The film opens with the narrator on screen addressing the audience directly. “This is a true story,” he tells us; a film based on a book about a young Georgia woman (“Eve”) who suffers from multiple personality disorder. Her psychiatrists, Drs., Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley, of the Medical College of Georgia, published The Three Faces of Eve in 1957, that same year the film was released.

Joanne Woodward’s performance was impressive, and one can understand why she won the Best Actress Oscar in 1958. Her change in tone, accent, and body language was quite convincing. The film’s structure however left something to be desired.  While one did become involved in Eve’s condition, the episodic nature of the film was negatively emphasized by constantly fading to black after every emotional moment.  Its tone was also confusing. It teetered unsteadily between near comedy and drama. Very little progress was made (or at least depicted) over the years that Eve was in counseling, therefore the key scene depicting her mental victory was somewhat anticlimactic.

The story was interesting and clearly established the difference in the personalities but one never felt very connected with any of them.  Part of the fault lies with the quick snippets of scenes (Eve Black in the back of a stranger’s car for example). Perhaps the point was never driven home, so the speak, because of scene length but quite possibly because of the Production Code which was still very much in control of content in 1957. How can we truly experience Eve White’s regret and horror over Eve Black’s sins if those sins are barely hinted at and certainly never shown?

Though the film shows Eve’s recovery, in truth, her story of struggle was not yet over. The real Eve, Chris Costner Sizemore, later in life wrote two books about her experience with, and treatment for, what is now known as “dissociative identity disorder.“  (First she had to sue 20^th Century Fox for the rights to her own story because her psychiatrists had previously signed them over to the studio.  She won the case.) In her books, she revealed that though she took a big step towards healing in the 1950s, in reality she was later treated by seven other doctors and experienced more than 20 personalities before eventually overcoming the illness in 1974.

 

Further Reading: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org