The Three Faces of Eve (1957)

This film starts out with a man giving a grave disclaimer, stating that the events in this film are based purely on true events. That most of the dialogue is in fact taken from the actual patient records of the so-called Eve White herself. The film is based on a real life account of a doctor's interactions with a patient who had multiple personality disorder.

We first meet Eve White in her psychiatrist's office. She explains that she suffers from blackouts and very bad headaches, and also that her husband seems to accuse her of things that she has no recollection of doing. It seems to be clear to the doctor that she has some sort of psychosis, but he's not exactly sure what... until during one therapy session she transforms into an entirely different personality before his eyes. He discovers that she has multiple personality disorder, and that she in fact is not the only person living inside her head. It eventually comes to light that three women reside within the body of Eve White. Eve White herself is a very timid, defeated housewife, and is completely unaware that she is sharing her body with another person calling herself Eve Black, who is the exact opposite of her. She's rambunctious and promiscuous and almost childish in her abject selfishness. She claims that she is not married to Eve White's husband and is not the mother of her child. She instead prefers to go out dancing at the local bar many a night. The final personality gives herself the name Jane, and we do not learn much about her when she is introduced. In fact, she knows very little of her own self. The psychiatrist works hard to understand how the personalities interact with each other, and tries to get them to coexist. He is also wildly curious about the event in Eve's past that may have caused this splitting on her personality and works very hard to discover it.

This is a pretty gripping film. Joanne Woodward does a great job of seamlessly switching between the different personalities, and performs each of them so believably well. Watching her work, I found that I did not even once wonder if she suit the role of the different personalities she was portraying because she performed them all so well. One could rightly believe that the performances were genuinely different characters, and she was able to transition from one character to another so quickly and smoothly also. There was no contrived 'transformation' from one personality to another, the transition took place largely in her head and she demonstrated that effectively.

Another interesting thing about film of this nature, in this era, is the fascination with mental disorders and the relation that disorder has to a past trauma. It's really fun watch the characters dig through the past to discover the cause of what ails them.

The characters and story went into just enough detail about the personal lives of the girls and displayed enough emotion each of them were feeling about their situation to create compelling hold on the viewer. Though I may not have liked all of the character types, I was genuinely interested in what was going to happen to them and how, or even if, the hopes and dreams they had about fulfilling each woman's own personal needs and desires would be fulfilled.