Well, Cukor and Manikiewicz have made films I gladly watch. The adoration of Vincente Minnelli as anything but a purveyor of pretty pictures just confounds me -- apart from two songs from that St. Louis thing his career is a wasteland.
SCFZ poll: George Cukor
Re: SCFZ poll: George Cukor
These matters are best disposed of from a great height. Over water.
Re: SCFZ poll: George Cukor
I agree with every word Roscoe wrote. I have no idea which Mankiewicz films are misogynistic, but they're not the ones I'm familiar with. Unlike Cukor and Minnelli he usually wrote his own scripts, which puts him in a different class. I challenge anyone to come up with five film scripts with dialogue as good as All About Eve.
profile
Re: SCFZ poll: George Cukor
Heh. I'll leave off arguing too much about Mankiewicz in a Cukor thread, but All About Eve is one of the key examples of his attitude towards women. It isn't the crude unthinking hate that shows up in so many movies just by being part of the atmosphere, Mankiewicz's misogyny is not accidental at all, it's the carefully sophisticated theme of his many or even most of his movies, not exhibited by physical treatment of women by men, but in considered thought to the effect of women's behavior on men and society. It's everywhere in All About Eve, that's what the title means, Eve is the personification of all women. The end shot makes that abundantly clear, with the new maid's act of aping Eve's actions at the start of the film shown in infinite reflection in the mirrors. That is the essence of woman to Mankiewicz, which he shows over and over again in his other movies. The counter argument is also pretty clear, that his movies often feature better roles for women than so many others of the era and after, and that's true as is the fact that Bette Davis in particular eats up playing exactly that kind of woman and can win sympathy by dint of her own talents in ways that counter the themes. And so she does, but that just makes the movie multivalent, with different possible readings contradicting each other being but unable to erase the other being present at the same time.I have no idea which Mankiewicz films are misogynistic, but they're not the ones I'm familiar with.
Re: SCFZ poll: George Cukor
I respect your nuanced reply, but I still disagree. It's an unwarranted logical leap to say that Eve represents all women at the end... she represents something in humanity at large that tends to replicate itself, and All About Eve uses mostly women to characterize humanity. Except for Addison DeWitt the men are all fairly weak characters. If a movie is full of strong male villains and weak women it's also going to be characterized as misogynist, so what can you do? I would say that Margo is written as a deliberate contrast to Eve. Yes, Bette Davis makes her sympathetic through her extraordinary talents, but that's no accident. I don't think the movie would have it any other way; at any rate I can only judge the movie that actually got made.
Re: SCFZ poll: George Cukor
The structure is cyclical. Margo was/acted the same as Eve, as is made clear in the dialogue, before Eve showed up and Eve's new maid/protege will do the same thing to Eve as Eve did to Margo and on and on in an endless cycle, which is the point of the last shot in the mirror. Women are like that, the movie says. The sleight of hand involved is in making the threat Eve poses to Margo appear to be about her career, when its really about her marriage and acceptance of not having the same sexual allure. Margo has to give up her career to save her marriage to gain the "happy" end. Her husband is the creator, the one who writes plays, and Margo and Eve are just the muses that inspire his creation. His work is the foundation,the thing that really matters, according to the ideology of the film, they just perform in it and need to be replaced with someone more vibrant when they no longer fit the needs of the playwright. The marriage to a creator type is the best they can expect as they age, as long as they allow that the inspiration will come from those younger and more alluring.
The men are weak in the face of that allure because that is the power women hold over men and the threat they embody. Men are the one's who make the world, but they and the world can be ruined by the attraction of a woman. That's the theme that comes up over and over again with Mankiewicz. It's the heart of Cleopatra and The Quiet American where empire and political control are at stake, it is the underlying issue in Five Fingers, Suddenly, Last Summer and People will Talk, it is an ugly subtext in Sleuth, in A Letter to Three Women it again comes up as a universal, where the generic letter of a husband's discontent could be true for any of the women and by extension virtually any woman at all who doesn't pay attention to her husband's needs. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir runs a strangely perverse variation on the idea and Dragonwyck and Guys and Dolls run more conventional and less noticeably problematic variations on the same for the men involved being criminals or mad, thus seeming to find a fitting a moral end for much the same dynamic. The Barefoot Contessa keeps much the same tone, but has a set up that leaves its theme more suggestively ambiguous. I haven't seen The Honeypot, but the title alone gives reason to suspect it isn't exactly going to be an improvement. For the movie's he wrote, Mannequin and Manhattan Melodrama follow similar paths to Guys and Dolls done straight, with the morality leading men to sacrifice, more in line with conventional movie norms of the time, but that obviously doesn't mean better about women given the times.
