Thursday, August 08, 2019
The Three Faces of Eve
- Commentary: What actor doesn't love a chance to display their skills by playing a character with DID (Dissociative Personality Disorder - Multiple Personality Disorder)? Many try; a surprising number succeed. After all, what is an actor but someone who has the desire and the ability to take on character after character after character ... which accounts for the fact that, having seen many of these movies (and owning a few), I can't recall ever seeing a bad one. The Three Faces of Eve with Joanne Woodward was made in 1957 and continues to show up on lists with titles like "The [Number] Best DID Movies". Yes Virginia, there are such lists, scads of them, I just discovered. Before I wrote up this movie, I couldn't help but recall that Split is such a movie, and that, throughout my life, I can remember several actors playing DID people. A few of the articles include certain superhero characters in the DID category. This had never occurred to me, but, surely, The Hulk would qualify.
So, anyway, Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve is neither the first, nor the last actor to take on multiple-characters-in-one, but she certainly turned in a fine performance [or, would that be "performance'S'"?]. Yes, I've seen this movie before, and, although this movie isn't the reason I bought the four-pack, it's certainly an attractive addition. Characterizations of multiple characters are guaranteed to be poignant, for better and worse, but, if my memory serves me correctly, this is one of the better poignant performances of such a disorder.
Update 1/12/21: A few days ago I noticed this missing from the four pack of movies which included this one. At first I figured I must have misfiled it in another movie jacket and mildly despaired at trying to find it among the hundreds of movie jackets I own. Then, yesterday, I recovered a faint memory of giving it to one of my nieces a few years ago, the one who is an actress. I even recall, at the time, thinking she'd really enjoy it, where as I probably wouldn't watch it, again, even though I didn't dislike it; I was, however, put off by the melodramatic aspects of the movie. I'll have to check with her. I hope I'm right about this. If not, well, who knows how long it will take me to discover where I misfiled it!
Update 3/29/21: I finally found this movie, lurking in a blu-ray case I'd bought for splitting collections into separate movies. Why I'd taken this out of it's original collection case and placed it in it's own case without doing that to the others, I'll never know, but, oh, well, I've found it now.
Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Joanne Woodward Eve White/Eve Black/Jane David Wayne Ralph White Lee J. Cobb Dr. Curtis Luther Edwin Jerome Dr. Francis Day Alena Murray Secretary Nancy Kulp Mrs. Black Douglas Spencer Mr. White Alistair Cooke Narrator
Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
Release Date: 1957
Directed by Nunnally Johnson.
Labels: drama3, haunting1, joanne-woodward, popcorn-and-soda1, psychological1
