All About Eve

...Aaaaand I'm finally back to writing about an actual film again, after thirteen months of hiatus.

1950's All About Eve, starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter, entered my consciousness after watching a compilation of the American Film Institute's "100 Years, 100 Quotes" series, which features Bette's immortal line "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night." I realized then that I'd never actually seen a Bette Davis film, despite her legendary career and volcanic presence onscreen. Combining all that with the film's status as being one of the earliest for one up-and-coming Marilyn Monroe, and that I knew the plot dealt with backstage drama (of particular interest to me, a now-and-then performer), All About Eve made quite a case for viewing.

When I did finally have time to watch the thing, I did so while cooking dinner one night. Alfred Newman's score soared over the opening credits as I banged around the kitchen with pots and pans, and Addison DeWitt began his opening monologue just as I started to season whatever was sautéing on the stove. In stolen glances during my cooking process I caught a glimpse of Bette (with a delicious, sardonic lift of an eyebrow) turning down a mixer for her whiskey at the film's fictional equivalent of the Tony Awards, and I knew I had to start the whole thing over— I couldn't miss a frame of this.

All About Eve takes place over the course of eight-ish months— though to paraphrase playwright’s wife Karen Richards (Celeste Holm) "in the theater, a lifetime is a season and a season a lifetime." Most of the film is therefore told in flashback, looking back from the awards night at which Eve (THE Eve, Eve Harrington, The Golden Girl, The Girl Next Door, etc., played truly diabolically by Anne Baxter) has become the youngest person to ever win the yearly award for Best Performance on the New York stage.

It's a good framing device, and one that I actually forgot about by the end of the film when we all returned to that auditorium for Eve to accept said award. In between those bookends, a tale unfolds of laughter, tears, gumption, insecurity, love, adultery, and basically everything else you'd expect to find in a story about the theatre.

Margo Channing (Bette Davis) is introduced as a long-running star of the stage at her peak, which, for actresses in 1950, means that she has just turned 40 and her career is on the one-way track into decline. She's in a long-term fling with Bill Sampson, a hotshot director eight years her junior, who loves her deeply. They're friends with playwright Lloyd Richards and his wife Karen. On the fringes of this little clique is theatrical critic and all-around sociopath Addison DeWitt, whose cynicism puts him at odds with the foursome.

Enter Eve. Eve is brought backstage to meet her idol, Margo, one night after being spotted at the stage door again by Karen. After some coaxing by the gang, Eve reveals that she's a war widow, an amateur actress, and all alone in the world. It's in this dressing-room dialogue that we first encounter a staple of this film: the mirror shot. In this world where identity is defined by exterior means— casting, criticism, applause— the mirror shot allows Mankiewicz to provide those means subtly, without alerting an audience to his designs just yet.

In many ways, All About Eve is all about identity— building it, maintaining it, and losing it. Margo's primary conflict in this film is her relationship with the idea of Eve: Eve, a potential usurper to her identity— professionally, romantically, and psychologically. Eve has the talent and traits to potentially take everything she holds dear. Eve’s struggle with identity is that she has to craft hers entirely from scratch— she has nothing, and nothing to lose. Eve moves from anonymity, through a Machiavellian attempt at supplanting Margo, and to her final form as a living embodiment of an award show trophy— golden, glittering, and ultimately hollow.

For a film about literal drama, however, the actual confrontations between the two main characters are quite tame. Eve’s strategy seems to be one of non-aggression: anytime Margo attacks Eve, Eve holds her characteristic soft-spoken innocence, letting Margo’s paranoic outbursts alienate everyone around her. Eve plays on Margo’s deepest fears: being alone, forgotten, unloved— allowing Margo to destroy herself from within. And boy, does Margo do it with flair.

To say that Bette Davis succeeds in this film is a gross understatement. She sizzles with barely-contained passion during her most powerful sequences; her caprice and charisma flash out from those legendary eyes. Her loss of the Oscar for this role is a true injustice and ironically happened in some measure because of Anne Baxter’s insistence that her portrayal of “Eve” be considered for Best Actress instead of Supporting Actress, splitting the All About Eve votes, and giving Judy Holliday the prize. (I’m 100% editorializing here, it could have easily gone to Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard.)

