The Three Faces of Eve

Alllllll better!

1957

Review: August 1, 2008

Director: Nunnally Johnson

Starring: Joanne Woodward, Lee J. Cobb, David Wayne, Edwin Jerome

If you like, not necessary.

THE SETUP:

Woman has multiple personalities, causing much trauma.

DISCUSSION:

My friend and I do movie night every week, where one week he picks the movie and one week I pick the movie. This was one of his choices, a story about a woman who has three distinct personalities, which causes her just the biggest hassle!

We get to the end of the credits, whereupon this movie announces that it is introducing Alistair Cooke, who appears a moment later, quite young, telling us about how very serious it is to have a multiple personality disorder and we should all totally wring our hands for a full minute right now. He comes on in voice-over throughout the movie to goose the story along.

Okay, so it’s 1951 Georgia, and Eve White [Joanne Woodward, who won an Oscar for this] simply cannot understand how she came to have $218 in slutty dresses and the garlands of a strumpet from local slutwear emporium The Beehive. I’m laughing a bit because what we’re referring to as slutwear, being 1951, is what we’d call a handsome prom dress today. Her husband comes home and asks Eve about them, but she says she has no clue where they came from. But she WAS having one of those odd headaches earlier…

You guessed it, Eve’s White’s other personality, Eve Black, grabbed the credit card and the keys and went on a spree. This is soon revealed by a trip to a local psychologist [or some such] who gets Eve Black to threaten to “Come out and stay out.” Eve B. thinks Eve W. is a ninny, and her husband an idiot brute. Turns out she’s right on both counts, especially about the husband. Let’s not even get into oatmeal-bland daughter Bonnie. Eve and the doctor explore with the personalities, until the husband finally gets fed up with all this “multiplied personalities” bullshit and takes off for Florida.

Eve moves into a boarding house, making such wonderful progress, when Eve B. starts going out and being, well, a floozy. She admits that she doesn’t want to go home with a soldier she’s been dancing with, and he shouts “You know how much I shelled out on you already? Eight bucks worth!” Then she switches personalities, goes home, the husband shows up, she has a big scene refusing to be with him, then switches to Eve B. and tries to seduce him. It’s a wild ride.

SPOILERS > > >
Soon a third personality emerges, Jane. Jane is supposed to be the rational and just plain nice one, but she comes off as impossibly boring and goody-goody. You want to put ants in her nonfat yogurt. And then one day a memory of being a little girl underneath the house emerges [cue innovate extra-large set!]. Soon after, the reason for the whole mental split emerges: When Jane was just a child, her mother made her kiss the corpse of her Grandmother at the old woman’s funeral. THAT'S what did it! And the very second she remembers, the other personalities go bye-bye, and Jane is released from her psychic bonds to adopt lovely Bonnie back and form a new life with some random hunk that just happened into her life. < < < SPOILERS END

As a movie, yeah, it’s an early movie from when people had just discovered the concept of multiple personalities, and it seems like a lot of what we’re supposed to do is marvel at the story and its shocking elements—regardless of the performances, the writing or the direction. None of which, despite Oscars won, I thought was much of anything special. It was interesting enough, I don’t really think it had all that much emotional resonance, it just tells a story that was kind of interesting way back in the day, but probably won’t impress too many now.

I happened to watch this movie the night before I had therapy, and the next morning, before my session, I found myself thinking about it. I thought about how mothers had just better be uber-careful with their parenting skills, because the slightest mistake may send your daughter into a lifelong mental fracture! I mean, sure, Mom could have been a little more sensitive to her child’s piercing and angished screams of horror, but you know, Eve could have just fired off an irritated “Mom!” and not had to launch into a lifelong shattering of personality. So wow, tread lightly, mothers! And two—the AMAZING reality that ALL you have to do to mend an ENTIRE LIFE LIVED AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL CRIPPLE is simply to have the right memory and PRESTO! Problem SOLVED! Watch your decades of psychological torment MELT AWAY in an instant! It is JUST as simple as that. We got a good chuckle out of that one.

So that’s about it. I think this movie is somewhat obsolete, which is not to say that it isn’t unpleasant to sit through.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

Whether you do or don't, you won’t be sorry.