Voici les (presque) dernières répliques de Bette Davies dans un de mes films préférés du cinéma américain, ALL ABOUT EVE. C’est probablement aussi le meilleur film qu’on puisse trouver sur le sujet du théâtre et du métier d’acteur.
Si vous avez oublié le sujet de All about Eve, allez donc relire ma Critique aisée n°59, dont voici le lien :
https://leblogdescoutheillas.com/?p=4196
Cette tirade que je vous propose n’est pas vraiment dans l’air du temps, pas vraiment féministe, et elle risque d’attirer au JdC quelques commentaires acides ou furibards. Eh bien, tant pis. Considérez seulement qu’on est en 195O, que c’est Mankiewicz qui écrit et qui dirige, que c’est Margo Channing, la plus grande actrice de Broadway du moment, qui parle, et qu’elle est interprétée par Bette Davies, la plus grande actrice d’Hollywood du moment.
« So many people know me !… I wish I did. I wish someone would tell me about me…
Besides something spelled out in light bulbs, I mean.
Besides something called the temperament, which consists mostly of swooping about on a broomstick, screaming at the top of my voice.
Infants behave the way I do, you know. They carry on and misbehave -they’d get drunk if they knew how- when they can’t have what they want, when they feel unwanted, or insecure, or unloved.
More than anything in this world, I love Bill, and I want Bill. I want him to want me, but me, not Margo Channing. And if I can’t tell them apart, how can he?
About Eve, I’ve acted pretty disgracefully towards her too. Oh, let’s not fumble for excuses, not here and now with my hair down. At best, let’s say I’ve been… oversensitive to… well to the fact that she’s so young, so feminine and helpless… to so many things I want to be for Bill…
Funny business, a woman’s career : the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster, you forget you’ll need them again when you go back to being a woman. That’s one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not, being a woman, sooner or later we have to work at, no matter what other careers we’ve had or wanted, and in the last analysis, nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed and there he is. Without that, you’re not a woman, you’re something with a French provincial office or a book full of clippings, but you’re not a woman… Slow curtain… The End. »