The Three Faces of Eve

'The Three Faces of Eve' tells the true story of a housewife who suffers from the condition recognized as dissociative identity disorder today. Nunnally Johnson's movie entirely focuses on the experience of Eve White, Eve Black and Jane during a period of a couple of years beginning from the time she started visiting her psychologist. This is unlike many of the 50s movies I've seen because it deals with several adult themes such as divorce, spousal abuse, sex and childhood trauma unlike the comparatively melodramatic films that were so popular at the time. Nunnally proves to be a fine storyteller as the meticulous writing is rich, tight and full of depth and the direction is great. I liked how he showed the 'treatment process'. It was cleverly downplayed in the story. The execution is done with skill. 'The Three Faces of Eve' has some outstanding nuanced performances. Lee J. Cobb is restrained as Eve's psychologist but it is Joanne Woodward who carries the film. She is simply sublime. Since then there have been numerous movies on dissociative identity disorder but 'The Three Faces of Eve' is the pioneer but that's not the reason why the movie ought to be watched because even as a stand alone, it works very well as a captivating character study.

Joanne Woodward was wonderful in this movie. She really showed the confusion and hardship surrounding multiple personality disorder. Years later, however, I found a book called, "I'm Eve". It was the autobiography of Chris Sizemore, the person the movie is based on. If you would like the continuation of this story, and there is a lot more, then this book is a must read.

Wow! Woodward is amazing in this film as Eve White, Eve Black and Jane. She plays them all to perfection. It has to be hard to switch and do all these different characters right after one another but she did it wonderfully. It's no surprise she won the oscar for best actress. Great film, if you havent seen this one yet do ASAP!

Joanne Woodward lights up the screen in triple roles in this tale of multiple-personality disorder. Her initial, primary role is that of Eve White, a seemingly ordinary and meek Southern woman married to a man named Ralph (David Wayne). Well into adulthood, her second personality, a flirty, vampish, life-of-the-party pre-marriage version of herself, starts posing serious problems, and she is sent to therapy. An eminent psychiatrist (Lee J. Cobb) uses hypnosis to try to get through to her, and find the life event that triggered the emergence of Eve No. 2 (although none seems to exist). In time, a third personality emerges, a soft-spoken but mature and intelligent woman named Jane.

Although extremely well shot in CinemaScope by Stanley Cortez, this relatively brief film (92 minutes long) does not try to dazzle the viewer with visual dynamics, hinging almost entirely on Woodwards' impressive ability to delineate these three distinct characters. She certainly deserved that Best Actress Oscar win; "The Three Faces of Eve" offers her plenty of opportunity to just emote for everything that she's worth. Offering strong support are Wayne, as the husband who finds that he just can't stand by her (and, in one memorable scene, finds himself attracted to the Eve Black personality), and Cobb as the determined doctor interested in Eves' welfare. In smaller roles, you'll see familiar actors and actresses such as Nancy Kulp ('The Beverly Hillbillies'), Douglas Spencer ("The Thing from Another World"), Vince Edwards ('Ben Casey'), and Ken Scott ("Stopover Tokyo"). The film is narrated by Alistair Cooke of 'Masterpiece Theatre' fame.

This compelling material is given fairly straightforward treatment by screenwriter Nunnally Johnson, in one of his eight directing credits. It doesn't get too bogged down in "psycho-babble", although there is some amusement in the way that Cobb has his work cut out for him trying to use laymen's terms with the not-terribly-bright, hot-tempered Wayne.

While the film ends rather abruptly, it's careful to point out to us that the journey to self-discovery for Eve was a couple of years in the making. While the ending is kind of typical Hollywood stuff, Woodward still sells all of it so beautifully.

Inspired by the real-life case of South Carolina woman Christine Costner Sizemore, who ultimately manifested over *20* different personalities over the course of her lifetime.

Eight out of 10.

For dramatic effect movies about mental illness always have the psychiatrist coming up with a miracle cure of the patient. You saw that in Spellbound with Gregory Peck and in The Snake Pit with Olivia DeHavilland. It's not that easy, but it does make for good cinema. To give credit where it is do, The Three Faces of Eve is about a real case of multiple personality disorder and Alistair Cooke's narration does give it a proper time frame, the cure is a matter of years here.

In only her third feature film Joanne Woodward became the Best Actress for 1957, ironically beating out Elizabeth Taylor who was descending into madness in Raintree County instead of being cured. I read somewhere that the Southern born Ms. Woodward remarked ironically that it took years of training for her to lose her southern accent and then she has to find it all over again to win her Oscar. I guess the Academy voters that year were as impressed as I was how she was able to flip into three different characters in many scenes. She's drab homemaker Eve White, a Tennessee Williams sexpot as Eve Black, and as Jane who's trying to leave both behind.

As good as Woodward is, my favorite scene in The Three Faces of Eve is when psychiatrist Lee J. Cobb tries to explain to Woodward's working class husband David Wayne about multiple personality disorder. The patient looks on Cobb's face and the blank expression on Wayne's face say more than ten pages of dialog. Another performance to look for is that of future TV physician Ben Casey, Vincent Edwards as a soldier trying to pick up Woodward in her sex kitten self.

Nunnally Johnson gets some real good performances out of his cast and a once in a lifetime role for Joanne Woodward.