Review of The Three Faces of Eve

Joanne Woodward won her Oscar for performing the role of a woman with 3 "multiplied" personalities in this Nunnally Johnson film. While I'm somewhat dubious about the medical veracity of this film, it does provide a compelling drama. Lee J. Cobb also gave an interesting performance as the doctor who is trying to help her with a problem that he doesn't even fully understand. What I liked best about the movie was the fact that the "bad girl" persona (Eve Black), who seemed at first simply a shallow representation of her repressed sexuality, actually becomes a very sympathetic and believable character in her own right. The scene where Eve Black weeps about the damage she's done to Eve White is the most affecting in the movie. However I didn't think there was enough differentiation between Eve White and Jane. I thought David Wayne's performance was intriguing; he's a husband who in the end is less concerned with his wife's welfare than with his own pride. Unfortunately the film also gives us Earl (Ken Scott) who is sort of an idealized masculine figure. Maybe Johnson thought the film could be seen as feminist if he didn't include him for some kind of balance, but to me it felt cheesy and forced.

On the whole the movie works, by keeping us interested in the cause of Eve's sickness and also in the fact that it's called "3 faces" but we only see the first two for quite a lot of the film's running time. It's a very dense film, in the sense that there are not a lot of characters and it's not very long but quite a lot of ground is covered within that space of time. I would say it remains interesting mostly for the performances of Woodward, Wayne, and Cobb.