My current Top 5

My current Top 5

7/12/2011

Number 44: Beatrice Straight as Louise Schumacher in "Network" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

Beatrice Straight’s win as Best Supporting Actress is surely among the most famous Oscar wins ever – because she holds the honor of having given the shortest performance ever to win the award.

Technically, there are three scenes that feature Beatrice Straight – but we can skip her second scene right away because all you see is the back of her head while she is watching TV. In her first scene, Beatrice Straight also might not do anything remarkable – but watch closer! She gets out of bed and finds that Howard Beale, a friend of her husband, has left their house at night and wakes her husband up to tell him. It’s not much of a scene but in this short moment Beatrice Straight gives a lot of impressions that will be very important in her final scene – she obviously loves her husband (expressed only by Beatrice Straight’s way of delivering one sentence to him – a remarkable achievement), she’s elegant and intelligent, she’s not involved in her husband’s work too deeply but she is also not an outsider.

But in the end, it all comes down to her big ‘money-scene’ when her husband confesses his affair to her and she begins her monologue about love and betrayal, about her desperation and finally her acceptance. She basically expresses all the reactions that should come in weeks and weeks in only a couple of minutes. ‘Then get out! Go anywhere you want, go to a hotel, go live with her, but don’t come back. Because after 25 years of building a home and raising a family and all the senseless pain that we have inflicted on each other, I’m damned if I’m gonna stand here and have you tell me you’re in love with somebody else. Because this isn’t some convention weekend with your secretary or some broad that you picked up after three belts of booze, this is your great winter romance, isn’t it? Your last roar of passion before you settle into your emeritus years. Is that what’s left for me? She gets the winter passion and I get the dotage. What am I supposed to do, am I supposed to sit home knitting and purling while you slink back like some penitent drunk? I’m your wife, damn it! And it you can’t  work up a winter passion for me than the least I require is respect and allegiance! I hurt, don’t you understand that? I hurt badly!’

I have often complained about characters that lack depth, show no development or are simply pushed too much aside – well, on the one hand Beatrice Straight would be the best example for all this. Her character only exists to mourn the end of her marriage in a scene that even could have been left on the floor of the editing room and nobody would have noticed. But even though – how can one deny all the brilliance that went into this characterization? Her suffering wife is much more touching than that of Jennifer Connelly despite the fact that there are worlds between the lengths of their roles. In one short scene, Beatrice Straight displays almost all human emotions, going from one extreme to the other, shouting and crying, suffering silently and smiling. All the lack of character and depth prevent her from going up further in this ranking but she definitely used her big scene to perfection.

What is also so impressive is the fact that the audience doesn’t know anything about her – her first scene surely went unnoticed by most people and a wandering husband isn’t anything new to the cinema. So why should the audience care for this unknown character when Faye Dunaway is so deliciously crazy in her role? But then all of a sudden, you see the wife’s face on the screen. All her hurt feelings, her desperation, her anger are shown in one second and you don’t even need any dialogue to know what is happening at this moment. From one moment to the other, the perspective completely changes and suddenly the wife, that nameless wife, has a face, she has emotions, she has a life, she is a real person. Her breakdown symbolizes all the breakdowns of cheated wives, she makes her monologue to something monumental.

Basically, Beatrice Straight is the only real human being in Network. All others seem like egoistic, rating-obsessed maniacs who don’t care for anyone or anything. Louise Schumacher shows us that there are also other people in this world, people with feelings, people who hurt.

It’s basically a very thankless part but Beatrice Straight turned it into gold and gave probably much more than was ever intended for this part.

12 comments:

Louis Morgan said...

Really below Jennifer Hudson, Donna Reed, and Renee Zellweger? She most certainly does do wonders in her short amount of time, she does so much I certainly would put her far higher than this.

Anonymous said...

Ha,am i having magic ball or something?:)Her big scene is fantastic,but little forced and partly unnatural(mostly because of little too talky script),and just about every decent actress would be as good as her.Vast majority of actresses would've failed misarably with Holly.

Fritz said...

@Louis: Well, I can only repeat that I warned you all right at the beginning about my unpopular taste in this category! :-)

@Anonymous: I think I don't see Holly as such as great character overall...

Anonymous said...

Jennifer Hudson should make her unflattering appearance next...

mrripley said...

I always have her in my 76 line up,sometimes it takes just one scene & she has it,ther roles similar to this are the 6 minutes of screen time by vanessa regrave in atonement or lynn redgraves 4 minutes in kinsey or betty bukcelys 2 minutes in another woman.

dinasztie said...

Yeah I forgot: where are Hudson, Zellweger and Reed? Easily in my bottom 10.

Fritz said...

@dinasztie: well, not for me! :-)

Anonymous said...

What? Top 20 for sure! Great review, she was amazing and Network is perfect! ;)

Anonymous said...

I'm glad that Hudson and Reed are still in, but I'm afraid I have to hop on the Zellweger hate train.

Anonymous said...

I really, really don't like this win. Out of all the true, absolutely, no-doubt-about-it, only-a-few-minutes-long supporting performances they could've rewarded, Oscar decides to give the win to the most showy and theatrical. I love Network but it's pretty phony and self-important, and I think the Straight-Holden relationship is more phony than any of those other characters going on their menopausal rants.

Just my two cents. Great review as always. Piper Laurie should've won.

Anonymous said...

I really like her, but Jodie Foster should've won for Taxi Driver. If not her then Piper Laurie.

Anonymous said...

I like her, but Jodie Foster was robbed imho.