Bette’s performance is amplified by a delightful script, her one-liners landing with devastating precision and without fanfare— the audience just comes to accept that she and the rest of these characters can volley dialogue back and forth between them like the best players at Wimbledon.

Margo (to Eve): “Don’t get up. And please stop acting as if I were the Queen Mother.”

Bill (to Margo): “Outside of a beehive, Margo, your behavior would hardly be considered either queenly or motherly.

Margo (to Bill): “You’re in a beehive, pal— didn’t you know? We’re all busy little bees, full of stings, making honey day and night— (to Eve) aren’t we, honey?”

The way Margo overcomes her primary obstacle— namely, her self-doubt about her age and status— is that she recognizes the dissonance between her on- and offstage lives. She breaks out of the cycle of theatre, ending whatever power the threat of Eve’s ascent might have held over her. She comes to know that the rigmarole of the stage is a fantasy, an escapist world where people gather to leave real life behind, and where those same people presume to define her and her worth. By giving it up and marrying Bill, she self-actualizes, and reengages with her humanity and her reality.

Margo: “I've finally got a life to live! I don't have to play parts I'm too old for— just because I've got nothing to do with my nights."

This is in marked contrast to Eve, who can’t leave the theatre even though she might clearly want to. Addison has outmaneuvered her and blackmailed her into a relationship, and so even the thrill of achieving the heights of stardom leave her weary and unsatisfied, and lonely.

All About Eve’s conclusion brings us right down to the final scene— a hall of mirrors, a labyrinth of frames around a bright new ingenue, an Eve-to-be— conveying to us that Eve herself is not so much an individual, but a vessel for another theatrical role. “Eves” pop up regularly, and they’re always ready to prey on opportunity and on those who can't or won’t see past pleasant façades— that is to say, people who prefer theatre to reality.

I’ve designed this poster to reflect the duality of these two women. Their identities blend together and yet stand markedly different. The color palette moves from the bright gold of award season to the shadowy brown of the backstage world. I designed a midcentury typeface for the title; modeled after the marquees and industrial posters of years gone by.

War and Peace

It's a book again.

Here's the thing: I know it's earned a reputation as being an overly-long, pretentious brick of paper, but I assure you, I only started reading War and Peace because I listened to the musical adaptation of its middle few chapters: Dave Malloy's Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. It's the most soap-operatic and romantic part of the novel, and set to techno beats and Russian folk melodies– well, what's a lowbrow lad to do? I wanted more.

With 1215 pages, Tolstoy has ample space to develop characters that are rich and riotous. The narrative moves fluidly between their internal monologues and exterior action, giving humanity to characters of all ages and stations. Old, thorny Marya Dmitryevna, hedonistic playboy (read: blonde) Anatole, introverted, devout Princess Marya– they all get a fair treatment under Tolstoy's hand.

It's not difficult to empathize with all of them, but I found particular affinity with the two protagonists, whose dilemmas and flaws I find myself oscillating between at this stage in life. Natasha Rostova is naïve and proud, a youth whose impulsiveness and puckish nature get her in over her head; Pierre Bezukhov is a bon vivant whose early years of adulthood have left him jaded and tired, wondering what to do next.

Compound that with the general feeling in Moscow that the distant rumblings of Napoleon will never reach them (much as the woes of the world at large today haven't penetrated the insular gardens of Lincoln, Nebraska) and you've got a book that landed in my lap at an eerily appropriate moment.

Natasha and Pierre belong primarily to the Peace chapters of the novel; the War segments follow Pierre's best friend (and Natasha's eventual fiancé), Andrei, and the big man himself– Napoleon. 

Some readers have claimed that one can skip some of the War and be just fine, and to them, I say that there's a reason it's long. Tolstoy himself served in combat, and it's his answer to human violence, making it so arduous to endure. War isn't a quick action-packed episode; it's pure destruction, the impact of which is often felt for generations. It's an on-and-on kind of nightmare.

