THE THREE FACES OF EVE (1957)
3.5***
For
dramatic effect many Hollywood movies about mental illness have the
psychiatrist coming up with a miracle cure of the patient. In reality cure is
often difficult to achieve, but it does make for good cinema. To give
credit where it is due, The Three Faces of Eve is about a real case of
multiple personality disorder and the cure takes a matter of years .
In only her third feature film Joanne Woodward (virtually an unknown at the time) won Oscar’s Best Actress award for the 1957movie, ironically beating out Elizabeth Taylor who played a woman descending into madness in Raintree County instead of being cured. I read somewhere that the Southern born Ms. Woodward remarked ironically that it took years of training for her to lose her southern accent and then she had to find it all over again for her role in The Three Faces of Eve to win the Oscar. Obviously the Academy voters were quite impressed with how she was able to so easily change into three very different characters . She's a drab boring homemaker Eve White, a sexpot who hates her husband and loves to dance at local dive bars as Eve Black, and as Jane who's a balanced level-headed woman. The question becomes which one will ultimately dominate.
As good as Woodward is ( and she’s outstanding), my favorite scene in the movie is when the psychiatrist played by Lee J. Cobb tries to explain to Woodward's working class husband about multiple personality disorder. The “he doesn’t understand a thing I’m saying” look on Cobb's face and the blank uncomprehending expression on the husband's face say more than ten pages of dialog.
In only her third feature film Joanne Woodward (virtually an unknown at the time) won Oscar’s Best Actress award for the 1957movie, ironically beating out Elizabeth Taylor who played a woman descending into madness in Raintree County instead of being cured. I read somewhere that the Southern born Ms. Woodward remarked ironically that it took years of training for her to lose her southern accent and then she had to find it all over again for her role in The Three Faces of Eve to win the Oscar. Obviously the Academy voters were quite impressed with how she was able to so easily change into three very different characters . She's a drab boring homemaker Eve White, a sexpot who hates her husband and loves to dance at local dive bars as Eve Black, and as Jane who's a balanced level-headed woman. The question becomes which one will ultimately dominate.
As good as Woodward is ( and she’s outstanding), my favorite scene in the movie is when the psychiatrist played by Lee J. Cobb tries to explain to Woodward's working class husband about multiple personality disorder. The “he doesn’t understand a thing I’m saying” look on Cobb's face and the blank uncomprehending expression on the husband's face say more than ten pages of dialog.
The
movie is somewhat dated but is still an excellent early docudrama about a rare
form of mental illness.
NOTE: According to information on the DVD : "When the real
Eve signed the contract for the movie, the studio had her sign three separate
contracts under each of her personalities, so that they would be covered from
any possible legal action. In fact, when she signed the contract, they actually
had her go into the personalities, and the signatures were all different on the
contracts."
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