Structure in 'All About Eve'

Structure in 'All About Eve'

1. circular narrative

   • opens and ends with 'Sarah Siddons Award'
     • Addison's perspective influences audience perception
     • prestigious event, highlighting significance
       • reinforced with freeze frame, unusual at time
   • starts in June
     • extended flashback, to previous October
       • accentuates Eve's sudden rise to fame
         • audience follows her journey, therefore understanding "all about Eve" as Addison states
           • lack of moral decency
         • fickle nature of theatre industry
       • linear framework
       • ends with postscript, which reveals Eve in apartment
         • reinforces nature of industry, with Phoebe waiting in wings
         • emphasises Eve's hollow victory

2. multi-voiced narration

   • Addison, Margo and Karen
     • Addison's voice is acerbic and sarcastic
       • spiteful and venomous, but as ambitious as Eve
       • benefits from her success
     • Margo and Karen are critical of Eve's meteoric rise
       • they create sympathy, further alienating Eve
       • emphasises Margo's conflicting interests, in stardom and family
         • heightens contrast between glamour of Hollywood and gloomy nature of backstage life
   • each has a vested interest in Eve's rise to fame
     • voices offer subjective viewpoints, limited by their own perspective
   • conflicting viewpoints create a more realistic, truthful picture of Eve
     • music echoes personalities
   • Deliberate delay of Eve's entrance

3. highlights Mankiewicz's purpose

   • challenges perception of Hollywood glamour
   • multiple problems for women in man's world
   • passing of time
     • success for women and womanhood are incompatible