Fritz and the Oscars

Best Actress 1963: Rachel Roberts in "This Sporting Life"

2012-01-24T18:38:00.000+01:00

Interestingly, three of the nominated actresses in 1963 had also taken home BAFTA awards for their performances. Leslie Caron won the prize for Best British Actress in 1963 and the next year, Rachel Roberts received the same award for her work in This Sporting Life while Patricia Neal took home the gold as Best Foreign Actress in Hud. For Rachel Roberts, it would be one of overall three BAFTAs she received during her career and her performance in This Sporting Life would also result in her first and final Oscar nomination. Her work as a young, repressed and bitter widow opposite Richard Harris was definitely a critically highlight in a career that would that would end tragically when Rachel Roberts killed herself in 1980, apparently out of misery and regret over her divorce from Rex Harrison. Harrison himself had also been nominated for an Oscar in 1964, making him and Rachel Roberts one of the few husband-and-wife-teams that scored nods in the same year. Rex Harrison would win an Oscar one year later for his signature role as Professor Henry Higgins in the musical My Fair Lady. And what about his wife? Does she have any signature part? The biggest problem with this question is certainly the fact that Rachel Roberts is not truly the kind of actress that is still largely remembered or praised. When it comes to high-profile British actresses from this time, there are many names that are mentioned much more easily and quickly and even among those actresses mostly referred to as ‘character actress’, others like Wendy Hiller enjoy a much higher reputation. Personally, I am also not too familiar with Rachel Roberts’s body of work – like most followers of the Academy Awards, I have seen her work in Murder on the Orient-Express even though I never watch it for this purpose. But even in the small part of Hildegard Schmidt, Rachel Roberts’s hard face, her cold and suspicious glances and her tight body movement left a lasting impression even if the role itself is a little bit of nothing. So, on paper, the combination of Rachel Robert’s cold screen presence and the part of Margaret Hammond, a cold, almost merciless, judgmental and depreciating young widow who still lives in the memories of the past while trying to handle her strange relationship to Frank Machin, an upcoming rugby player who rents one of her rooms, appears like a perfect match. But the right personality is certainly not the only important factor for a great performance. Nearly every character that Audrey Hepburn played was elevated by her radiant charm, poise and personality – but this does not mean that all of these performances were masterpieces. Margaret Hammond suits Rachel Roberts and vice versa – but what about the actual performance that results from this match?

In This Sporting Life, Rachel Robert faced some of the same obstacles Patricia Neal did in Hud – mostly the fact that her role often feels rather secondary compared to that of her male co-star. And if this wasn’t enough, both Paul Newman and Richard Harris dominated their movies with uncompromising, challenging, riveting and stark performances that haven’t lost a bit of their energetic and realistic appeal. Both actors crafted characters that defied conventions, that pushed the opinion of others aside and that verbreiten an aura of pure sex, no matter how unappealing or off-putting they may appear. In This Sporting Life, Richard Harris may easily be confused with a young Marlon Brando, as not only his acting style but even his looks remind the viewer of Brando’s personality and electric screen presence. But Richard Harris never felt like a copy of Brando and instead found his own voice in his role and therefore gives a raw and powerful piece of work that matches the celebrated, brutal but also sensual and sensitive work of those new and realistic actors like Brando, Paul Newman, Montgomery Clift or James Dean at every step. Okay, but enough of Richard Harris for now. Because does this have any significance for Rachel Roberts’s work? Having a powerful co-star does not mean that the other actor cannot be equally impressive. Well, but a lot here simply depends on the writing – Patricia Neal faced a severely underwritten character in Alma Brown and even though she improved her material vastly by adding wisdom and experience to her role which made her performance a very satisfying experience, she was still constantly overshadowed by the work of those around her, mainly that of Paul Newman. Rachel Roberts also has the problem that This Sporting Life focuses most of its attention to the character of Frank but it also has to be said that her role is still significantly larger than that of Patricia Neal in Hud and that Mrs. Hammond also plays a much more central role in the structure of This Sporting Life than Alma Brown in Hud. Okay, but comparing Patricia Neal and Rachel Roberts here is basically rather pointless since this review is supposed to focus on Rachel Roberts – the ranking at the end of the year can do the comparison. But what’s still left to say is the fascination in comparing these two actresses attack these two similar and yet also different parts. Patricia Neal took a part that offered her pretty much nothing on paper and added various dimensions and inner brokenness to turn Alma into the complex and earthy creation she turned out to be. Rachel Roberts on the other hand was given much more by the script – Margaret Hammond suffers from the death of her husband, her inability to deal with a man like Frank and her unwillingness to change her life outside or inside. Because of this, Mrs. Hammond was rather already fully developed before Rachel Roberts became her and the actress therefore had to follow a stricter guideline in her characterization. But since the character of Margaret Hammond is certainly an extremely fascinating one and Rachel Roberts’s own screen presence already suited to the part so wonderfully and she not relied on this screen presence but crafted Margaret’s rejection, fear and hate with a strangely intriguing coldness, Rachel Roberts’s performance is much more memorable, spellbinding and exciting than it could have been by either an actress who didn’t suit the part so well or by Rachel Roberts herself if she had decided to simply rely on her personal effect in that role instead of creating Margaret beyond that.

The first moments of Rachel Roberts’s performance happen as memories of an injured Frank – even though he has such strong feelings for her, the first image of her that seems to come into his head is that of her rejecting, disapproving glances and of the shoes that she keeps by the fire side. Shoes that used to belong to her dead husband and which she still cleans and polishes as if he might walk through the door any moment. Like an evil ghost, Mrs. Hammond lingers in Frank’s mind and even his memories cannot change her character – she tells him that she is sick of him and that she and her two children will be better off without him and in the delivery of Rachel Roberts, there is no doubt that Margaret really means those words. She also states that she won’t pretend to be happy for him – that angry, constantly disapproving face that seems to have not seen a smile in years is as strong a part of her character as her desire to clean the shoes of her dead husband. And when Frank asks her if she doesn’t want to be happy, her husband is a stern ‘If I’m left alone, I am happy’. Especially this last line is delivered by Rachel Roberts without any exaggeration and she did not try to turn this single bit of dialogue into the central symbol of her character. Again, a comparison with Patricia Neal can help because both actresses thankfully resisted the temptation to fill various of their on-screen moments with big declarations or attempts to make their words appear more important than they truly are – instead, both women live in their roles and show that her moments on-screen may be the only time the audience gets to know them but in their own world, they have already experienced a lot without the audience. Rachel Roberts shows that Margaret Hammond is not limited to the world of This Sporting Life but demonstrates in her acting that she is also a product of earlier times. But surely the most fascinating aspect of this performance is the fact that Mrs. Hammond can never be truly explained or understood – did she turn into this bitter and cold woman after the death of her husband or was she already like this before? There are rumors that Mr. Hammond’s death was not an accident but actually a suicide – does she realize this, is this the reason for her behavior or was her behavior maybe the reason for the suicide? Rachel Roberts gives no answer to this but it’s clear that, even though she still cleans the shoes of her dead husband, she does not live in a parallel fantasy world in which she expects him to return any moment – it’s not even clear if there was really love between them or if Mrs. Hammond treated her husband with the same kind of annoyed anger as she treats Frank. Maybe it is just the memory of him that she truly cherishes, the thoughts of a time in which there was a father, a mother and two children – surely an ideal situation for a woman who so often feels embarrassed because of what the neighbors might say about her and Frank. Overall, Rachel Roberts beautifully succeeded in turning Mrs. Hammond into a woman who is very secluded, off-putting and often downright disdainful without making her unlikable or an unwelcome presence in This Sporting Life, which might even be her biggest achievement in this part. That she was able to captivate the audience for so long and turn her character into a kind of fascinating enigma while basically constantly telling Frank and the audience to leave her alone with a voice full of hate and anger is certainly a remarkable feat. Mrs. Hammond is the kind of woman who can destroy every bit of happiness in others – when Frank tells her about his new contract and how much money he received, Mrs. Hammond only needs one small comment to ruin this whole moment for him. And just as Rachel Roberts gives no reason to the question how Mrs. Hammond became like this, she also leaves it open why she keeps acting like this, why she apparently feels the need to destroy happiness, push Frank away and almost retire from all human contact. But again, Rachel Roberts did a beautiful job in creating Mrs. Hammond like such an almost unbearable woman without becoming unbearable.

Another highlight in Rachel Roberts’s work is her chemistry with Richard Harris. Both actors had a certainly very demanding task in crafting their own characters but also creating a believable relationship. Especially Rachel Roberts needed to work very carefully since her character basically loathes Frank and everything he stands for but also falls for him at some time – and she also had to make it believable that Frank would even want to get involved with her. Margaret tells Frank quite open that she does not care to see him play rugby, she does not want to go with him on a ride in his new car, she more than once tells him to go, that he makes her sick and what not – but for some strange reasons, the fact that Frank keeps trying to get involved with Margaret, that he wants her, does not seem unbelievable at all. Rachel Roberts is not a sex bomb and even downplays her looks in this role, so any kind of erotic attraction from his side is not the simple answer. Mrs. Hammond is also not the kind of woman who makes you want her by pushing you away. But there is a certain chemistry between these two actors and Rachel Roberts walked a very thin line between being completely unlikeable and unlikeable, but still appealing. Just like the character of Mrs. Hammond itself, the appeal of Rachel Roberts in this part is hard to explain but the relationship between Mrs. Hammond and Frank and the chemistry between Rachel Roberts and Richard Harris is strangely captivating and satisfying. When she finally decides to go to the country with Frank and her children, the viewer almost waits for her to destroy the happiness of the others but when she catches a ball and finally smiles, it’s almost a relieving moment. And Rachel Roberts again did not over-emphasize this smile as a fundamental change in Mrs. Hammond but instead showed that she can find a little happiness in her life without softening her character. When the relationship with Frank develops and Mrs. Hammond even puts her husband’s shoes away, Rachel Roberts lets her character even smile a bit more, talking about old times with her husband, making it again an enigma why she turned into such a stern and icy woman. But a relationship like the one between Mrs. Hammond and Frank is destined to be broken from the start and Rachel Roberts impressively displays how much Margaret hates herself for actually falling for him, how the embarrassment during a dinner in a fancy restaurant with Frank is hurting her inside and how she now hates herself even more for having given him a chance. And later, Rachel Roberts become immensely heartbreaking when she begs Frank to leave, packing his things while he hits her, trying to remove herself from him, fearful that he might again speak out about the rumor of the suicide, an accusation to which she replied with a shocked ‘You want to kill me?’ Rachel Roberts’s character and role may never be as prominent in This Sporting Life as that of Richard Harris but her powerful work certainly prevented her from being over-shadowed at any moment.