The War chapters also allow Tolstoy to provide his thoughts on humanity: its existence and habits, and how studying it often raises more questions than it does answers. It's his complete worldview in essay form, and it's far more articulate and philosophically sound than anything I could ever hope to pen. Near the end of the book, he ruminates on history in general, and the rather approximate way we approach it. Why, he asks, did all those men from Western Europe march thousands of miles eastward toward Moscow? Simply because Napoleon asked them to? Maybe, but his word couldn't keep them from looting and deserting. It's not as easy as saying, "Napoleon ordered it, so it happened," because there were several hundred thousand soldiers with intellects and wills and arms that at any point could deviate from their orders, and many did. Tolstoy asserts that the Napoleonic Wars happened because they had to. Men do the same things over and over again, every day, but what keeps them from going mad is the illusion that they have the power to act differently, should they choose. If one feels completely bound to never changing, one dies. 

The Peace chapters (a Tumblr user who speaks Russian provided the insight that the translation of Tolstoy's original title, Война и миръ, could more accurately be translated as War and Society, implying that the juxtaposition between the words is not simply action vs. inaction, but bloody chaos vs. social order) address the problems already inherent in the Russian aristocracy a century before the Revolution of 1917. They are idle, wasteful, and for the most part, unequipped to deal with existing outside of their extravagantly choreographed leisure. But my, are they entertaining.

As per usual, I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll leave off with a quote that has stuck with me since finishing this behemoth.

"To understand all is to forgive all."

– This one stuck with me because I know from experience that it is much harder to forgive someone when you can't comprehend where they're coming from. In turn, once you can empathize with a person, it's much harder to hold on to a grudge. In the context of war, it's why diplomacy is so important. If you can reach common-ground before you reach a battleground, you can save a lot of time and resources. And limbs.

//

I did the cover far more minimally than I typically do for anything else, but it's War and Peace, man, come on. The title is enigmatic and grand and too much embellishment would be gilding the lily. I did sample a bit of illustration from the British Library's public domain Flickr account, since it's filled to the brim with material from around the time of the novel's publication. The comet motif is a nod to Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, but also to the reason that title was chosen for the musical: in a time where men wreak so much destruction, the arrival of the comet is a reminder of the immensity of the universe and the foolishness of mortals who commit acts of atrocity in their minutes on earth. 

Also, I kept it stripped back because I modeled the type off of a modernist Cyrillic typeface from a Soviet toothpaste ad, and I didn't want to hide it with frippery.

The Book Thief

It took exactly one post to already diverge from refreshing movie posters to doing a book cover, but technically The Book Thief was adapted for film– I just choose to forget about it, because it wasn’t nearly as macabre or darkly beautiful as the novel, and nobody has the time for bad adaptations.

Markus Zusak’s 2005 novel The Book Thief chronicles the adolescence of a young German orphan during World War II, tracing her relationships with her foster parents, her (sometimes unlikely) friends, and ultimately, with Death, who functions as the story’s narrator.

I picked it up on a whim based on an emphatic recommendation by my dear friend Rebekka, who had recently been wrecked by Zusak’s tale. I’m torn between wanting to give a full synopsis and wanting everyone to go to their friendly neighborhood library or their unfriendly distant Amazon and get wrecked themselves; so I think I’ll just address what makes this piece important enough to want to make fan art about it. And, disclaimer: I haven’t read it in its entirety in a while, instead going back for the moments that demand another reading from time to time.

Putting it plainly, I’m a sucker for any story in which characters have to move from ignorant youth into the tremendous pressure of knowledge, and the moral responsibility that comes with that. Liesel (our protagonist) is doing her best to stay tender-hearted and sympathetic in Nazi Germany, which is no easy feat. Her foster-parents Hans and Rosa give her the tools to emerge on the other side of the war with her sense of hope intact: that is, creative energy (from Hans), endurance (from Rosa) and love (from them both). She learns to read with the help of Max, a Jewish man harbored by her foster-parents, and along the way, acquires the powerful ability to see that words give people the means to reach and understand one another, to find common ground with others, and ownership of herself even as civilization collapses around her.

