Amazon.com Essentials:
Showered with Oscars, this wonderfully bitchy (and witty)
comedy written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz concerns an aging
theater star (Bette Davis) whose life is being supplanted by a
wolf-in-sheep's-clothing ingenue (Anne Baxter) whom she helped. This
is a film for a viewer to take in like a box of chocolates, packed
with scene-for-scene delights that make the entire story even better
than it really is. The film also gives deviously talented actors such
as George Sanders and Thelma Ritter a chance to speak dazzling lines;
Davis bites into her role and never lets go. A classic from
Mankiewicz, a legendary screenwriter and the brilliant director of A Letter to Three
Wives, The
Barefoot Contessa, and Sleuth. --Tom
Keogh