It’s a performance that mixes moments of pure intensity with shocking and heartbreaking images. Rachel Roberts can accuse Frank Harris of being a big ape and take a slap in the face outside of a church without any kind of emotional reaction. Very often, she moves her head away from Frank and the camera as if even the contact with the audience is too much for her but Rachel Roberts did not turn Mrs. Hammond into a lonely spinster nor a crazy woman who wallows in her own misery. It’s a very effective turn that leaves a lasting and hunting impression and for this she receives

Best Actress 1963: Leslie Caron in "The L-Shaped Room"

2012-01-16T21:18:00.000+01:00

Leslie Caron had quite an impressive career start in the 50s – her first movie role was opposite Gene Kelly in the Best Picture winner An American in Paris and only 2 years later she would receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actress as a young, depressive girl who forms a strange relationship to a puppeteer in the musical drama Lili. After this, critical success became rather slim although she did star in another Best Picture winner, the musical Gigi. In this movie, just like in Lili, she played a young, inexperienced girl who needs a man to fulfill her own happiness. Finally, in 1963, Leslie Caron left her child-like image behind and starred as a young, unmarried and pregnant woman in the Black-and-White drama The L-Shaped Room. This controversial role is certainly as far removed as possible from the colorful, entertaining and sing-along world she had been mostly known for up to this point. And this time, critics were fully convinced and a win at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs must have made her a strong competitor for the Oscar statuette. Today, Leslie Caron does not necessarily hold a reputation as a strong dramatic actress – not only is she mostly remembered for her musical roles because these movies still have a lasting appeal while movies like The L-Shaped Room are largely forgotten but it seems that people want to remember her for her parts as Nina, Lili or Gigi, as if the innocence and sweetness she portrayed in these roles are the only aspects of her personality and her abilities as an actress that are worth cherishing. Leslie Caron may not have the same irresistible screen presence as another actress who started her career in the 50s, Audrey Hepburn, and she also was not really able to turn these roles into showcases for her talent and dedication like Audrey did, but she did possess a certain charisma that helped her to pull of such rather empty and thin characters because these characters mostly needed charisma to become alive. In her most famous parts, Leslie Caron may never be outstanding in any way and a more skilled actress might have realized these roles with more depth but Leslie Caron also never disappointed and gave performances that were satisfying enough to either carry the picture or become an enjoyable part of it.

In The L-Shaped Room, Leslie Caron did not have her usual advantages – being sweet or innocent would neither help her in a Black-and-White drama nor would it be believable in this kind of role. Furthermore, she could only use her acting talents in this case – the movie itself did not help her by surrounding her with entertaining situations that would enable her to show her charm and appeal, may it be by singing a song with four puppets or dancing through her apartment with a bottle of Champagne. No, The L-Shaped Room completely depended on her ability to communicate her character’s fears and worries while showing how her interactions with various inhabitants of an old English house, in which her character rents an l-shaped room to live in during her pregnancy, slowly changes and strengthens her character without either exaggerating or downplaying this transformation. In her role, Leslie Caron had to find new ways to use her usual screen personality while redefining it at the same time. And while Leslie Caron may not be the greatest actress in movie history, she was always able to portray her character’s inner feelings and emotions with a surprisingly subtle facial work that could easily build a connection between her and the audience without making it appear as if she was acting for the audience. Leslie Caron could easily portray likeable heroines that become an easy object of affection for her male co-star or the viewer. This aspect certainly helped her to find the necessary appeal in Jane because even though the character may not resemble her usual parts, it still benefited from her way of appearing so naïve and child-like but also so practical, grown-up and experienced.

In the 1963 Best Actress line-up, Leslie Caron is the only nominee who truly had to carry her picture. Both Patricia Neal and Rachel Roberts faced slightly limited parts and also played second fiddle to their powerful male co-stars who were the real centre of Hud and This Sporting Life. Shirley MacLaine’s role in Irma La Douce was considerable longer but Billy Wilder’s direction made it very clear that he was only interested in providing a showcase for Jack Lemmon’s comedic talents and considered Shirley MacLaine as an obligatory necessity. And Natalie Wood played the female lead in a romantic comedy with serious undertones but a movie like this obviously also featured an equally important male lead. In this case, Leslie Caron’s performance stands out among the nominees this year but at the same it’s surprising that hers is by far the most ‘passive’ and reactive part out of the five contenders – Jane is a character that mostly reacts and listens, one who is influenced by her own journey of thoughts and experiences. Because of this, Leslie Caron needed to craft Jane with even more dedication because the character could easily have gotten lost in a movie that is actually about her. And Leslie Caron achieved this goal beautifully by presenting Jane as an ever-developing character – she did not present her with any clear ideas or thoughts of how Jane should behave or what she expects. Instead, she showed that Jane is a woman who has no idea about her future, about her life and her present – she is still developing her own feelings and thoughts about both her current situation and her life when her child will be born. In this way, she used her usual screen presence as a woman who is wondering about what life will bring her while denying the audience her usual sugar-coated approach to this material. Usually, Leslie Caron’s presence was mostly needed for some more emotional, maybe even superficial moments – even in her own star-vehicle Lili, the more dramatic depth was given to her co-star Mel Ferrer. But in The L-Shaped Room, it fell upon Leslie Caron to provide the dramatic arc of the story while her male co-star Tom Bell was the one to provide charm and sweetness.

In her role, Leslie Caron benefited the most from the fact that her movie takes such an unspectacular look at her personal situation – The L-Shaped Room never feels like a cheap attempt to ‘shock’ the audience of 1963 with an unmarried, pregnant woman nor like a voyeuristic look into the exciting life of a ‘girl in technical difficulties’, as Gregory Peck called it the Oscar ceremony that year. Instead, The L-Shaped Room is as subtle, quiet and straight-forward as possible (even though it does feature some occasional melodramatic moments) – it takes a completely ordinary approach at this extraordinary story, treating Jane with a welcoming distance that allows her to develop as an independent creation while also letting Leslie Caron’s performance work in beautiful harmony with this unspectacular style. Her simplicity in a part that could have been an over-the-top portrayal of worries, grief, regret, hope, love and desperation is beautiful to watch and by playing her role just as unspectacularly as the screenplay writes it, she creates an atmosphere that is neither overly tense nor tired but moves the picture along smoothly, with a touching quietness and captivation. Sadly, there are moments when Leslie Caron tends to become that cute, little girl again, may it be Gigi or Lili, who only wants to be loved by a man, especially when the screenplays asks her to show a more desperate side or when she is worrying about the whereabouts of Toby. In these moments, the effect of her work becomes somewhat less satisfying but Leslie Caron finds enough positive moments in her work as a compensation. Her big, dramatic speech to Toby at the top of the stairs is played with just the right mix of over-the-top and honest reality and her tears never feel forced and her voice never appears to be trying too hard. Overall, her chemistry with Tom Bell is one of the strongest aspects of The L-Shaped Room, no matter if the characters are fighting or lying in bed together. Unfortunately, the role of a man in Jane’s life is often too overemphasized in a movie that is actually about a woman trying to organize her life alone – an obligatory love story was probably wanted but not truly needed. Still, Leslie Caron did her best by never insisting that Jane is actually looking for a man. Instead, she seems to enjoy Toby’s presence and certainly feels an attraction towards him but she never truly wanted this relationship to develop the way it did – Jane likes the idea of being loved but sees herself alone. This way, Leslie Caron avoided to turn Jane into ‘the woman’ even though she does sometimes exaggerate her needs for affection.

But apart from Tom Bell, Leslie Caron also works well with the other players of The L-Shaped Room. Since the journey of Jane is influenced so much by the other characters she meets in the little house, Leslie Caron always has to step back a little while those characters and actors get their little moment in the sunlight but Leslie Caron did her best to show that Jane is not only listening to their words but is actually also touched and influenced by them. This way, the journey of Jane turned into the journey of a woman who finds new ideas for her life but who also remains the same person she was before. During her stay, Jane accepts certain ideas while remaining strong about her own. She may have used this little, l-shaped room to retreat from the world but she used it to develop and face this world again. Leslie Caron shows Jane as a woman who tries to hide her fears and who does not have any illusions about her live but who is still a little puzzled by it. When she decides to keep the baby or shows Jane’s happiness when she realizes that she did not lose it, Leslie Caron never portrays these worries as grander than they really are – her Jane never tries to become a symbol of lost hopes or regret of the past. In this way, Leslie Caron succeeded the same way Patricia Neal succeeded in Hud – by focusing on the character instead of trying to go for more. And especially in the scenes opposite the father of her unborn child, Leslie Caron crafts Jane with a refreshing individualism – Jane neither wants to apologize for her behavior nor does she expect any support in this moment, from the father or the audience. Instead, she is very honest as a woman expecting nothing.