The character of Death framing the story is as powerful as it is poetic. Death is impartial, so, as a narrator, he’s perfect. He’s there for the final moments of Liesel’s friends and family, and each loss has a profound effect on her young life. Death is also a romantic (what else?), so his asides are invariably poignant and Wagnerian in scale. It’s his viewpoint that can move the book’s perspective on war from painful personal experiences to an age-old meditation on the senselessness and waste of hatred and violence. He sees his moments of soul-harvesting in vivid color, as if those dying and the manner in which they die can affect the way the world looks to him. Reading this book actually got me into the habit of identifying my feelings in terms of color, which is how I ended up with a bunch of Spotify playlists defined by the color I feel when I listen to them.

A quote from Death (about meeting him) before I get back to doing serious work: “His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do - the best ones. The ones who rise up and say "I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come." Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out. More of them have already found their way to other places.”

In thinking about how this cover ought to look, I wanted something that would convey the relationship between Liesel and Death: how, even when she’s far away from him, she’s still surrounded by him on all sides, small and awkward and human as she is. I also knew that the colors had to be lurid, the way Death illustrates the last moments of human lives in startling, searing color. Red and yellow are among the colors Death describes during air raids; and Liesel’s friend Rudy is consistently identified by his hair, the color of lemons. I modeled the title’s typeface off a bit of blackletter text from a Nazi propaganda poster, and gave everything a little bit of a charred look where possible.

The Philadelphia Story

This is the beginning of a blog series in which I’m going to try to get back in the habit of writing about cinema (which I did a lot in college) as well as getting practice in for designing arts promotions (which I do regularly). I decided to start with 1940’s The Philadelphia Story because it was back in theaters last week, and I think I sighed at the end, it was that good. Also, *SPOILER ALERT* for anyone wanting to see the film without any knowledge of the plot.

I saw The Philadelphia Story for the first time in the summer of 2010.

Eager to expose myself (wait, what?) to the art I’d theretofore neglected, I saw a shabby DVD case on a library shelf and took it home to share with a few friends whose favorite films starred Jimmy Stewart (It’s a Wonderful Life) and Cary Grant (Bringing Up Baby).

It never made it off the cutting room floor for us, as they say. I tried watching it in advance to gauge how well it would go over in a social setting, and deemed the pacing too slow to hold the attention of a gaggle of eighteen-year-olds (read:me) for the full runtime. I think we ended up watching Singin’ in the Rain again.

In any case, I didn’t think about The Philadelphia Story again until I found it on my computer a year later, and, in the same way one idly eats whatever mediocre snacks appear in the course of daily life– simply because they’re there– I interrupted my unenthusiastic attempt at homework to commit to watching it.

To be fair to eighteen-year-old me, the early exposition scenes of the film are oddly constructed. George Cukor, whose work I adore almost without exception, introduces the major players thusly: first, a quick little pantomime of Tracy Lord (Hepburn) and C.K. Dexter Haven’s (Grant) semi-abusive marital discord, second, a rather longer scene with the lady Lords– elegant Tracy, impish Dinah, and traditional Mother Lord– preparing for a wedding, which presents the many internal familial conflicts in a tightly-packed scene that requires absolute attention to pick up on tensions later on, thirdly, a bizarrely long montage of doors opening at a tabloid office to bring in sardonic writer/photographer duo Macaulay “Mike” Connor (Stewart) and Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey), and finally, a better-paced scene with Tracy and upstanding fiancé George at the stables, revealing his moralistic persona as well as his vainglory.

Once you have the stakes well in place, though, The Philadelphia Story takes off. Tracy, brought to life with Katharine Hepburn’s electric, indomitable spirit, is beautiful and charismatic– and yet, her intolerance for weakness in herself and others damages her relations with nearly everyone she knows. With the exception of Liz Imbrie, every character makes a comment or the occasional scene-long monologue about Tracy’s emotional hardness, lack of understanding, and general tendency to keep people at a distance, particularly those she cares about. A poetic accusation from Dexter cites her “blank intolerance,” and “prejudice against weakness,” and Dexter, Mike, and George all liken her to a “virgin goddess” and a “distant queen.” Tracy despises these accolades from Dexter's lips, knowing them to be mocking, but George uses them to describe what he likes best about her– her purity and unattainability, her reputation, and how she will add to his status and elevate his class.

Class is a bit of a hot-button issue in Main Line society, and a thematic point for the characters to argue about. While initially, Mike, Liz, and George have either contempt or undue respect for the blue-blooded Lords and Dexter, by the end of the film, Tracy, Dexter, Mike, and Liz seem to have reached the consensus that class, on some level, is not defined by money. Being a first-class woman, or writer, or human being hinges on learning “to have some small regard for human frailty.” Generosity of spirit, not lucre, is what separates George and Tracy at The Philadelphia Story’s conclusion. And ironically, George– a self-identified man of the people– finds himself on the miserly side of that class divide.

Unable to give Tracy the benefit of the doubt after her early-morning, champagne-fueled swim with Mike, George presumes her guilty of full-fledged fornication before getting the full story from her. Upon learning of her innocence, he maintains that his verdict was just, as “all the evidence was there,” but for once, Tracy has to play the misunderstood supplicant. She realizes that in situations where people don’t have all the facts, they believe what they want to believe– and that reveals the kind of people they are, be that understanding or priggish. Frustrated with George’s lack of understanding in the same way that Dexter, and Mike, and Dinah, and her parents have been frustrated with hers, she ends their engagement, in order to own her flaws at last.

A point I’ve taken issue with is Tracy’s father’s insinuation that he might not have embarked on an affair with a chorus girl if Tracy had been more emotionally present. It’s a dodgy thing to do, blaming someone else for your own destructive choices. But I also understand that the point of the scene is to better demonstrate that Tracy’s invulnerability has damaged her familial as well as her romantic bonds. And, her adulterous father’s assertions that she’s a “prig, and a perennial spinster” are what catalyze her drunken escapade (and the revelations it causes) later in the night.

This movie has a special place for me in the empty space where most humans have a heart; it’s always fun watching a film with an emotionally unavailable protagonist and inevitably drawing constant comparisons to your own life. And if you’re among the litany of people who have been made victim to that, I really am sorry.

There is also a scene at the end of the film with lighting I can’t quite get over. It’s just daylight, but it’s an intensity and angle and temperature of daylight that I remember most vividly from a very specific day, on which I had brunch at my grandparents’ parish hall and ate sausages and pancakes. I associate it with the simplicity of childhood, but also with my grandparents, and an era where people wore tailored clothing and sent letters. It looks how 1940 ought to look in my mind.

The costumes in The Philadelphia Story are also absolutely dynamite, and I could fill an entire blog about them, but for brevity’s sake, I’ll leave you with the knowledge that you haven’t seen a peak lapel until you’ve seen the peak lapels sported by Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant.

Anyway, I can’t recommend this picture enough! I’m going to try to write about / design new art for my favorite (or maybe not-so-favorite?) films pretty regularly, though what interval of time that will be is anyone’s guess. Congrats on reading this far, if you’ve read this far!

In refreshing the poster for the film (read:fan-art), I designed a typeface that was a little art-deco-y but also somewhat hoity-toity, as Katharine Hepburn is when she's in her gleaming white engagement dress with the geometric sequin embellishments (That's the white title, the quote beneath is in a typeface called Matchbook from One by Four). I also found a promo shot with the three men of the story seemingly accusing her of being the problem, while Hepburn rolls her eyes, which I love. There's also a running metaphor throughout the story likening love to sailing; Dexter builds Tracy a boat called the "True Love," known for its easy handling (yare, to use a nautical term). He plans on replacing it with a new boat (the True Love 2nd), which Tracy threatens to blow out of the water, making a subtle argument that maybe you only truly love once. I don't think I believe that, but it's a romantic notion and I do love me a romantic notion every now and then. I also included the Spanish proverb from Macaulay Connor's book: "with the rich and mighty, always a little patience." Going back to what I said about class earlier, I think that quote can apply to anyone who's proud: they just need time and patience to get knocked down a few pegs. And, it's a little enigmatic, which is what a good poster should be, in my mind. So, there we are.