I was reading William Goldman's brilliant account of working in Hollywood, Adventures In The Skin Trade last month, and I noticed that he lavished particular praise on a single speech in this movie, which I hadn't seen before. So when it turned up on TV this week I was of course keen to see it. And now I've seen it.

WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH!

Now don't get me wrong. The colour is stunning. The camera work is fine. Bogart as the over-the-hill ex-alcoholic writer/director does a marvellous job as a man who maintains his integrity even in a situation where he's forced to be servile. I'll also add that this is one of three performances by Ava Gardner (the other were The Night Of The Iguana and The Sun Also Rises) where I found her convincing. And I'm glad Edmond O'Brien got his Oscar for this, though I'd rather he'd got it for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

So what's wrong with it? The script, that's what.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz wrote and directed All About Eve in 1950. It's a wonderful film, in which he takes apart the world of making a Broadway Play. Now he's applying these same talents to taking apart Hollywood. And what do we get?

The story of a wonderful Spanish dancer who makes it to Hollywood. Fair enough. Let's seee her dance, then? Sorry, no: the film opens with some brilliant shots of an audience reacting to her dance (there's a woman in the audience getting a bigger kick than most of the men: kinky) but we the paying public don't get to see her. OK. Later she makes a screen test. We're told it's one of the greatest screen tests in movie history. Do we get to see it? Like hell.

What we get is dialogue. Some of it is damn good. "The world has a habit of imitating what you've seen in a bad movie." - brilliant. Sadly,a lot of the rest of it is "Gosh, Mom! Look what a clever line I just wrote!" On top of that, Mankiewicz can't just Let The Picture Tell The Story - surely Rule One of film-making - no, he's got to tell all through voice-over commentaries. Three I counted. First by Bogie, then by O'Brien, finally by Rosanna Brazzi. Sorry, Joe - we actually came to see a story, not to listen to the audiobook of a novel read by three actors.

So let's get back to this wonderful line that made such an impression on William Goldman.

There's a party going on. Bogie is playing backgammon with his wife (Elizabeth Sheppard) and Ava Gardner. A drunk loser starlet comes up and insults Gardner. Sheppard (who has scarcely had a line in the film so far) turns on her with the line, "What she's got, you couldn'tspell, and what you've got, you used to have."

Goldman thinks it was a great coup du theatre to give the line to Sheppard. I think it was sloppy scripting. We've hardly seen the woman before. We've never seen the drunk blonde before. What we've got here is a good line that Mankiewicz has come up with. He wants to give it to someone in some sort of scene. He can't be bothered to set one up properly, so he hands it to a minor character to say to a non-character.

Anyone can come up with a good line. To be a writer means fitting your lines into a good script. You didn't do it, Joe.

Oh, we do eventually get to see Ava dancing. She's terrible.

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They did chat up a storm didn't they. It kept me entertained for a few hours though.
It was the only movie where I thought Ava Gardner looked attractive, instead of like a guy in drag.

I enjoyed your review more than the movie. I watched it a few weeks ago myself.

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