The Three Faces of Eve

Eve White is a young housewife with severe headaches and gaps in her memory. She goes to a psychiatrist. During the sessions something happens: in the middle of one she changes. Her speech, her bearing and her name are different; she introduces herself as Eve Black and is unhappy with the other Eve's life. The doctor begins to follow this movement between two personalities. Then a third appears. Nunnally Johnson directs. Joanne Woodward plays Eve. Woodward won the Academy Award for best actress for the part. She separates the three without makeup or technical trickery, using only voice, bearing and gaze. The film rests on a real case. The patient revealed her identity years later and wrote her own book, describing a process different from the film's and the doctors' account and saying her condition lasted far longer. The narrative takes the medical view and carries the psychiatric understanding of its period; the diagnosis and treatment are simple by present measure. A narrator speaks at the beginning and the end and presents the case as real, a presentational choice of the time. Its limit is structure; the plot consists of sessions and the outside world is almost absent. Who it is for: viewers who like Hollywood drama of the fifties and performance driven films. Who it is not for: the medical frame is dated, the narrative is confined to one setting, and the ending resolves too neatly.