In this very emotional performance, Leslie Caron gives a quiet and subtle piece of work that may be limited by the way her character was written but is also much more memorable than any exaggerated overacting would have been. What the character of Jane may miss in mystery, depth or really captivating qualities, Leslie Caron makes up by finding beauty in the ordinary. For all of this, she receives

YOUR Best Actress of 1951

2012-01-16T16:51:00.000+01:00

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Vivien Leigh - A Streetcar named Desire (43 votes)

2. Katharine Hepburn - The African Queen (6 votes)

3. Shelley Winters - A Place in the Sun (2 votes)

4. Eleanor Parker - Detective Story (1 vote)

5. Jane Wyman - The Blue Veil (0 votes)

Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1963: Patricia Neal in "Hud"

2012-01-07T21:49:00.002+01:00

Ah, the never-ending debate…leading or supporting? Even I have had various discussions about this topic on this blog already but the simple truth is that there is no truth. Everybody will see the input and influence of a performance differently, everybody has different criteria for the definition of ‘leading’ and ‘supporting’ and everybody has quite simply a different opinion overall. So, my opinions on Patricia Neal’s Oscar-winning turn as Alma Brown, the lonely and earthy housekeeper in Hud: slight borderline case with a strong tendency for supporting. I used to call this a clear supporting performance in the past – and for good reasons. I still insist that, if the film makers had wanted to, the part of Alma Brown could have been left on the cutting room floor without affecting the overall plot of the movie. The whole story of Hud circles around Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas and Brandon De Wilde with Patricia Neal providing some more emotional moments from time to time but she never does either become a part of the main storyline nor does she ever get her own. She is Paul Newman’s object of affection and as such written surprisingly thin. But somehow, Patricia Neal’s screen presence and her unique take on this character help her to achieve a level of visibility in Hud that other actresses might have missed and her status as the only female presence in this modern Western somehow makes her classification as Leading Actress more understandable. In the end, it’s all relative – the Golden Globes nominated her as Supporting Actress (but the winner was Margaret Rutherford for The V.I.P.s which has to make Patricia Neal’s win truly unique – has there ever been another Best Actress winner at the Oscars who lost the Golden Globe as Supporting Actress for the same performance?) while the critics in New York, the National Board of Review and the BAFTAs awarded her in the leading category. So, even though I would probably still put her in the supporting category if I could decide the category placement myself, her entry as leading actress does make enough sense. But: what about the performance? I often complained that if an actress is not given enough material to build on, material that presents her with a developed character and allows her to find additional depth and aspects herself, it is very hard for her to compete with other, more fully realized performances in this category. After all, Vivien Leigh had probably over three hours of screen time in Gone with the Wind, plus a demanding character that goes through various transformations while Patricia Neal has maybe 20 minutes of screen time and is given a character that only exists to reject Hud’s sexual advances. How can they compare? Well, to sum it up: Patricia Neal does suffer from the thin writing and the fact that Hud creates its own world that Alma Brown is barely touching at all – but it’s also the truth that it’s all about quality and not quantity and one critic was certainly right when he stated that Patricia Neal fully realized all of the part’s potentials, no matter how small or scattered they may be.

As Alma Brown, Patricia Neal had to fight hard to make her presence noteworthy and to let her character truly become a part of Hud instead of an occasional addition. And for this fight, Patricia Neal chose a very intriguing approach that does not include any scene-stealing, overacting or exaggerating – instead, her performance is one of the most straight-forward, subtle and low-key pieces of work this category has ever seen. There are no big break-downs, no big scenes, no big emotions. Alma Brown is one of the most calm, relaxed, wise and unflashy creations in movie history, a woman who breathes and lives but does not overwhelm the audience. It’s an extremely interesting and unique approach to a part that could have been played in a thousand different ways and that could have invited countless actresses to try to leave a big impression as desperately as possible – but by not trying to make any big impression at all, Patricia Neal found a way to create Alma as a woman who escapes the usual logic of characters like these and she underlined the script’s writing by showing Alma as an outsider by choice but making her a part of Hud by her behavior and interactions with the other cast-members. Her Alma is fascinatingly mysterious and yet very familiar, she is neither a very deep nor a very complex character but she benefits a great deal from Patricia Neal’s interpretation which is able to suggest a whole life beyond Hud, a journey that Alma has gone through and that will continue long after the movie has ended. Because of a lack of an own plotline by the script, Patricia Neal had only herself to rely on and her acting choices, even though not always able to truly overcome the limits of her character, made it possible for her to leave a distinct mark on her role and the movie and she was able to add various layers beyond the surface of Alma, added only by her own interpretation. Patricia Neal showed that she did not truly need a script to help her – because while her work with her dialogue is very intriguing, it’s mostly her unspoken scenes that truly turn Alma into a the memorable character she turned out to be: little looks at Paul Newman, short moments of doubt or regret, decisions of strength played with a certain vulnerability or little gestures of joy that make her interactions with Paul Newman so tense and yet so relaxed.

In her first moment on the screen, Patricia Neal already demonstrated how unexpected her interpretation of Alma Brown is – her delivery of the line ‘He parked right on my flower bed’ after the arrival of Hud lacks all the emotions that usually would accompany a line like this: hidden pain or suffering, regret, a secret longing, everything that could help an actress to tell all the untold secrets of Alma Brown in one second. Patricia Neal instead delivered the line without any of these emotions and stated it in a very matter-of-fact way, with maybe a slight annoyance but still a tone that expressed even an acceptance of his behavior since she already knows what to expect of him. And when she later asks him why he chose to park exactly on her flowers, her voice again speaks with clear composure that is not trying to hide any deeper feelings but again shows how well she knows Hud and men like him. In her first interactions with Paul Newman, Patricia Neal also lays the foundation of their relationship – her Alma Brown is a woman who clearly enjoys all his stories about the countless women he goes to bed with, who likes his behavior and apparently never thinks of herself as an object of affection but rather someone who prefers to meet Hud on the same level when it comes to their private lives. This way, Patricia Neal also underlined that Alma knows her position as housekeeper in the Bannon household but neither in this position nor as a woman she is willing to put herself under Hud’s influence and charm. During her later scenes, Patricia Neal slowly shows how much Alma has been shaped by the life she led so far – the dialogue about her past is only minimal but her facial acting and the way she speaks her lines make it clear that Alma is a woman who experienced a great deal during her life so far, good and bad. The way Alma behaves around the household, as the only woman in a world of men, demonstrates that she is already used to this life kind of life. Patricia Neal crafted Alma as a woman who has her own philosophy, her own wisdom and the strength to live her life accordingly to it. She is not a saint nor a mysterious creature that came out of nowhere – instead, she is very much a part of her environment, earthy and real, transcendent and not at once. Patricia Neal turned Alma into a real three-dimensional human being, a woman who possesses the toughness she needs in a world like this, the no-nonsense attitude that helps her to keep her strength and her dignity but also the joyful spirit that allows her to always enjoy life, no matter how little it may offer to her.

Since Alma is mostly written as a female counterpart for Hud, Patricia Neal’s scenes opposite Paul Newman (which are most of them) are the most important factor in her work. She could have easily suffered the same fate Eleanor Parker in Detective Story or Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun did 12 years earlier – playing characters that are only seen as important as long as they provide a storyline for the central male character. But Patricia Neal did not fall under this pressure but instead was able to craft Alma Brown as a woman who clearly exists independently from Hud and this way prevented her from turning into a plot device that only exists to give Paul Newman more screen time. Her chemistry with Paul Newman is the most deciding aspect of her work and both actors did their best to combine a certain level of mutual indifference, respect, friendship and clear sexual interest to achieve a wonderful and captivating chemistry. In various little moments, Patricia Neal shows that Alma is a woman who cares more about Hud than she should and who sometimes thinks about him in a way that is different from their moments of relaxed honesty as she sometimes seems to enjoy the idea of being an object of affection to him. But she can also suffers from his constant insults, disinterest and behavior like everybody else. The look on her face as she is doing the dishes, a look completely rid of any emotions which again underlines Patricia Neal’s straight-forwardness in the part, tells how easily Hud can hurt her, despite Alma’s own protectiveness. And so, despite her longing for him she keeps her distance. Or better: she keeps him at distance. Her slight annoyance after one of Hud’s rather unsubtle advances on the porch or her delivery of the line ‘Way over’ when Hud, obviously drunk, again tries to make a pass at her in the kitchen, show that there are no illusions in Alma’s life and that her own experience and her own wisdom prevent her from surrendering to her physical desires. And the scene when she talks to him in her little house, after having quickly removed her underwear that was hanging outside to dry, shows an almost burning passion between these two without ever losing the subtlety of the character – her smiles, her eyes all tell of a certain longing while her words are trying to keep Hud at a distance. It’s mostly this relaxed, open but sexually filled atmosphere between Patricia Neal and Paul Newman that is one of the most fascinating aspects of Hud.

