The Three Faces of Eve

Winner of the 1958 Oscar for Best Actress (for Joanne Woodward), no other nominations.

I will say this much for The Three Faces of Eve... It is admirable, particularly for the time that this film was made, that the filmmakers decided to give such a sympathetic portrayal of a woman with a psychological disorder. There is, however, a reason that this movie didn't get any other nominations besides Woodward's. Her performance is impressive. She is quite believable as each of Eve's distinct personalities, and the viewer can always tell with just a glance which of the personalities she is inhabiting at any given time.

Beyond that, however, the film is what it is: a portrayal of a complex medical disorder that had only recently been discovered, and about which very little was known at the time. What was then a riveting look at a mysterious disorder is now just dated and hokey. It is actually dated and hokey on two levels. One is the style of storytelling. The use of voiceover narration is meant, I'm sure, to give the film a more documentary feel, but it really just took me, as a viewer, out of the story, and made the movie feel old.

The other way in which the film feels dated is in the content itself. This is actually accentuated by the opening scene, in which journalist Alistair Cooke introduces the film and briefly lectures the audience about how most films that proclaim to be based on a true story bear little resemblance to the actual facts of the story that they tell, but that this film is different, and everything in it is absolutely true. The film goes on to give an entirely oversimplified portrait of multiple personality disorder. Eve White's doctors come to the instant conclusion that she has multiple personalities, despite the fact that, at the time, that disorder had only recently begun to be theorized about, and very few of the doctors who would have even heard of the disorder truly believed that it actually existed.

Eve is able to switch personalities at will, simply because the doctors ask her to. For one thing, most people who truly have multiple personalities are not even aware of the other personalities, much less able to switch between them at will. For another, if Eve was able to switch personalities at will, why didn't she simply choose the personality that she liked, and suppress the others. If she had that much control over it, it wouldn't have caused problems in her life.

Finally, the conclusion of the film wraps the disorder up entirely too quickly and easily. In actual cases of multiple personality, it is generally the case that many years of torturous physical, psychological, and/or sexual abuse must occur before the patient begins to manifest multiple personalities. The single traumatic event described at the conclusion of this film would not be nearly enough to create that level of psychological disorder. Presumably, the filmmakers had to soften the blow, to come up with an alternate trauma that would be more palatable to audiences, in order to get the film made. But the result is that the film is rather unbelievable and unsophisticated now that more is known about multiple personality disorder. In addition, in the film, as soon as Eve and her doctor uncover the traumatic event that caused her disorder, the discovery is enough for her to get over the trauma. Her alternate personalities instantly disappear, and she is all better. This is nothing but a Hollywood happy ending. The patient upon whom Eve was based first sought treatment in 1951. The film was made in 1958. The patient upon whom Eve was based was still in constant psychological treatment until the mid-1970s. Clearly, the film was not as 100% loyal to the facts as the introduction would have you believe.

Movie trivia: What was the longest film to win the Oscar for Best Picture? The answer, most likely, will be my next post.