunning ensemble piece that gave career-defining roles to George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Anne Baxter and Marilyn Monroe, All About Eve also offered the quintessential star vehicle to Bette Davis who heaps playful scorn and heavy lidded charm into Margo Channing's every cutting bon mot. Celebrated as a fabulously over-illuminated chandelier of camp excess, Mankiewicz's best-known and best-loved film is seldom recognized as a contemplative and melancholy mid-career work, an expertly balanced concoction of intriguingly satiric backstage drama, soulful ruminations on the unsteady place of women in postwar America, and a profound meditation on the ruthless competition between the equally blind drives of ambition, love and loyalty. – HG