This past weekend I had the pleasure of watching "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) and "All About Eve" (1950), two American classics. To me they seemed very much to be sibling period pieces with political undertones and a spotlight on the sanctity of the American family and the question of shifting gender roles.
"The Best Years of Our Lives" chronicles a Hemingway-esque effort to preserve masculinity in the wake of war; "All About Eve" centers on the power of youthful femininity and the devastation wreaked by its loss. Cigarettes and fake eyelashes pervade both films as the viewer becomes aware that gender is performed and perhaps exaggerated in post-war America: as Margo Channing (protagonist of "Years") muses, "There's one career all females have in common - whether we like it or
not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter
how many other careers we've had or wanted. And, in the last analysis,
nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn
around in bed - and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman."
Both films chronicle an effort to recapture the past against the inevitable and relentless tug of the future. The transitory nature of the best years of one's life is treated with tenderness in "Years" and cynicism in "All About Eve": "Nothing is forever in the theatre. Whatever it is, it's here, it flares up, burns hot and then is gone."
Burning hot in "Years" is Peggy's (Teresa Wright) ardor for Fred, and with it, the question of female agency. Will she break up his marriage? Will Wilma's hands suffice for both herself and her future husband, whose own hands were burned off in the war? Whatever agency "Years" imparts to women may be strong by 1940's standards but is weak by our own. "All About Eve," on the other hand, imparts a pernicious form of female agency that is as subtly regressive (only recall Eden) as it is potent. Still, a sign of progress: it calls on the mental resources, not just the physical ones, of the quasi- femme fatale.
The threat of communism looms over both films, overtly in "Years" and covertly--under the guise of homosexuality, as some critics suggest--in "All About Eve." In "Years," confidence in the moral high-ground of American democracy finds its reflection in the affirmation of the loving nuclear family. Still, American prowess in war forms the backbone of patriotism in "Years", while "All About Eve" both celebrates and deconstructs the distinctly American brand of culture represented by Hollywood and Broadway, hinting of the cultural imperialism with which they colonize the tradition of performance:
"The Theatuh, the Theatuh - what book of rules says the Theater exists
only within some ugly buildings crowded into one square mile of New York
City? Or London, Paris or Vienna? Listen, junior. And learn. Want to
know what the Theater is? A flea circus. Also opera. Also rodeos,
carnivals, ballets, Indian tribal dances, Punch and Judy, a one-man band
- all Theater. Wherever there's magic and make-believe and an audience -
there's Theater. Donald Duck, Ibsen, and The Lone Ranger, Sarah
Bernhardt, Poodles Hanneford, Lunt and Fontanne, Betty Grable, Rex and
Wild, and Eleanora Duse. You don't understand them all, you don't like
them all, why should you? The Theater's for everybody - you included,
but not exclusively - so don't approve or disapprove. It may not be your
Theater, but it's Theater of somebody, somewhere."
Two newly beloved films to celebrate and see again!