Patricia Neal’s performance is a beautiful example of a dedicated realism on the screen but also of an actress taking an underwritten and thin part and filling it with life thanks to her own acting, her own personality and her ability to use her material to craft the idea of a whole world beyond the written word. Of course, this beautiful portrayal still exists inside the possibilities of Patricia Neal’s work – it’s easy to praise an actress for doing so much with so little but it does not change the fact that this ‘little’ is still holding her back in a certain way. She certainly succeeded in the role but this success is just as limited as the role itself. Still, Patricia Neal used her limited screen time and material very wisely and was able to create a memorable, three-dimensional character by completely focusing on the realism of Alma Brown’s life, her present and her past, a woman who does not spend her life thinking about what could be but only about what is. She brought a wonderfully sad, longing quality to her part and that way took it much further than the screenplay allowed. In her final scenes, her sudden tears are such a start contrast to her earlier characterization that the effect is overwhelming for a short moment until Alma again turns into the woman she used to be. Her husky voice and her body language all show a certain sexuality behind her tough façade, but also a lot loneliness and the trace of a hard life, a relaxed and self-assured but still doubting woman who more than once suffers from her own wisdom, her own choices to remain at a distance to her environment and protect herself against being hurt again. And even during her final talk with Hud, in which she again shows that she knows men like him and that the only thing she can do now is leave, Patricia Neal delivers her lines in which Alma finally tells Hud that she did have some sexual interests in him, again so completely straight-forward and without trying to turn them into anything noteworthy that Alma leaves the movie just as quietly and incidentally as she entered it. So, for her unique and captivating approach to this part, she receives

Best Actress 1963

2012-01-04T18:46:00.000+01:00

The next year will be 1963 and the nominees were

Leslie Caron in The L-Shaped Room

Shirley MacLaine in Irma La Douce

Patricia Neal in Hud

Rachel Roberts in This Sporting Life

Natalie Wood in Love with the Proper Stranger

Some fun stats...

2012-01-03T09:52:00.001+01:00

Just for fun, here are some statistics:

Most wins: Meryl Streep & Vivien Leigh (2 times each)

Most losses without a win: Greer Garson (3 times)

Most losses overall: Katharine Hepburn (6 times, but 1 win)

Most reviewed: Katharine Hepburn (7 times)

Most 5-star reviews: Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh & Meryl Streep (2 times each)

Most last places: Katharine Hepburn (3 times)

Most runner-ups: Bette Davis & Katharine Hepburn (2 times each)

The ranking of the judged performances so far...

2012-01-03T09:35:00.000+01:00

5 new performances enter the ranking of the Best Actress nominees!

Here is how I rank the 148 judged performances so far (new additions in bold):

Best of the Best

01. Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves (1996)
02. Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar named Desire (1951)
03. Marion Cotillard in La Môme (2007)
04. Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939)
05. Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice (1982)
06. Jessica Lange in Frances (1982)
07. Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)
08. Luise Rainer in The Good Earth (1937)
09. Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday (1950)
10. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950)
11. Meryl Streep in A Cry in the Dark (1988)
12. Geraldine Page in The Trip to Bountiful (1985)
13. Bette Davis in All about Eve (1950)
14. Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
15. Joan Fontaine in Rebecca (1940)
16. Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette (1938)
17. Imelda Staunton in Vera Drake (2004)
18. Judy Garland in A Star is Born (1954)
19. Katharine Hepburn in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
20. Bette Davis in Dark Victory (1939)

Really Fantastic

21. Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (1967)
22. Frances McDormand in Fargo (1996)
23. Brenda Blethyn in Secrets and Lies (1996)
24. Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth (1998)
25. Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939)
26. Louise Fletcher in One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
27. Isabelle Adjani in L'Histoire d'Adèle H. (1975)

Fantastic

28. Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944)
29. Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby (2004)
30. Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight (1944)
31. Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
32. Sophia Loren in La Ciociara (1961)
33. Ingrid Bergman in Höstsonaten (1978)
34. Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman (1978)
35. Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story (1959)
36. Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass (1961)
37. Elizabeth Hartman in A Patch of Blue (1965)
38. Julie Christie in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
39. Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
40. Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple (1985)
41. Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen (1951)
42. Annette Bening in Being Julia (2004)
43. Catalina Sandino Moreno in Maria Full of Grace (2004)
44. Glenda Jackson in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
45. Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story (1940)
46. Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge! (2001)
47. Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
48. Kristin Scott Thomas in The English Patient (1996)

Really Great

49. Bette Davis in Jezebel (1938)
50. Edith Evans in The Whisperers (1967)
51. Simone Signoret in Room at the Top (1959)
52. Kate Winslet in The Reader (2008)
53. Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)
54. Eleanor Parker in Caged (1950)
55. Sissy Spacek in In the Bedroom (2001)
56. Fernanda Montenegro in Central do Brasil (1998)
57. Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist (1988)
58. Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
59. Laura Linney in The Savages (2007)
60. Greta Garbo in Camille (1937)
61. Julie Christie in Darling (1965)
62. Jane Fonda in They shoot Horses, don't they? (1969)

Great

63. Jessica Lange in Sweet Dreams (1985)
64. Deborah Kerr in The King and I (1956)
65. Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married (2008)
66. Carroll Baker in Baby Doll (1956)
67. Grace Kelly in The Country Girl (1954)
68. Susan Hayward in Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947)
69. Jodie Foster in The Accused (1988)
70. Geraldine Page in Interiors (1978)
71. Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965)
72. Rosalind Russell in Mourning Becomes Electra (1947)
73. Glenda Jackson in Hedda (1975)
74. Samantha Eggar in The Collector (1965)
75. Emily Watson in Hilary and Jackie (1998)
76. Bette Davis in The Letter (1940)
77. Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle (1940)
78. Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love (1998)
79. Ellen Page in Juno (2007)
80. Julie Christie in Away from Her (2007)
81. Jean Simmons in The Happy Ending (1969)
82. Meryl Streep in Doubt (2008)
83. Bette Davis in Now, Voyager (1942)
84. Halle Berry in Monster's Ball (2001)
85. Meryl Streep in Out of Africa (1985)
86. Piper Laurie in The Hustler (1961)
87. Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth (1937)
88. Geneviève Bujold in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
89. Liza Minnelli in The Sterile Cuckoo (1969)
90. Margaret Sullavan in Three Comrades (1938)
91. Geraldine Page in Summer and Smoke (1961)
92. Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria (1982)
93. Greer Garson in Mrs. Parkington (1944)
94. Judi Dench in Iris (2001)

Very Good

95. Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver (1942)
96. Melissa Leo in Frozen River (2008).
97. Jane Fonda in Klute (1971)
98. Joan Crawford in Possessed (1947)
99. Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959)
100. Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday (1953)
101. Jane Wyman in The Blue Veil (1951)
102. Carole Kane in Hester Street (1975)
103. Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (1953)

Good

104. Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina (1954)
105. Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones (1954)
106. Simone Signoret in Ship of Fools (1965)
107. May Robson in Lady for a Day (1933)
108. Sissy Spacek in Missing (1982)
109. Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun (1951)
110. Meryl Streep in One True Thing (1998)
111. Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year (1942)
112. Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)
113. Maggie McNamara in The Moon is Blue (1953)
114. Diane Keaton in Marvin's Room (1996)
115. Greer Garson in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
116. Anne Baxter in All about Eve (1950)
117. Janet Gaynor in A Star is Born (1937)
118. Leslie Caron in Lili (1953)
119. Audrey Hepburn in Wait until Dark (1967)
120. Angelina Jolie in Changeling (2008)
121. Irene Dunne in Love Affair (1939)
122. Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
123. Janet Suzman in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)
124. Ingrid Bergman in Anastasia (1956)
125. Jane Wyman in Magnificent Obsession (1954)
126. Fay Bainter in White Banners (1938)
127. Claudette Colbert in Since you went Away (1944)
128. Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas (1937)

Okay

129. Katharine Hepburn in Guess who's coming to dinner (1967)
130. Ava Gardener in Mogambo (1953)
131. Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)
132. Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)
133. Anne Bancroft in Agnes of God (1985)
134. Wendy Hiller in Pygmalion (1938)
135. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year (1978)
136. Nancy Kelly in The Bad Seed (1956)
137. Rosalind Russell in My Sister Eileen (1942)
138. Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter (1947)
139. Martha Scott in Our Town (1940)
140. Ann-Margret in Tommy (1975)
141. Katharine Hepburn in The Rainmaker (1956)

Unsatisfying

142. Dorothy McGuire in Gentleman's Agreement (1947)
143. Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1978)
144. Eleanor Parker in Detective Story (1951)
145. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1933)
146. Katharine Hepburn in Morning Glory (1933)

Disappointing

147. Bette Davis in Mr. Skeffington (1944)
148. Melanie Griffith in Working Girl (1988)

And Vivien makes two...

2012-01-03T01:39:00.003+01:00

Well, it has finally happend! Meryl got company! Who thought that Vivien Leigh would be the first actress on this blog to tie Meryl Streep as the most-honored winner? Both actresses now have two wins to their names. It should also be noted that both received their wins for performances with perfect grades.
Will anybody join them in the future? Or even top them? Oscar Queens Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis are surley eager for another win. Kate may have won once but also lost for the 6th time now. And Bette is probably very angry that she, too, like Vivien and Meryl, has given two performances that received a perfect grade but lost both times anyway.
Who knows what the future will bring...

But for now, congratulations to Vivien Leigh!

Best Actress 1951: The resolution

2012-01-03T01:35:00.002+01:00

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

5. Eleanor Parker in Detective Story

It’s easy to imagine that this whole performance could have been much more satisfying and actually overcome the limitations of the writing if Eleanor Parker had actually dared to leave her own comfort zone and invest all the possibilities the character offered despite these obvious limiations – but she unfortunately played it too easy overall and reduced her character to a variety of different teary-eyed reaction shots.

4. Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun

Shelley Winters does suffer from the sheer fact that she simply could not turn Alice Tripp into more than what George Stevens would allow her (and this is rather little) and often Alice also does feel too one-dimensional in her attempts to get George to marry her, but if Alice is a plot device, then Shelley Winters made sure that she would at least be a beautifully realized one.

3. Jane Wyman in The Blue Veil

Jane Wyman suffered from her weak material and very often limits her performance to two different facial expressions but within these limitations she crafted a touching piece of work that is saved by her decision to remain realistic while highlighting the sentimentality of the story and her strong final moments.

2. Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen

Katharine Hepburn has seldom been so deliciously entertaining, so wonderfully amusing and so dramatically heartbreaking in one movie. Rose Sayer is certainly not a very deep or complex character but there is still something almost magical about watching Katharine Hepburn bring her to such splendid life.

1. Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar named Desire

Vivien Leigh gave a performance that dug so deeply in this character’s mind and portrayed such unforgettable moments that it is one of a few movie performances that can truly be called a work of art, that serves the movie it is set in while also existing in its own universe, proofing once and for all the greatness of her talent and standing as a symbol for movie acting at its finest.

Best Actress 1951: Vivien Leigh in "A Streetcar named Desire"

2012-01-03T01:33:00.001+01:00

‘She brought everything I intended to the role and even much more than I had dared dream of.’ Is there really anything else to be said? If Tennessee Williams praises a performance of his most famous female character in a movie based on his most famous play with such clear words, then there cannot be any doubt that the actress in question has done a job that surpasses usual indicators of quality and reached a level of excellence that can only rarely be seen on the screen and offers a once-in-a-lifetime experience for everyone involved – the playwright who watches as his words become reality, the audience which becomes deeper and deeper involved into this unsettling and yet so fascinating characterization and the actress herself who leaves an everlasting imprint in the history books of movie acting. And even more astonishing in this case is the fact that the actress in question had already done the same thing 12 years earlier on exactly that same, almost unreachable level of excellence. It’s one of the most famous movie facts of all time that British actress Vivien Leigh secured two of the most famous American female movie characters of all time – first the coquettish, beautiful and manipulative Southern Belle Scarlett O’Hara in Hollywood’s most famous epic Gone with the Wind and in 1951 the faded, delusional and mentally breaking Southern Belle Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar named Desire. Her work as Scarlett O’Hara is probably the single most famous motion picture performance of all time, a legendary case of actress and role fitting together so perfectly that even the thought of another performer in this part seems completely absurd. In this role, she twirled the screen and forever defined the character of the Southern Belle, making her Scarlett selfish and loveable, mean-spirited and delightful, empty and deep. The normal path for Vivien Leigh after this astonishing work should have been the way it was until 1950 – a career of several movie and stage roles that helped her go on proving her seriousness of her craft that would never again reach that same level of complexity and perfection. But in 1951, Vivien Leigh suddenly returned to the Oscars with a performance that would, as perplexing at is may seem, make her Scarlett O’Hara ‘only’ the second-greatest piece of work she had ever done. Her Blanche DuBois is a creation that haunts and hurts the viewer, a woman who so shatteringly walks down a road of self-destruction while being pushed down this road at the same time and she portrayed this slow, drawn-out mental break-down with a delicacy and heartbreaking anguish that is almost peerless among her craft.

Interestingly, director Elia Kazan apparently did not think as much of Vivien Leigh as Tennessee Williams did – he talked about her as an actress small talent but whose vast determination would have made her crawl through broken glass if she had thought it would help her performance. Well, Elia Kazan is maybe not the best judge in this case – or to put it better, not the most neutral judge. I’m sure that, among the method actors who slowly conquered the acting world, Gone with the Wind was seen as the highpoint of triviality and melodramatic movie acting from those melodramatic days of old Hollywood and Vivien Leigh, with her past as Scarlett O’Hara, certainly did not fit Kazan’s own criteria for great actors – he surely had much more admiration for Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden who had all originated their parts in A Streetcar named Desire on the Broadway stage and Kazan was surely not too pleased when the studio insisted to replace Jessica Tandy, who originated the role of Blanche on the Broadway stage and won a Tony for it, with Vivien Leigh, who was considered a bigger box-office drawn than the unknown Tandy. But Elia Kazan’s criticism as well as his ‘compliment’ on her determination feels rather difficult to be taken seriously – of course, everybody is entitled to his/her opinion but a performance like that of Vivien Leigh cannot only be explained with determination. A lot of actors and actresses display enormous amounts of determination and while this is certainly a very important ingredient for a truly outstanding performance, it cannot replace the necessary talent and abilities. And also: didn’t Vivien Leigh disappear more into the role of Blanche DuBois than her method-acting cast mates? She famously later blamed her performance as Blanche DuBois for causing her own mental problems, she felt that the role tipped her over the edge, grabbed her and never let her go again. It’s maybe the opposite of the acting style of Brando, Hunter and Malden who used their own personality first before finding themselves in their roles and later leaving it again – but Vivien Leigh’s own personal problems made her performance as Blanche DuBois just the same irreplaceable meeting of actress and part as it was 12 years earlier with her and Scarlett O’Hara, even if the consequences resulted in such a personal tragedy. But it’s not difficult to imagine Vivien Leigh being hunted by Blanche DuBois for the rest of her life – she seemed to go so deep into this character that she not only played her, but understood her, felt like her, suffered like her and slowly feel into the darkness of her own mind. It’s basically impossible to think that Vivien Leigh stopped being Blanche DuBois at the end of the day and became her again the next morning – such a level of abandoning one’s own personality can only be explained with a complete surrender to the part one is playing and letting it take over every aspect of one’s own existence. Of course, Blanche DuBois was not completely new to Vivien Leigh – she had already played the role on the London stage under the direction of her husband Laurence Olivier, a run that surely was the beginning of her own connection to this tormented soul and helped her to perfect her understanding in the movie version that would follow.

10 years after A Streetcar named Desire, another movie version of a Tennessee Williams play would again lead the playwright to extensive praise of an actress – but while Geraldine Page’s acting style was more that of a machine that could produce every single human emotion with exact precision, Vivien Leigh portrayed Blanche DuBois with much more emotional closeness that allowed her to completely fit into the form of her character while Geraldine Page preferred to control her characters from a distance. Overall, Vivien Leigh’s acting style is probably the biggest key to her success in this role – yes, there is melodrama in her performance which would make it easy to dismiss her work next to the raw brutality and sensitivity of Marlon Brando and the warm earthiness of Kim Hunter but this melodrama so wonderfully clashes with everything around her that it only helps to increase the loneliness of this woman, her cherishing of days gone by, her inability to cope with the people and reasons that confront her and the intensity of her growing isolation, mentally and physically. Stanley may be called a survivor of the Stone Age by Blanche but Marlon Brando was able to fill his role with an amount of tenderness and child-like dependence that naturally worked in perfect harmony with his brutality, roughness and cruelty and resulted in a performance that is a landmark in pure human force on the screen. Vivien Leigh crafted her own tour-de-force differently, turning Blanche into a passive creature, a woman who is shifted and influenced by the characters around her, who retreats herself more and more into her own mind even though it’s the most dangerous place for her to be. The clash of these two acting styles, these two completely different actors and characters and their chemistry of hate, rejection but also sexual lust is the driving force of A Streetcar named Desire. Vivien Leigh is the antithesis to Marlon Brando just as much as Blanche DuBois is the antithesis to Stanley Kowalski. Today, A Streetcar named Desire is often referred to as a ‘Marlon Brando movie’ but for me, it’s Vivien Leigh who carries the picture and has to handle one of the most challenging parts ever written and in which she not only plays but also evokes all different kind of emotions. Very few other performances are able to pull the viewer so completely into their own misery until the pain and desperation felt on the screen seems to be felt by everyone watching it. But Vivien Leigh portrayed the mental breakdown and humiliation of Blanche DuBois not only on this emotional, but also on an intellectual and psychological level.

Just like Blanche appears out of thick fog at the beginning of A Streetcar named Desire on the movie screen, she also seems to appear out of another world in the environment of the French Quarter in New Orleans. Her delivery of the line ‘Can this be her home’ shows how unable Blanche is to connect to her new surroundings and how she prefers to live in a world of memories, good and bad. Blanche was looking for a kind of security that she will never find here. For the entire movie, Vivien Leigh sustains this aura of inexplicability, of mysteriousness, even when her character has been stripped down of all secrets, of all privacy and all dignity. By focusing on these effects of Blanche, Vivien Leigh was able to create her desperation and helplessness without making it too obvious. Her performance never turns into a display of ‘Look what I can do!’ but instead she fulfilled the task of working with the realism that this movie version demands and the delicacy and otherworldliness of the character of Blanche. Blanche DuBois may want magic instead of realism – Vivien Leigh gave us both, the realism of a harrowing break-down and the magic of a performance was able to realize it with almost poetic beauty that brings absolute justice to the writing of Tennessee Williams and the character of Blanche. She can be real and surreal at the same moment – walking around in the dark, laughing about liquor while trying to prevent Mitch from speaking the truth he came to say, yelling at him for a short moment before she becomes a desperate girl again and creates a moment that is almost like an imaginary dream that unwillingly pulls the viewer more and more inside. Like so many heroines in his plays, Blanche is destroyed by both her own longings and the actions of the people around her. In the case of Blanche, it is never clear if she is truly a victim or an offender – she is exposed to the mental and physical abuse of Stanley which pushed her already delicate condition further and further into a state of madness but she also looks back at a past of sexual behavior that may have been caused by her inability to cope with the memory of her husband’s death but also does not excuse an affair with a pupil. In her interpretation, Vivien Leigh may overall have gone the ‘sympathy road’, playing Blanche mostly as a desperate victim (Jessica Lange’s Blanche DuBois showed her sexual interest in Stanley in various scenes in which Vivien Leigh played her with fearful shame) but this interpretation is in no way easier than another one might have been and Vivien Leigh was brave enough to find some moments in her work in which she leaves it open for everyone to decide how much sympathy and understanding she truly deserves. Blanche is clearly a manipulative woman who tries to lie her way out of her own memories and into the lives of Stella and Mitch. Also, her fake attitude that she has built for herself, that cheerful, high-pitched naïve little girl that dreams to be a Southern Belle is often hard to take and makes it even understandable that Stanley would not want her in the house. Blanche’s arrival destroys the balance that has existed in the marriage of Stella and Stanley as her behavior affects everyone around her and almost even takes everyone down with her. In this way, Vivien Leigh did not corner the other performances of the movie but every character is allowed to develop its own intentions and thoughts.

Vivien Leigh does thankfully not exaggerate the dreams of a Southern Belle. Her Blanche DuBois is not a successor of Scarlett O’Hara – in A Streetcar named Desire, Vivien Leigh demonstrates beautifully how Blanche uses the masque of that cheerful woman to hide all the overwhelming worries to haunt her constantly. This way, she did not turn into a squeaky, fake and unbearable creation like Mary Pickford’s Norma Besant in Coquette but instead made it clear that any melodrama or stylized approach is part of her characterization and not of her performance. The fact that both of Vivien Leigh’s Oscar-winning portrayals are some kind of Southern Belles would make it easy to see Blanche DuBois as an alter ego of Scarlett O’Hara but where Scarlett O’Hara had the strength to adjust herself to a new life, to new circumstances and situations, Blanche DuBois is exactly the opposite as she cannot leave the past behind, lets it haunt and torture her, influence her actions and finally break her. The suicide of her love, a deed she indirectly provoked, has destroyed something inside her but she does not use her fantasies to escape reality but rather becomes dominated by her past, constantly hearing the music that was playing when her husband killed himself, waiting desperately for the shot to make it stop. It’s hard to imagine Scarlett O’Hara being so completely affected by anything that happens in her life. Scarlett O’Hara also existed in a different world of plantations and Southern gallantry while Blanche DuBois comes to life in a small, Black-and-White character study in which Vivien Leigh receives no support from opulent costumes, a sweeping score or fancy Art Direction – in A Streetcar named Desire, she has nothing but herself to rely on.

Playing a character so close to the edge of sanity, almost near a mental breakdown is incredibly hard to pull off without over-acting or doing a collection of ‘crazy tics’. And so, Vivien Leigh has to be applauded even more for letting everything she is doing appear so natural while emphasizing every single emotion Blanche is feeling and experiencing. Her delicate appearance perfectly matches Blanche’s fragility while her voice helps her wonderfully to express the different states of minds she is experiencing. She can pronounce her own name with a tone that seems to come right from the graveyard in which almost all of her family members have retired and she can laugh during her date with Mitch in the most girlish giggle. With all this, she found the harrowing core in what could have been an exaggerated portrayal. She combines the naivety of a lost girl with the self-assurance of a lustful woman – her Blanche is stuck somewhere in her own development, unable to become her own person. She can throw Mitch out of the apartment by exposing a scream that is half anger and half fear, she can appear almost like a dark ghost out of the worst nightmare when she recounts to Mitch about her downfall while leaving the viewer puzzled if they should feel their heart break out of pity or feel their heart stop out of anxiety. Vivien Leigh also finds constantly new nuances in Blanche, breaking down when Cola is spilled on her dress and later angrily pushing her sister away who tries to comfort her after Stanley shouted at her. A scene of her seducing a young man/boy is as disturbing as it is painful and Vivien Leigh portrays the constant spiral downwards which is Blanche’s life with a straight-forwardness that catches all her illusions and fears. This also underlines the fact that Blanche is, essentially, a very straight-forward role that clearly tells an actress what to do and how to do it (unlike Stanley who leaves more room for interpretation) – but the role itself is already so demanding that even with the guidance of Tennessee Williams’s words, a failure could come very easily. The scene in which Vivien Leigh discusses the loss of her old home with Stanley, presenting him letters from lawyers and then fighting with him for the old lovers of her husband shows how completely she lost herself in the role, finding Blanche in every body movement and line delivery. When she talks about her past with her husband and the night he killed himself, Vivien Leigh shows Blanche completely lost in her own thoughts, overwhelmed by her memories while also appearing to be having waited for years to share these moments with somebody, anybody. Who is Blanche? Who does she want to be? These questions seem never clearly answered – Blanche may say that she never lied in her heart but does this not mostly mean that she never lied to herself? This is certainly true because the masque that she has build only exists to fool others but never herself. Blanche always exposes little bits of truth whenever she is forced to, hoping to receive affection and acceptance in return. Vivien Leigh also constantly acts these two Blanches – one on the outside whom she expresses with her body, face and voice and one on the inside who listens to imaginary musical pieces and is always tormented by her own doings and thoughts whom she expresses only with her eyes.

Blanche says that she wants Mitch very much and later even begs him to marry her. But it’s always rather doubtful if Blanche is really looking for this kind of love or if this is a last attempt by her to escape her old life even though it only fastens her circle of destruction and self-destruction – or if she is truly able to even feel this kind of love anymore. It seems that for her, everything is better than that music inside her head but her body mostly appears like an empty shell with a dead soul living inside. ‘Death…the opposite is desire’, Blanche expresses. She may have lived a life of desire for a long time but she did not only take the streetcar named desire but also one called ‘Cemetery’ and the apartment of Stanley and Stella will be place at which she will be crushed like a flower. She has build a cage for herself in her own mind but also in this apartment which secures her from the outside world, from the woman selling flowers for the death but also keeps her locked inside with Stanley whose unwillingness to understand her and his willingness to torture her will finally break her completely. Her final scenes are among the most disturbing displays of human humiliation ever presented – the way she hides behind the curtain like a scared animal and then tries to fight against the nurse while howling like a wounded animal show how much of her dignity and self-understanding as a human being have been taken away from her. At one point, Stella accuses Stanley that men like him have destroyed Blanche and forced her to change but when she delivers her famous last line ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers’, it becomes clear that she was destroyed by all sorts of men, by her own deeds, by words, by actions and much more because she existed in her own world that simply had to collide with the harsh reality of her life some day. Blanche may cheerfully hum ‘Paper Moon’, a song about believe, make-believe and the closeness of reality and illusion – but for her, this make-believe cannot last.

Many actresses have played the role of Blanche DuBois. So it’s maybe wrong to say that only Vivien Leigh could play her but it’s certainly not wrong to say that nobody can ever top her. Her Blanche is a mysterious, pathetic, lovely, charming, appealing, tragic, fragile, hopeless and helpless creation that has stood the test of time in the most glorious way. At the end, the viewers feel as if they have known her all her life, to watch her fall and being violated felt too unbearable to remain at a distance and Vivien Leigh gives one of the few performances that make the viewers feel actually helpless but the truth is that we hardly know anything at all about her. She leaves the movie with just as many questions as she entered it and even though Vivien Leigh showed that Blanche was constantly pushed further and further to the edge of her own mind while walking towards it at the same time, she still did not gave an answer to all the mysteries that surround her. She’s a woman who lived behind a thin veil of illusions until these illusions were crashed and destroyed and led her to be unable to separate between them and reality anymore. In realizing all this, Vivien Leigh gave a performance that dug so deeply in this character’s mind and portrayed such unforgettable moments, that it is one of a few movie performances that can truly be called a work of art, that serves the movie it is set in while also existing in its own universe, proofing once and for all the greatness of her talent and standing as a symbol for movie acting at its finest. So it no surprise that for all her talent, determination, willingness, honesty, helplessness, desperation, fear, panic, happiness, suffering and incomparable excellence, Vivien Leigh receives

Best Actress 1951: Katharine Hepburn in "The African Queen"

2011-12-24T14:37:00.000+01:00

Very few performers had such longevity as Katharine Hepburn. After she began acting in the early thirties, she kept going acting right up until 1994 when she made her last film appearances ever in the TV movie One Christmas and Warren Beatty’s Love Affair. Her lasting popularity as an actress meant that the audience could accompany her through her various stages as an actress and not only remember just one but several defining images of her work and personality. There is the sophisticated and witty heroine of such Black-and-White-classics like Bringing up Baby or The Philadelphia Story, the strong woman opposite Spencer Tracy or the loveable, old, grandmother-like Katharine Hepburn with the slightly shaking head. All these images have become a part of motion-picture history – but even though, the most iconic image of Katharine Hepburn may be the one she cultivated during the 50s: the middle-aged spinster who suddenly finds unexpected and overwhelming love for the first time in her life. The ground for this was laid with her performance in 1951’s The African Queen – in this she played Rose Sayer, a missionary in Africa who accompanies a rough boat captain to destroy a German gunboat during World War I. The part was famously declined by Bette Davis because she had no interest to go Africa and only would have joined the project if they had recreated German East-Africa on the back-lot (of course, she would later have to compromise when she did Death on the Nile in Egypt). Katharine Hepburn did not have such problems and joined the crew and the rest of the cast and travelled to Uganda and the Congo to play a role that would turn out to be among the most famous ones of her career. During the shooting, she had to endure constant sickness because of the bad water and spartan living conditions (director John Huston and co-star Humphrey Bogart apparently avoided any sickness by drinking nothing but Scotch or Whiskey) but it’s not hard to imagine her fighting any obstacles that may have come her way. In this way, Rose Sayer was surely a gift for Katharine Hepburn since the two women appear to have so much in common, especially after Rose has left the uptight missionary behind and turned into an almost rebellious and free-spirited fighter. Rose, too, defied convention and found her own spirits and thoughts – even though only after a man got her off her high horse which is another theme that is more than once visible in Katharine Hepburn’s work, a fact that further underlines how well the part of Rose fitted her and how it is almost a perfect synopsis of her entire filmography. It combines her talent for comedy and drama, the witty heroine, the rebellious spirit, the stern spinster, the romantic love interest and the independent woman in one and therefore somehow became the quintessential ‘Katharine Hepburn experience’. It’s not necessarily the strongest work of her career (even though surely among the top) but she beautifully turned it into a blend of her entire career without losing the originality and spontaneousness of this singular performance.

The African Queen, which also holds the distinction of being Katharine Hepburn’s and Humphrey Bogart’s first motion picture in color, has by now deservedly gained its reputation as one of Hollywood’s greatest classics. If nothing else, the co-starring of Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, both of whom had been selected as the greatest male and female movie legend of all time by the American Film Institute, alone guaranteed this – and it’s true that, despite the gripping plot, the exotic location and the always fascinating theme of ‘David vs. Goliath’, The African Queen is a character-piece that completely rests on the shoulders of its two stars who spend most of the running time alone together on a little boat. Looking back at the career of Katharine Hepburn, her most famous co-star is easily Spencer Tracy simply because of the sheer number of movies they made together but also because of the well-known love affair behind these pictures. But this does not mean that Katharine Hepburn could not lighten up the screen with any other actor – because she did it almost every time. No matter if her co-star was Cary Grant, James Stewart, Peter O’Toole, Henry Fonda, Fred McMurray or Rossano Brazzi – she was always able to both underline the relationship between the two characters and keep the integrity and independence of her own work intact. And her work with Humphrey Bogart is no exception. The uptight, strict and demanding woman opposite the drinking, loud-mouthed and unconventional man may not be a truly original concept but the work of Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn carries it to a wonderfully entertaining, touching, engaging and irresistible level. The chemistry between those two pros is the fuel that keeps The African Queen going at every minute – they are romantic and nauseated, companions by fate and lovers by choice, a little crazy, humorous and both entertaining and three-dimensional enough to emphasize the adventure and action of the story while also making their characters believable and engaging. Like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight, Katharine Hepburn gives a performance that serves the overall purpose of the picture while never forgetting that this purpose can only be fulfilled by crafting a character that is more than a mere plot-device but stands firmly and strongly on its own, a woman that goes beyond the script and feels truly complete instead of just like a part of a whole.

Right from the start, Katharine Hepburn, like Humphrey Bogart, understands that The African Queen is a movie that mixes adventure and romance with a good deal of humor – humor that comes from the characters’ differences, from their relationship and from the circumstances, no matter how serious they may be (‘I pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution.`). The chemistry between the two leads first comes from the way they both obviously dislike each other’s characters only to fall in love with them very soon. And at all these times, both actors do their best to find the right sparkle in their interactions that keeps The African Queen entertaining and touching. So far, this review always mentioned both Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart – and it’s true, the structure and nature of the movie depends on both actors and both performances are strongly interwoven and, in most parts, depend on each other – but as mentioned in the beginning, Katharine Hepburn was always able to both develop strong relationships with her screen-partners and create characters that independently stood on their own two feet. As previously stated, Rose Sayer combines almost everything that Katharine Hepburn usually presented on the screen. In the beginning, she plays her with the slight arrogance and self-righteousness that Tracy Lord displayed in The Philadelphia Story but, also like Tracy, she already shows the romantic heroine beneath the surface – in her early scenes with Humphrey Bogart, it’s easy to see her dislike for this kind of man and her devotion to her religious brother but the foundation for their later love can already be spotted. During the first parts of The African Queen, Katharine Hepburn also shows her talent for drama as she plays a woman whose life is falling apart in just a short period of time – the death of her brother, the destruction of the village, the fact that she suddenly became part of a war that is mostly fought on another continent. In these moments, she displays her dislike for the Germans with a bitter hatred that motivates her further actions before the movie begins to take a more adventurous tone. After all, it’s Rose’s plan to sink the German gunboat and even though she may act with a certain naivety, her determination to proceed this goal is real. During the first half of The African Queen, she plays Rose with captivating earnest and disapproval of Mr. Allnut’s behavior – maybe because it was the first time that she played a character like this, she also did it without any exaggeration or some of her typical mannerisms. And somehow, only Katharine Hepburn could sit in a little boat in the African jungle, drinking tea or throwing Whisky overboard without becoming annoying or unlikeable.

During The African Queen, Katharine Hepburn takes her character around for about 180 degrees but she does it without interrupting her interpretation. The basis for this transformation was constantly created by her – her way of delivering the line ‘Mr. Allnut’, her facial expressions when she realizes that he only wanted to get close to her during the night because of the rain or her development of the plans to sink the German gunboat all help to see Rosie and Charlie as a match made in heaven. And when the moment of her transformation finally comes, it’s one of the most original, funny, touching and satisfying moments of Katharine Hepburn’s career – her way of touching her face with the back of her hand and the expression on her face as she marvels about the delightfulness of a physical experience turn Rose into an irresistible heroine. It’s a scene that reminds me of the musical Tommy and the lines ‘I’m free! And freedom tastes of reality!’ – the mirror is broken for Rose, all the feelings and emotions that have been locked up inside are allowed to reveal themselves and surprise herself just as much as everybody else. This is also one of the great gifts of Katharine Hepburn in this part – her ability to constantly surprise the viewer, Charlie and herself. She can constantly change the tone of the movie while always staying true to the character – she can delight the audience with her chemistry with Humphrey Bogart and then a few moments later break its heart when she prays in the boat, expecting to die very soon. In her work, she finds a wonderful balance between all the different kinds of genres that The African Queen covers. And in the end, when she proudly declares in front of the Germans that it was their plan to sink their ship and isn’t afraid of the consequences or her moving reaction shots when Charlie wants them to get married before their execution make it clear that Katharine Hepburn creates one of her most vibrant, full, living, exciting and captivating characters.

Overall, Katharine Hepburn has seldom been so deliciously entertaining, so wonderfully amusing and so dramatically heartbreaking in one movie. Rose Sayer is certainly not a very deep or complex character but there is still something almost magical about watching Katharine Hepburn bring her to such splendid life. For all of this, she receives

Best Actress 1951: Shelley Winters in "A Place in the Sun"

2011-12-20T16:45:00.001+01:00

1951 was a strange year for the Best Actress line-up – besides Eleanor Parker, Shelley Winters also managed a nomination for a performance that can be considered a borderline-case between leading and supporting. Her Alice Tripp is an easy to overlook character, not only because Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor are so much more fascinating to look at but also because Alice herself is the kind of woman almost everyone overlooks because her exterior is basically as uninteresting as her interior. But in the case of Shelley Winters, the category placement is less controversial than in the case of Eleanor Parker – Shelley Winter’s character is, in some way, the motor of A Place in the Sun who always dominates the tone of the story and the direction it takes and whose ultimate fate also influences and shapes the second part of the movie even when her character is already gone. It seems as if every character in A Place in the Sun wants her to go away just as quickly as everyone behind the camera but even with all her flaws, there is one thing about Alice Tripp that cannot be denied: her persistence and her (ironically) longevity. Everybody may want her to go away but Shelley Winters and Alice Tripp are determined to stay, no matter what. Ultimately, both women will lose the fight against this constant disinterest but their cry for attention is still admirable.

I assume that I am not the only one who is always…let’s say surprised when it is mentioned that Shelley Winters actually began her career as a ‘blonde bombshell’ before she turned herself into a serious character actress. Shelley Winters has so completely embedded herself into the public memory as the open-mouthed, loud and somewhat overweight mother/grandmother that it’s just impossible to imagine that she could really be mostly praised for her looks at one time or another. Apparently, A Place in the Sun was the important turning point in her career when she could show her serious dedication as an actress when she brought the role of Alice Tripp to life – a lonely, stubborn, sometimes annoying but ultimately tragic young girl working in a factory and starting an ill-fated relationship with Montgomery Clift’s George Eastman. There is certainly nothing glamorous or bombshell-like about Shelley Winters in this part – her face almost constantly reduced to a variety of grumpy sadness or anger, her appearance as plain as possible, she fulfills the task of being the complete opposite of Elizabeth Taylor’s Angela Vickers who embodies beauty, elegance, class and sex-appeal. But even though Shelley Winters has to play second fiddle to Elizabeth Taylor when it comes to filling the movie with sexual tension or breathtaking sensitivity, she does have the benefit of actually being given a much more emotional and demanding character – the only problem is: nobody really cares. Shelley Winters and Eleanor Parker may be the two ‘supporting girls that could’ in this year but they also share another similarity: they play characters that are experiencing great personal tragedy (Alice Tripp even much more than Mary McLeod) but are stuck in movies that are never interested in them. Eleanor Parker has to learn that her life as it used to be is falling apart in just a few moments and this one day at the police station will change everything for her forever – but all this is never presented as Mary’s tragedy but only serves as a catalyst for the actions of Kirk Douglas’s character. In this way, Eleanor Parker is basically reduced to a plot device – there is so much to say about Mary McLeod, so much to discover and so many possibilities but none are ever used. Part of the blame here also falls on Eleanor Parker who added to this imbalance between herself and Kirk Douglas by reducing her character to a variety of teary-eyed reaction shots. Shelley Winters cannot be blamed the same way because she obviously invests a lot of thought and dedication into Alice Tripp and was truly able to turn her into the into the movie’s most deciding character. But just like Eleanor Parker, she also faces an almost lost battle because she, too, gets mostly treated like a plot device and very often it appears that Shelley Winters was as unwanted to the movie makers as Alice Tripp to George Eastman.

Shelley Winters’s performance is such an interesting one to observe because there are certainly few performances that are so dominant and lasting and at the same time so invisible and feeble. Ultimately, Alice Tripp is less a character than a presence in A Place in the Sun – she influences the story and always lingers in the back of George’s and the audiences’ minds and is able to dominate the story because her fate (or better: fates) is (are) always influencing the actions and thoughts of everyone else in this movie. But this is less the achievement of Shelley Winters but of the screenplay which in Alice Tripp created a character everything seems to circle around but who is always considered much more noteworthy for what she does than for who she is. There is a lot that is happening to Alice Tripp in her short on-screen time: she falls in love with a guy, she has to see how he slowly turns away from her, she has to face being pregnant out of wedlock and in the end (or better: in the middle) of the movie she has to realize that George would be much happier if she simply did not exist at all. All of this sounds like a heartbreaking and memorable role – and it is: Shelley Winters actually adds much more pathos to this role than expected and it’s commendable that she is not afraid to show Alice as an often impossible, difficult and annoying woman. But she suffers from the problem that A Place in the Sun tells the story of George Eastman – and not of Alice Tripp. It’s always interested in his actions, in his thoughts and in his fate – and because of this, it takes almost the same attitude towards Alice Tripp as George does: she’s a problem that needs to be solved. Considering all the tragic incidents that happen to Alice, she remains a strangely pale character. As previously mentioned she is feeble and dominating. Feeble in regards to the fact that she never becomes her own person and always only exists in connection to George – when Alice is visiting a doctor and talks to him about her pregnancy, Shelley Winters clearly shows all her misery and suffering but the structure of the movie never allows her to step into the foreground because A Place in the Sun makes it clear that much more interesting than anything Alice has to say is a close-up of George, waiting in the car, prompting the audience to wonder what he will do now and how Alice’s pregnancy will affect him. This constant connection to George is also the reason why the character is so strong because she always influences the actions of A Place in the Sun. So, yes, Alice Tripp is a very fascinating case just because it’s so rare to see a character so strongly dominating her movie while constantly remaining so pale and uninteresting. When George arrives late for a date in her home, the following scene so perfectly sums up everything that A Place in the Sun is doing to Shelley Winters and Alice Tripp: when she delivers a moving speech and talks about their relationship, the camera is not once interested in her face but always stays on her back to focus exclusively on how George will react to her words. So, Alice Tripp is a lot: a presence, a plot device, a catalyst – but never a character.

So, Shelley Winters basically lost the fight before she could begin it since she faces a director and a script that is obviously never interested in Alice or Shelley. But even despite this, Shelley Winters never went the easy route in her performance but still realized that it’s worth a shot and did her best to get the most out of her material. As stated in the beginning, she lacks glamour and obvious appeal in her part but she does possess a certain sweetness and friendliness that makes it easy to understand why George would be attracted to her for a short period of time before losing his interest again just as quickly. Shelley Winters is not trying to win any sympathy with her role even though it would be very easy – she is not afraid to show Alice as a woman whom the audience could easily detest despite all the tragic things that are happening to her. Since the movie makes it so easy to sympathize with Clift’s George, Shelley Winters can easily be seen as the intruder, a woman whose nagging and demanding could become tiresome very soon, no matter how justified her demands may be. Shelley Winters manages to turn Alice into a very believable character who somehow neither receives any sympathy nor any hate but who ultimately always remains the pale, almost unnoticeable girl nobody ever seems to think of except when her action are interfering with the lives of somebody else. This appears to be Alice’s tragic fate and Shelley Winters was brave enough not to try to cover this but emphasize it in her work. Alice Tripp may mostly be an invisible presence in A Place in the Sun but Shelley Winters gave her a face and a voice that haunts the viewer for the entire story. Her sad expressions, almost completely covered in darkness during her and George’s ride on the lake, her anger when she calls George on the phone after her left her to celebrate with Angela while Alice remains alone at home or her desperation when there is no judge to marry them are all done beautifully and memorably despite appearing so insignificant at the same time. Shelley Winters did her best to create Alice as the complete opposite to Elizabeth Taylor and, just like Alice, refused to be ignored for the sake of a more beautiful and fascinating appearance. Shelley Winters performance works almost in contrast to A Place in the Sun because her work always calls for attention and makes the viewer want to know more about her while A Place in the Sun does its best to constantly push her in the background for the sake of its main character. In this way, she succeeded in turning Alice into a pitiful, heartbroken and sadly neglected person. She also triumphed in the difficult aspect of making it believable that Alice knows that she cannot hold a man like George forever while desperately trying to at the same time. Shelley Winters shows that Alice is aware of George’s disinterest and very often it appears that she does not even love him herself, that she was attracted to him for a short moment only, just like George to her, but she combines this with her longing to have him forever, not just because she wants to have a husband and a father for her child but also because, in some ways, she still loves him and hopes that, some day, he will feel the same. Shelley Winters portrays this nervousness, this determination, this naivety and this intelligence with clear precision and made the part of Alice seem much easier than it actually is. She willingly portrayed Alice as the aforementioned `problem that needs to be solved` without trying to come out at the end as a poor victim of circumstances and her own doings. Alice Tripp certainly deserved to be treated better for all her trouble – by George Eastman and by George Stevens. But Shelley Winters understood the structure of the role and A Place in the Sun and settled for the little chances she was given – and filled them with touching poignancy.

In the end, it seems almost fitting that Shelley Winters thought that Ronald Colman called out her name as the Best Actress of 1951 during Academy Awards night and was almost on the stairs leading up to the stage before she was called back – like Alice, she got her hopes up only to realize that, in the end, nobody really wanted her there. But also like Alice, she refused to be pushed aside too easily – Shelley Winter’s portrayal works in great harmony with the character of Alice Tripp and while she cannot overcome the limitations of the role and the resistance of the screenplay that always considers her a mere plot device, she still got the most out of what she had been given. Alice Tripp may be feeble because of the way the movie makers presented her and only strong whenever she changes the direction of the movie – but this strength is also owed to the sensitive portrayal of Shelley Winters. Ultimately, Shelley Winters does suffer from the sheer fact that she simply could not turn Alice Tripp into more than what George Stevens would allow her (and this is rather little) and often Alice also does feel too one-dimensional in her attempts to get George to marry her. But if Alice is a plot device, then Shelley Winters made sure that she would at least be a beautifully realized one. For all, she receives

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YOUR Best Actress of 1938!

2011-12-14T14:30:00.000+01:00

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Bette Davis - Jezebel (24 votes)

2. Norma Shearer - Marie Antoinette (17 votes)

3. Margaret Sullavan - Three Comrades (3 votes)

4. Wendy Hiller - Pygmalion (1 vote)

5. Fay Bainter - White Banners (0 votes)

Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1951: Jane Wyman in "The Blue Veil"

2011-12-14T12:40:00.002+01:00

There can be a lot of reasons why one wants to watch a certain performance. A legendary reputation, a horrible reputation, a general affection for the actor or the actress and many, many more. My personal interest for Jane Wyman’s performance in The Blue Veil was based on the fact that she won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama over Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar named Desire. Of course, I do not see this as a puzzling decision – I always say that voters in 1951 surely didn’t know which performance will gain a reputation for being one of the greatest of all time and which one will be forgotten in a couple of years. And let’s not forget that the Hollywood Foreign Press did obviously not care very much for A Streetcar named Desire – Kim Hunter may have won the award as Best Supporting Actress but Marlon Brando and Karl Malden were not even nominated. So, I was very interested to see Jane Wyman’s work which not only resulted in her win at the Golden Globes but also her third Oscar nomination, having won the award three years earlier for her performance as a mute rape victim in Johnny Belinda. Of course, Jane Wyman also won a Golden Globe in 1948 so the Hollywood Foreign Press clearly enjoyed her work.

The Blue Veil is a rather typical tear-jerker that resembles countless other movies that feature a self-sacrificing female character in its center – movies like Stella Dallas, The Sin of Madelon Claudet, White Banners, Mildred Pierce or To Each his Own come to my mind. All these movies have various things in common – they feature either an Oscar-winning or Oscar-nominated performance and characters that are either the self-sacrificing mother or the self-sacrificing secret mother (of course, in different shades – Mildred Pierce also wants to do everything for her child, too, but there are limits to her selflessness). The first fact shows that these kinds of roles are true award-magnets – how could Academy members resist such a teary display of motherly love and selfless suffering? The second fact is a bit tricky – it is both a difference and a similarity to The Blue Veil. Because Jane Wyman does not play a selfless mother in this movie – instead, she is a selfless nursemaid, a nanny who takes care of various children during the course of her life after she lost her own child when it was a baby. But even though Jane Wyman’s LouLou is not the real mother of all these children, the role actually gives her even more sentimental value because it offers her the opportunity to be the ‘secret mother’ and a ‘stranger’ at once: she is the one taking care of the children, she is the one who watches them grow up, helps them, shares their worries and their happiness – until one day she suddenly has to leave them again. Like Mary Poppins, she comes and goes but she does not go because she is not needed anymore – her reasons for not staying are always rather personal and more sentimental. Because of all this, The Blue Veil gave Jane Wyman a part that is guaranteed to win the audience’s affection, offers her plenty of touching (of would a better word be manipulative?) moments and even allows her to age gracefully from a young maid to an old woman. Sound like a juicy part – and it is. In some parts. But at the same time, the sentimentality and simplicity of the story also prevent Jane Wyman from making her character truly interesting. Everything about LouLou is played safe – she is lovely and nice, never complaints, suffers quietly and nobly. But a lack of life in both the movie and Jane Wyman’s performance leaves an undeniable impression that everything could have been more intriguing than it really is.

There are different approaches that can be used to play such a sentimental character. The actress can either completely surrender to the sappiness of the story and give a performance that only rests on the material she is given, hoping that the tears from the audience will come anyway and this way help her to appear more moving than she really is. The complete opposite of this approach would be to avoid any sentimentality in the performance and contradict the script by trying to find more shades and unexpected depth in these usually underwritten characters. This second attempt is always much more exciting than any schmaltzy emphasizing of the character’s misery. But, of course, there are many more approaches that can work – Helen Hayes in The Sin of Madelon Claudet emphasized the pain of her character to the maximum but she did it with so much life and energy while always keeping her character believable that the final result was a heartbreaking and surprisingly satisfying performance. Jane Wyman’s work in The Blue Veil can be found somewhere in the middle of all this. She neither wallows in LouLous’s constant desperation to leave yet another child behind but she also does not add anything to the character that isn’t written in the screenplay – considering that The Blue Veil basically follows LouLous’s whole life, it is a bit disappointing that everything the viewers know about her in the end is the same as they knew in the beginning: she likes children. So, