Bette Davis well-known, particularly "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night". She was again nominated for an Academy Award, and critics such as Gene Ringgold described her Margo as her "all-time best performance". Pauline Kael wrote that much of Mankiewicz' vision of "the theater" was "nonsense", but commended Davis, writing "[the film is] saved by one performance that is the real thing: Bette Davis is at her most instinctive and assured. Her actress - vain, scared, a woman who goes too far in her reactions and emotions - makes the whole thing come alive." Davis won a Best Actress
All About Eve theme in "All About Eve" is that the defense of the norms of heterosexuality, specifically in terms of patriarchal marriage, must be upheld in the face of challenges from female agency and homosexuality. The nurturing heterosexual relationships of Margo and Bill and of Karen and Lloyd serve to contrast with the loveless relationship predation and sterile careerism of the homosexual characters, Eve and Addison. Eve uses her physical femininity as a weapon to try to break up the marriages of both couples, and Addison's extreme cynicism serves as a model of Eve's future. Even film reviewer Kenneth Geist, despite being