Oh, and the idea of "weak" and "strong" is a current method of reading of characters that is deeply flawed on its own, favoring "strong" as proof of value when it is no such thing and almost an inherently masculinized way to think about characters and movies that holds all sorts of problems. Women in films now are as violent and can kill as readily as men! Yay! What a victory for feminism! The very idea of "strong as any man" is example of how flawed this thinking is. What's the counter to that? As soft as any woman? Framing the idea of equality in terms of force concedes the idea that there is other ways to measure importance and values, that there can be passive strength and ways of betterment that don't involve force and individual exceptionalism. It just puts the same old ideology in new packages, casting women in rules once given to men rather than rethinking anything significant about the meaning behind it.
The men are weak in the face of that allure because that is the power women hold over men and the threat they embody. Men are the one's who make the world, but they and the world can be ruined by the attraction of a woman. That's the theme that comes up over and over again with Mankiewicz. It's the heart of Cleopatra and The Quiet American where empire and political control are at stake, it is the underlying issue in Five Fingers, Suddenly, Last Summer and People will Talk, it is an ugly subtext in Sleuth, in A Letter to Three Women it again comes up as a universal, where the generic letter of a husband's discontent could be true for any of the women and by extension virtually any woman at all who doesn't pay attention to her husband's needs. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir runs a strangely perverse variation on the idea and Dragonwyck and Guys and Dolls run more conventional and less noticeably problematic variations on the same for the men involved being criminals or mad, thus seeming to find a fitting a moral end for much the same dynamic. The Barefoot Contessa keeps much the same tone, but has a set up that leaves its theme more suggestively ambiguous. I haven't seen The Honeypot, but the title alone gives reason to suspect it isn't exactly going to be an improvement. For the movie's he wrote, Mannequin and Manhattan Melodrama follow similar paths to Guys and Dolls done straight, with the morality leading men to sacrifice, more in line with conventional movie norms of the time, but that obviously doesn't mean better about women given the times.
Oh, and the idea of "weak" and "strong" is a current method of reading of characters that is deeply flawed on its own, favoring "strong" as proof of value when it is no such thing and almost an inherently masculinized way to think about characters and movies that holds all sorts of problems. Women in films now are as violent and can kill as readily as men! Yay! What a victory for feminism! The very idea of "strong as any man" is example of how flawed this thinking is. What's the counter to that? As soft as any woman? Framing the idea of equality in terms of force concedes the idea that there is other ways to measure importance and values, that there can be passive strength and ways of betterment that don't involve force and individual exceptionalism. It just puts the same old ideology in new packages, casting women in rules once given to men rather than rethinking anything significant about the meaning behind it.
Re: SCFZ poll: George Cukor
Incidentally, Cassavetes seemed to see All About Eve in just that way and Made Opening Night as a sort of correctionary remake of the movie. It also appears to be one of the things the directors of the French New Wave glommed on to about Mankiewicz, with a number of their films following similar patterns regarding women. The love/hate thing strikes a chord with a lot of men in that way.
Re: SCFZ poll: George Cukor
Well said greg! 
"I too am a child burned by future experiences, fallen back on myself and already suspecting the certainty that in the end only those will prove benevolent who believe in nothing." – Marran Gosov
Re: SCFZ poll: George Cukor
Margo and Eve are decidedly not the same. Margo came into acting at age 4 in a Peter Pan production, and from an early age she had a natural flair for winning an audience. She never betrayed or usurped anyone... it's not even implied that she did. Eve schemes her way into the business. The real contrast is in their motivation... Eve talks about the "waves of love" coming from the audience... the theater is more real to her than the real world (per her dressing room speech). Margo is only interested in the love of one man. In short, Margo is a natural talent, but for her the theater is just part of life. For Eve it IS life. Margo's famous line about the things you drop on the way up the ladder is crucial, because Eve doesn't have those things. Margo has real friends around her, but Eve does not.
I agree with you very much that strength and weakness are no proof of value. All the talk of Wonder Woman as progress for feminism is so wrong-headed to me. My point was that by creating a scenario where the women are the stronger characters (I think there's an extremely specific reason for that, but it's another topic), it follows naturally that the destructive character(s) will be women, but so too is the most creative character, Margo. It's too easy to dismiss a movie because something doesn't seem to meet our ideals, but it's important to see first what the movie is actually trying to say. Just looking at the depth of dialogue in All About Eve, it's obvious it's not a throw-away movie. Why invest so much psychological insight just to conclude with a cheap shot at the nastiness of women? The movie's much more than that.
