All about Eve 1950 - "Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night!"

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 8,4

Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Main Cast: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill, Hugh Marlowe, Gregory Ratoff, Barbara Bates, Marilyn Monroe, Thelma Ritter

"Based on the story The Wisdom of Eve by Mary Orr, All About Eve is an elegantly bitchy backstage story revolving around aspiring actress Eve Harrington. A skewering satire of the theatre world, All About Eve entertains while it eviscerates. This is a film that really does have it all: Joseph L. Mankiewicz's sure-handed direction and gloriously poisonous screenplay, celluloid diva Bette Davis at her disdainful best, uniformly excellent performances from the supporting cast, and costumes that further demonstrate that designer Edith Head did indeed give good wardrobe. The fact that All About Eve swept the 1950 Academy Awards (receiving six, including Best Picture) speaks to all of these qualities, but a great deal of the film's historical and cinematic importance lies in its content. For years, Broadway had taken aim at Hollywood, and now the tables were turned with considerable venom. Mankiewicz's script summoned into existence a whole array of painfully recognizable theatre types, from the aging, egomaniacal grand dame to the outwardly docile, inwardly scheming ingenue to the powerful critic who reeks of malignant charm." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

Rebecca 1940 - Hitchcock's hauntingly atmospheric masterpiece

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 8,3

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Main Cast: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith Anderson, Nigel Bruce, Reginald Denny, C. Aubrey Smith, Gladys Cooper

"Producer David O. Selznick's 's second consecutive Best Picture (after the previous year's Gone With the Wind) and another enormously popular adaptation of a bestseller, this adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's novel was also the first American film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenwriters Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison recreated du Maurier's novel precisely, complete with the ideal casting of new star Laurence Olivier as brooding Maxim de Winter and insecure neophyte Joan Fontaine as his timid new bride. Rebecca displayed Hitchcock's unparalleled talent for ominous atmosphere, as he derived suspense from the clash between Fontaine and Judith Anderson's coldly sadistic, Rebecca-obsessed Mrs. Danvers. The elaborately appointed Manderley mansion became a character in itself, with Rebecca's expressively lit, diaphanously curtained bedroom, overlooking a suitably wild ocean, evoking her all-consuming absent presence.
Selznick's and Hitchcock's attention to detail paid off with eleven Oscar nominations, including Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress, and it won the top prize as well as an award for George Barnes's cinematography. David O. Selznick had the final cut of the picture, which was drastically altered from Hitchcock's original vision." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links: