Directed by Woody Allen
Movie Review by Greg Goodsell
Mama Eve (Geraldine Page) is an elegant, highly vaunted interior decorator who proves to be a handful for her husband Arthur (E. G. Marshall) and three adult daughters Renata (Diane Keaton), Flyn (Kristin Griffith) and Joey (Mary Beth Hurt). Maintaining an icy façade, Eve is overbearing, manipulative and controlling. One of her chief activities is staging elaborate suicide attempts in which she knows she will be rescued at the nick of time. It comes a no surprise that papa shortly declares at the dinner table that he will be leaving Eve for a trial separation. While the delusional Eve pines for reconciliation, dad shortly arrives at the family’s seaside home with his fiancée Pearl (Maureen Stapleton). The clash is immediate from the get-go; whereas the other characters dress in limpid grays, whites and browns, Pearl is first introduced in a blood-red dress (future superstar director Joel Schumacher served as the costume designer for this film, and Woody Allen gave him a prominent credit at the beginning of the film – and for good reason.) The sassy, brassy and outspoken Pearl grates upon the clan’s nerves. As Julie Kirgo points out on in the liner notes to this Twilight Time release – 3,000 copies, snap them up quick), while it is never made evident, Pearl is implied to be Jewish, and anti-Semitic sentiment seems to bubble just beneath the surface. Eve faces the fact that she and her husband will never be reunited and high tragedy ensues – but in a surprise twist, Pearl grants life to one of the daughters in the manner of the real-life Eve.
Movie Review by Greg Goodsell
Mama Eve (Geraldine Page) is an elegant, highly vaunted interior decorator who proves to be a handful for her husband Arthur (E. G. Marshall) and three adult daughters Renata (Diane Keaton), Flyn (Kristin Griffith) and Joey (Mary Beth Hurt). Maintaining an icy façade, Eve is overbearing, manipulative and controlling. One of her chief activities is staging elaborate suicide attempts in which she knows she will be rescued at the nick of time. It comes a no surprise that papa shortly declares at the dinner table that he will be leaving Eve for a trial separation. While the delusional Eve pines for reconciliation, dad shortly arrives at the family’s seaside home with his fiancée Pearl (Maureen Stapleton). The clash is immediate from the get-go; whereas the other characters dress in limpid grays, whites and browns, Pearl is first introduced in a blood-red dress (future superstar director Joel Schumacher served as the costume designer for this film, and Woody Allen gave him a prominent credit at the beginning of the film – and for good reason.) The sassy, brassy and outspoken Pearl grates upon the clan’s nerves. As Julie Kirgo points out on in the liner notes to this Twilight Time release – 3,000 copies, snap them up quick), while it is never made evident, Pearl is implied to be Jewish, and anti-Semitic sentiment seems to bubble just beneath the surface. Eve faces the fact that she and her husband will never be reunited and high tragedy ensues – but in a surprise twist, Pearl grants life to one of the daughters in the manner of the real-life Eve.