I agree with you very much that strength and weakness are no proof of value. All the talk of Wonder Woman as progress for feminism is so wrong-headed to me. My point was that by creating a scenario where the women are the stronger characters (I think there's an extremely specific reason for that, but it's another topic), it follows naturally that the destructive character(s) will be women, but so too is the most creative character, Margo. It's too easy to dismiss a movie because something doesn't seem to meet our ideals, but it's important to see first what the movie is actually trying to say. Just looking at the depth of dialogue in All About Eve, it's obvious it's not a throw-away movie. Why invest so much psychological insight just to conclude with a cheap shot at the nastiness of women? The movie's much more than that.
Re: SCFZ poll: George Cukor
It's not the method that's cyclical, it's the process, so, yes, it's true Margo isn't like the real Eve in the end for making the "right" choice or accepting the inevitability of the process, she was likened to the fake Eve, the mask Eve put on to obtain her goal, but at the same time Margo clearly was shown as capable of acting in ways similar to "real" Eve before choosing to accept her fate, that's what gives the character her zest as she, not Eve, is the center of the story in terms of the decisions and actions taken.
I agree of course that there is more to the movie than that, it's only in trying to draw out some recurrent themes that makes that condensed version of it useful for how it fits to the larger body of work. It isn't really possible to deal with the whole of a movie in a few short paragraphs if it has any complexity at all. None of this is to even say I think Mankiewicz or the movie is "bad" either, that too would be a simplification that doesn't say enough. Mankiewicz is too talented and observant, in his way, to be a hack and how he shows women in his films and their relationships to men is more complicated than it is for most directors, who either don't seem to think about it beyond what the script and social norms say at all or are crudely certain of their own views and thus dismissive about the question. GIlliam, for example, tends to shows older women as ridiculous and/or grotesque if they are shown as having any desire for attraction whatsoever. There's no depth of thought beyond ugly caricature. Mankiewicz follows more the lines of Picasso, not at the same level of importance or skill, but in being too much the artist to be blind to there being more to the subject than their emotions, but unable to allow that their emotions don't define the subject.
Picasso, like so many important male artists, both was deeply drawn to women and captured them in detail, but allowed his attitudes about them to shape how they were portrayed making his paintings brilliant and horrible at the same time. Mankiewicz is something like that, as are Godard and Truffaut at times and many other artists as well. They sometimes provide portraits of women in great detail and beauty, but also with a terrible emotional core to the works. The women in their works can stand out for the detail of the embodiment compared to the thin and empty options lesser artists provide, but the core isn't true or is deeply skewed to suit a view of women that justifies their wants and attitudes instead of illuminating that of the women themselves, often to harsh judgment or end.
It's in comparison that the themes and different kinds of handling are more able to be drawn out, either in a body of work or when matched against that of other works from different creators. All About Eve, for example, is similar to Ray's Born to Be Bad in some interesting ways, slightly different milieu and purpose, but the same faux innocent schemer seeking to move in on the turf of another woman. That movie has more sympathy for it's "Eve" in some ways and makes its "Margo" less central and able, leaving it more "Eve" versus the men of the movie, which both constricts the worldview of the film but also allows it to hint at rebelling against it for making it a simple question of what the woman will do next to deceive and how the men will find her out. The path is more plainly linear but its straightforwardness allows some sympathy drift to the schemer with a hint of transgression at the end in her fate. It has its own problems from the era, but offer a different sort of tone to its morality/values. Minelli's The Pirate plays with women's roles, performance and has an important mirror scene but ends in performance empowering the woman.
And to get back to the actual topic of the thread Cukor's A Woman's Face, Born Yesterday, and It Should Happen to You all have triangles and questions about identity at their heart, but take those themes in almost opposite direction than Mankiewicz, Gaslight perhaps being even more of an inversion, with it being the husband who is the fake but the woman the one being questioned which only deepens her peril. That's all just hinting at the kind of comparison and explication one could or would need to do to really dig in to the subject more, but as I don't even have a copy of most of these films on hand I can only deal in broader contrasts and suggestion. In the case of better, or more complex movies, there is also, as was briefly touched on before, competing creative forces to consider. Talking about Mankiewicz's themes leaves out talking about how Davis, Baxter, and the rest of the cast give additional and/or even contrasting possibilities to reading the movie for how one's own pleasure and attention is shaped. Talking just about All About without considering that would be foolish given how its been received and digested by the culture. Mankiewicz's themes as part of his body of work, and the various angles of approach to any individual work are gonna necessarily differ depending on what you're looking for and at. Seeing the movie, for example, as part of Bette Davis' body of work leads to a different discussion.
I agree of course that there is more to the movie than that, it's only in trying to draw out some recurrent themes that makes that condensed version of it useful for how it fits to the larger body of work. It isn't really possible to deal with the whole of a movie in a few short paragraphs if it has any complexity at all. None of this is to even say I think Mankiewicz or the movie is "bad" either, that too would be a simplification that doesn't say enough. Mankiewicz is too talented and observant, in his way, to be a hack and how he shows women in his films and their relationships to men is more complicated than it is for most directors, who either don't seem to think about it beyond what the script and social norms say at all or are crudely certain of their own views and thus dismissive about the question. GIlliam, for example, tends to shows older women as ridiculous and/or grotesque if they are shown as having any desire for attraction whatsoever. There's no depth of thought beyond ugly caricature. Mankiewicz follows more the lines of Picasso, not at the same level of importance or skill, but in being too much the artist to be blind to there being more to the subject than their emotions, but unable to allow that their emotions don't define the subject.
Picasso, like so many important male artists, both was deeply drawn to women and captured them in detail, but allowed his attitudes about them to shape how they were portrayed making his paintings brilliant and horrible at the same time. Mankiewicz is something like that, as are Godard and Truffaut at times and many other artists as well. They sometimes provide portraits of women in great detail and beauty, but also with a terrible emotional core to the works. The women in their works can stand out for the detail of the embodiment compared to the thin and empty options lesser artists provide, but the core isn't true or is deeply skewed to suit a view of women that justifies their wants and attitudes instead of illuminating that of the women themselves, often to harsh judgment or end.
It's in comparison that the themes and different kinds of handling are more able to be drawn out, either in a body of work or when matched against that of other works from different creators. All About Eve, for example, is similar to Ray's Born to Be Bad in some interesting ways, slightly different milieu and purpose, but the same faux innocent schemer seeking to move in on the turf of another woman. That movie has more sympathy for it's "Eve" in some ways and makes its "Margo" less central and able, leaving it more "Eve" versus the men of the movie, which both constricts the worldview of the film but also allows it to hint at rebelling against it for making it a simple question of what the woman will do next to deceive and how the men will find her out. The path is more plainly linear but its straightforwardness allows some sympathy drift to the schemer with a hint of transgression at the end in her fate. It has its own problems from the era, but offer a different sort of tone to its morality/values. Minelli's The Pirate plays with women's roles, performance and has an important mirror scene but ends in performance empowering the woman.
And to get back to the actual topic of the thread Cukor's A Woman's Face, Born Yesterday, and It Should Happen to You all have triangles and questions about identity at their heart, but take those themes in almost opposite direction than Mankiewicz, Gaslight perhaps being even more of an inversion, with it being the husband who is the fake but the woman the one being questioned which only deepens her peril. That's all just hinting at the kind of comparison and explication one could or would need to do to really dig in to the subject more, but as I don't even have a copy of most of these films on hand I can only deal in broader contrasts and suggestion. In the case of better, or more complex movies, there is also, as was briefly touched on before, competing creative forces to consider. Talking about Mankiewicz's themes leaves out talking about how Davis, Baxter, and the rest of the cast give additional and/or even contrasting possibilities to reading the movie for how one's own pleasure and attention is shaped. Talking just about All About without considering that would be foolish given how its been received and digested by the culture. Mankiewicz's themes as part of his body of work, and the various angles of approach to any individual work are gonna necessarily differ depending on what you're looking for and at. Seeing the movie, for example, as part of Bette Davis' body of work leads to a different discussion.
Re: SCFZ poll: George Cukor
I'm not sure we have a fundamental disagreement... I would just stress what an incredibly sympathetic and human character Margo is. Mankiewicz doesn't make it easy to admire her; you have to look past her rough edges, her insecurities, and her temperament, but underneath everything she's a brilliant character and a fine human being. It's not only her end that differs from Eve's, but her reasons for acting and her sustaining motivation. It was unprecedented for two actresses in the same movie to be nominated for Best Actress, yet in this case it's understandable. (Anne Baxter didn't agree, pointing out that the movie isn't called "All About Margo", but she had an obvious reason.) In my viewing the two are equally important, and they're meant as a comparison.
So is there room to criticize Mankiewicz for his portrayal of women? I still don't see it, but the only four of his films I've studied extensively are All About Eve, People Will Talk, A Letter to Three Wives, and Five Fingers. The latter two seem tricky to me, in the sense that most people are likely to misread their purpose, so I'm predisposed to give Mankiewicz the benefit of the doubt. All those films show a profound humanity. I've only seen Cleopatra once, but Mankiewicz was only brought on after several weeks of production.
So is there room to criticize Mankiewicz for his portrayal of women? I still don't see it, but the only four of his films I've studied extensively are All About Eve, People Will Talk, A Letter to Three Wives, and Five Fingers. The latter two seem tricky to me, in the sense that most people are likely to misread their purpose, so I'm predisposed to give Mankiewicz the benefit of the doubt. All those films show a profound humanity. I've only seen Cleopatra once, but Mankiewicz was only brought on after several weeks of production.
Re: SCFZ poll: George Cukor
this has to be the closest poll we've ever done (and maybe will ever do) - almost a 4-way tie for first place!
cukor directed seven best picture nominees, but two got no support (romeo and juliet and david copperfield). he only won once, for my fair lady in 1964, but perhaps interestingly, that was the only cukor film of the dozen or so he made after 1957 that got even one vote, so late-period cukor didn't fare too well in our poll:
1. Sylvia Scarlett (1935) -- 18 pts
2. Holiday (1938) -- 17 pts
2. The Philadelphia Story (1940) -- 17 pts
2. A Star Is Born (1954) -- 17 pts
5. Born Yesterday (1950) -- 12 pts
6. Gaslight (1944) -- 11 pts
7. The Women (1939) -- 10 pts
7. Dinner at Eight (1933) -- 10 pts
9. The Marrying Kind (1952) -- 7 pts
9. A Double Life (1947) -- 7 pts
9. A Woman's Face (1941) -- 7 pts
9. My Fair Lady (1964) -- 7 pts
13. Les Girls (1957) -- 6 pts
14. What Price Hollywood? (1932) -- 5 pts
15. Adam's Rib (1949) -- 4 pts
16. It Should Happen To You (1954) -- 3 pts
16. Manhattan Melodrama (1934) -- 3 pts
16. Little Women (1933) -- 3 pts
19. Bhowani Junction (1956) -- 2 pts
19. Girls About Town (1931) -- 2 pts
21. Edward, My Son (1949) -- 1 pt
21. No More Ladies (1935) -- 1 pt
cukor directed seven best picture nominees, but two got no support (romeo and juliet and david copperfield). he only won once, for my fair lady in 1964, but perhaps interestingly, that was the only cukor film of the dozen or so he made after 1957 that got even one vote, so late-period cukor didn't fare too well in our poll:
1. Sylvia Scarlett (1935) -- 18 pts
2. Holiday (1938) -- 17 pts
2. The Philadelphia Story (1940) -- 17 pts
2. A Star Is Born (1954) -- 17 pts
5. Born Yesterday (1950) -- 12 pts
6. Gaslight (1944) -- 11 pts
7. The Women (1939) -- 10 pts
7. Dinner at Eight (1933) -- 10 pts
9. The Marrying Kind (1952) -- 7 pts
9. A Double Life (1947) -- 7 pts
9. A Woman's Face (1941) -- 7 pts
9. My Fair Lady (1964) -- 7 pts
13. Les Girls (1957) -- 6 pts
14. What Price Hollywood? (1932) -- 5 pts
15. Adam's Rib (1949) -- 4 pts
16. It Should Happen To You (1954) -- 3 pts
16. Manhattan Melodrama (1934) -- 3 pts
16. Little Women (1933) -- 3 pts
19. Bhowani Junction (1956) -- 2 pts
19. Girls About Town (1931) -- 2 pts
21. Edward, My Son (1949) -- 1 pt
21. No More Ladies (1935) -- 1 pt
Re: SCFZ poll: George Cukor
thanks for the great conversation here guys. picasso and godard and manckiewicz oh my
also happy to see sylvia scarlett come out on top
it took me awhile to come around on that one, thx to sally
sometime i want to hear greg's critique of katherine hepburn lol
also happy to see sylvia scarlett come out on top
it took me awhile to come around on that one, thx to sallysometime i want to hear greg's critique of katherine hepburn lol
Re: SCFZ poll: George Cukor
You know me, sooner or later something will trigger a long winded take on pretty much anything, Hepburn I'm sure will be no exception, just not today as I don't have the time. (A huge disappointment for everyone I'm sure. Heh.)