All About Eve's greatness as a film starts with its script. Writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz manages to create an engaging story with memorable characters and tie them together with some of the sharpest dialogue ever to reach the screen. With a script this good, who needs actors? But Eve has them too, several in the roles that would come to epitomize their careers. Combine a fabulous script, several excellent performances, and production values that only enhance the story-telling, and you've got the basis for a pretty good film - but somehow All About Eve manages to become just a little bit more.