The Three Faces of Eve

Multiple Personality Disorder is a great narrative tool, as excellently used in movies like "Fight Club" "Primal Fear" even "Identity does a very good job with it. This movie is based on the real thing, and those other movies aren't to far off, well maybe not "Identity" that was way off reality but whatever.

The story if of a wall flower, sad little woman named Eve White (played by Joanne Woodward, as well as she plays the other 2 personalities that exist within her) Eve is having head aches and blackouts, she sees a psychiatrist who seems to be helping her until Eve Black emerges, a play girl who really doesn't like Eve White all that much. The doctors do what they can to try and merge the two personalities until Eve Black starts blacking out, and then Jane enters the picture, the third and final personality (in real life the woman had 26 separate personalities) As they figure out why she ended up like this we learn the inciting incident which is more than a little creepy, but I wont say more.

Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for her performance, which she fully deserved, with little more than her face and minor hair changes she goes from one personality to another, most times right in front of our eyes, no cuts. Her husband in it is a total tool, and the doctor in the movie seems really nice and I just wish he had been in real life (The real woman wrote a book, and got the movie deal, but he made her sign something that withheld all rights she had to the material, she didn't make a dime from the book she wrote, the doctor did)

The thing that bothered me about the movie, and its indicative of older movies, its easy to see that every scene is a set on a sound stage, and the lighting was more than a little heavy with the shadows, but that is what they did then. For only being 90 minutes it feels a lot longer, but its because there is no real action (as my cousin Scott put it, it could have been a play) It was a strong movie story wise and acting. If your like me and appreciate modern cinema more, then it might not totally appeal to you, but still a good one. 7/10 stars.

Director: Nunnally Johnson

Starring: Joanne Woodward, David Wayne, Lee J. Cobb, Edwin Jerome