Thoughts on The Three Faces of Eve

The Three Faces of Eve (1957) directed by Nunnally Johnson. This is a 1950s movie in which Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for playing a woman struggling with dissociative identity disorder (back then called multiple personality disorder), based on a real person, and while I don’t know how accurate the portrayal of this disorder is in the film (as the movie has her “switch” between identities by just looking down and up), I can say that Woodward was fantastic in this, and was really engaging and captivating to watch. I loved how convincing she could be as a scared housewife unable to remember her other identities’ actions like buying expensive clothes and being confused at her abusive husband’s accusations, to acting like a flirty Southern charmer straight out of a Tennessee Williams play, trying to score a date with her psychologist and having an awareness of her “main” identity and struggling to come out. I hadn’t really seen Joanne Woodward in much aside from The Long Hot Summer, Sybil (in which she is the psychologist to Sally Field’s character struggling with the same disorder), and narration in The Age of Innocence. She’s 91 now, and has worked in films and TV well up to her eighties.

I liked how sympathetic her psychologist (Lee J. Cobb) was to her situation. He was compassionate, not condescending, didn’t dismiss her or treat her like she was insane. It was a really nice and humane treatment that he gave her that recognized her as a person, taking her seriously while still wanting to help her live a healthy life. The ending is way too pat in claiming that she’s “cured” from her mental illness based from recounting a long-buried childhood trauma, but I was fine with the therapy depiction for the most part. The film can be seen on Criterion.