My current Top 5

My current Top 5

4/15/2010

Best Actress 1950 - The resolution

After having watched and reviewed all five nominated performances, it's time to pick the winner!


5. Anne Baxter in All about Eve

Anne Baxter wants to do everything right but unfortunately does a lot wrong in her performance but is nonetheless still able to create an interesting character thanks to the brilliant writing. She shows the differences between the fake Eve, the evil Eve, the manipulating Eve, the scared Eve and the real Eve but her limited talent prevents her from combining her instincts with a truly great performance.



                     
Eleanor Parker shows Marie like a deer caught in the spotlight – frightened, unable to do anything. This way, she is wonderfully able to distance Marie’s character from the other, more experienced inmates and give an extremely moving performance that shows how innocence and goodness can be turned into hardness, bitterness and insubordination.



3. Bette Davis in All about Eve

Bette Davis is able to show all the weak and strong sides of Margo and mixes them with wonderful sarcastic humor and so creates one of the most fascinating characters in movie history. In a very private portrayal of a larger-than-life woman, Bette flawlessly demonstrates the self-assurance of Margo without ever overshadowing any of her co-stars.



2. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard

Gloria Swanson gives a pitch-perfect performance as she completely understands both the character and the movie style: it’s a mix of satire and realism, a dark comedy and a shocking drama and Gloria Swanson fitted her performance to this – stylized to the maximum, over-the-top and larger-than-life but always real and Gloria Swanson never crosses the line to unconvincing.




Judy Holliday delivered a comedic tour-de-force in Born Yesterday that carries this movie and turns it into one of the great comedies while never forgetting to show also more serious sides of the character. It’s an incredibly multidimensional and deep characterization that is done in the most subtle way because Judy Holliday never draws any attention to her performance itself. Instead, she understands how to maximize the comedy aspect while slowly creating a character that is so much more than visible on the first look.



9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I was expecting it :)

Fritz said...

Then the shock is not so big! :-)

But I know that I am alone in the world wide web with this opinion...

Anonymous said...

Well, everyone has there controversial wins.

I know I feel alone in my enthusiasm for wins like Art Carney and Lee Grant.

Louis Morgan said...

Controversial wins sometimes though are caused by a lack of viewing the performance, or say it is a bad performance only because they really like one of the performances it won against. By the way I like Carney too.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I forgot about Louis :)

Seems like when people call Carney one of the worst they always bring up who he beat instead of why he was so bad.

Anonymous said...

Holliday, Swanson and Davis are equally brilliant to me so I have no problem with your ranking!

Fritz said...

Thanks, I'm happy to hear that!

Michael Patison said...

I know I'm a year too late, but I just wanted to talk about Carney and Grant. I dislike Carney because I thought he was decently good but not nearly as good as who he beat (only Pacino and Nicholson). I actually think Grant should've won.

Nues20 said...

I agree with Michael here Pacino and Nicholson were so excellent that year that it almost makes Carney's performance look bad even though it wasn't.