Brandon Aguilar

Dr. Klock
English 371-131
March 23, 2011

Beowulf: Fasten Your Seatbelts, It’s Going To Be A Bumpy Night

It’s a tricky assignment to compare one of the works in our course to a modern day

work. It seems to require double the work, analyzing not one text but two. While there are many

elements to many stories and films I could relate snippets of Beowulf to, there is only one film I

could write a 6-page paper on, analyzing with some depth: All About Eve. This 1950 film

directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and starring Bette Davis was nominated for 14 Academy

Awards (a record only tied with Titanic almost 50 years later). It may seem a bizarre or tacky

choice to examine alongside Beowulf. As I read the 8th century story, I translated the action into

this movie, which lives in my vividly in my imagination, conflating the two. This is not a paper

anyone could purchase on the internet and is probably something I alone could write.

The two works are very different! One can’t claim they’re of the same species. Camille

Paglia wrote of the film, “All About Eve (1950), with its rising and falling stars, automatically

adopts the Wildean wit of the English epicene.” (It begs the question: if this film is a descendent

of Oscar Wilde, what was his relation to Beowulf? Though that will go unexplored in this paper.)

If their style is vastly different, the language in which the two works written has similarities. The

stories share a number of parallels and common themes. This paper also examines references to

gold and light and in the texts, as they stand for symbols of fulminant glory and power.

Both are named after heroes who are monster-slayers (Beowulf/Eve) who destroy a

tyrannical monster that has long been terrorizing a community. (Though in the film, the
monstrosity is purely metaphorical.) Both works relate a tale of a heroic journey and struggle

which is transformative. Both depict the monstrous feminine: women who are sympathetic yet

horrific. Both have mother-offspring dynamics. Both have scenes of conflict in a “banquet hall

bereft of all delight.” (2456)

Beowulf is a masculine tale. Conversely, All About Eve is mostly about women. To

briefly summarize, it tells the story of a young girl who rises to power, surreptitiously stealing

the light from an older actress, despite an initial benefactor-type relationship. The balance of

power and sympathies shift as the story progresses. Eve (played by Anne Baxter) perhaps is

initially like Grendel, an outsider. A waif who lurks in the alleyway outside the theater, watching

her idol come and go. She is called, “the mousy one in the trench coat and funny hat.” One day

she is invited in, slowly insinuating herself into the lives of the other characters. Beowulf tells the

story, “Then out of the night/ came the shadow- stalker, stealthy and swift./ The hall-guards were

slack, asleep at their posts…” (702-704) It is the sleep of arrogance in which the movie’s

characters reside, unaware anyone could disrupt their comfortable world. Little do they suspect

“…the blood-lust rampant.” (85) Eve is “…a prowler through the dark, nursed a hard grievance.”

(86-87)

The Oscar-winning screenplay of All About Eve contains language of violent imagery

and many references to war, though its violence is acerbically verbal. Battles for glory are being

raged. The civilized society of 1950’s New York is not so far removed from a primitive past of

bloodlust; ancestral instincts of hunting-killing man live on within the ambitions of modern man.

A few examples of the blood and death lurking about the edges of All About Eve are

conveyed in some of the lines: "This bed looks like a dead animal act."…"Next time Lloyd,
honey, write me one about a nice normal woman who just shoots her husband"…“I shall

personally stuff that pathetic little lost lamb down Mr. DeWitt’s ugly throat.”

Both works involve hubristic narratives. In Beowulf, the characters often lapse into self-

aggrandizing tales of questionable veracity. As Eve meets in the cast early in the film she tells a

heart-rending yarn of being a war widow, which is ultimately debunked toward the film’s

climax. Though its ludicrous sentiment is immediately sensed by one character who says, “Boy,

everything but the bloodhounds snappin’ at her rear end.” This is similar to Beowulf’s “…hart in

flight from pursuing hounds.” (1369)

In Beowulf there are many references to Cain. The monsters are spawns of the fallen

Biblical icon, expressed in the line, “from Cain there sprang/misbegotten spirits”. (1269)

Likewise, the name Eve has Biblical references, suggesting the subject of the story refers to more

than a specific individual woman per se, but is commenting on universal traits within a kind of

everywoman. Like Cain and Abel, the two female characters in Eve initially form a sisterly bond,

which is severed as one overtakes the other.

“To hear the din of the loud banquet/ Every day in the hall, the harp being struck and

the clear song of a skilled poet.” (88-90) This is an interesting parallel, in that the film opens

with a scene in a banquet hall, as theatrical honors have been almost all distributed. Both works

are involved with pomp and circumstance, the politics of hierarchy and group dynamics, the

acrimonious shift of power.

“Sometimes at pagan shrines they vowed/ Offerings to idols, swore oaths/ That the

killer of souls might come to their aid/ And save the people.” (175-179) This is an interesting

allusion to the religiosity of the events about to transpire. A character in the film says, “I have

lived in the theater as a Trappist monk has lived in his faith.” It is as if everybody’s waiting, the
jaded souls, for a great talent to come along. To slay the dragon, or to rearrange the existing

order of the universe. The jaded denizens of the film are pagans, a movement falling out of favor

in the Christian world of Beowulf, but vaguely revived by the 20th century. Margo

Channing/Bette Davis says, “Did she tell you about the theater? All the religions of the world

rolled into one and we’re gods and goddesses.”

Beowulf has come from afar, across the water, to confront his nemesis. Eve’s

convoluted tale of origins depicts her fixating upon the object of her quest in San Francisco,

“When the show came East, I came East,” she confesses. She has followed her idol across the

nation, stalking with a killer’s focused devotion. Margo experiences herself as being preyed upon

by her admirers: “Autograph fiends, they're not people. Those are little beasts that run round in

packs like coyotes...”

When Marilyn Monroe as Miss Caswell is asked how she feels at one point, she

responds, "Like I just swam the English Channel."

Bette Davis is larger than life; she is “…bigger than any man, an unnatural birth called

Grendel.” She is so large in fact that her presence smothers those she is around. The people in

her life find her hard to endure. She has dwarfed human connections. She exists like Grendel in a

cavern, which for her is the stage. A hallowed womb, constricted by the eyes of her audience and

the cumbersome persona she wears. She lives by abusing her friends and coworkers: "So Grendel

waged his lonely war/inflicting constant cruelties on the people.” (165)

In the 20th century, great female film stars often have a monstrous quality. There is

something rapacious in their appeal, something furious and scary about a powerful woman in

charge of her career and destiny. An uncontrolled, frightening monster in the 8th century was

perhaps more literal. Monsters today have been humanized. A modern monster often seems to be
a woman, perhaps a receptacle on our anxieties of the mysterious power of the feminine. (Of

late, among entertainers, Lady Gaga seems to appropriate this classic trope into her shtick.)

In Beowulf, the deformed monster lives in a cave with his mother. In the movie, Margo

also lives with a kind of mother figure/caretaker, who is a matronly maidservant. She speaks to

this character disparagingly. This is similar to how Unferth is addressed in Beowulf. “Now I

cannot recall/ Any fight you entered, Unferth,/That bears comparison. I don’t boast when I

say/That neither you nor Breca were ever much/Celebrated for swordsmanship.” (582-585)

Bette Davis/Margo similarly says. “There are some experience which do not take place

in a vaudeville house and which even a fifth rate vaudevillian should respect and understand.”

Both works also comment upon the decline which occurs with oncoming age. “It was

like the misery endured by an old man.” (2444) And, “The wisdom of age is worthless to him.”

(2449) Whereas the aging actress laments, “I'm not twentyish. I am not thirtyish. Three months

ago, I was forty years old. Forty. Four oh. That slipped out. I hadn’t quite made up my mind to

admit it.”

Some of the fascinating common symbols are the references to gold and heavenly light.

The light and gold in both works seems to symbolize glory: the power which has been seized and

the prosperous passage of time. Beowulf contains endless references to it: “…no small amount of

gold” (3011), “gold under gravel” (3167), “glittering gold” (2759), “gold hidden” (2765).

The most poignant reference to gold in the film is the following exchange.

EVE: What a day - what a heavenly day...

ADDISON: D-day.
EVE: Just like it.
ADDISON: And tomorrow morning you will have won your beachhead on the shores
of Immortality...
EVE: It'll be a night to remember. It'll bring to me everything I've ever wanted. The end
of an old road - and the beginning of a new one...
ADDISON: All paved with diamonds and gold?
 EVE: You know me better than that.
ADDISON: Paved with what, then?
EVE: Stars.

The light in All About Eve is mostly starlight, or the glow from footlights. Eve is

introduced in the film with these words: “Minor awards are for such as the writer and director -

since their function is merely to construct a tower so that the world can applaud a light which

flashes on top of it and no brighter light has ever dazzled the eye than Eve Harrington…Eve, the

Golden Girl…” Later in the film, George Sanders tells Marilyn, "Well done, my dear, I can see

your career rising in the East like the sun." This is similar to “the wonder of light/coming over

us” (1137-1138) and “the way the sky does when heaven’s candle/ is shining clearly”. (1871-

1872)

Both works have some culmination in death. These two passages are rather similar:

Bill: Many of your guests have been wondering when they may be permitted to view the body.
Where has it been laid out?
Margo: It hasn't been laid out. We haven't finished with the embalming. As a matter of fact,
you're looking at it - the remains of Margo Channing, sitting up. It is my last wish to be buried
sitting up.

From Beowulf: “The veteran king sat down on the cliff-top./ He wished good luck to the

Geats who had shared/ his hearth and his gold. He was sad at heart/unsettled yet ready, sensing

his death.” (2417-2420)

Both works are cyclical. The battle of various monsters takes place repeatedly. Fifty

years after his victory, Beowulf faces a dragon that triumphs over him.

In Eve the story concludes with another ambitious girl who has sneaked into Eve's room.

The final image of the film shows the new girl, reflecting an infinity of selves within a mirror,

suggesting the eternal aspect to what has transpired.

 The young defeat the old. The transfer of power is inevitable. The conquerors are

themselves conquered. Balances of glory always shift eventually, willingly or not.“It seemed to

me I had known always that it would happen--and here it was,” Celeste Holm says in the film.

“Famous for his deeds/ a warrior may be, but it remains a mystery/ where his life will

end…” (3062-3064)

WORKS CITED

All About Eve. Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz. 1950.

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/all_about_eve.html

Heaney, Seamus, trans. Beowulf: A Verse Translation. New York: W. W. Norton and Company,

2002.

Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.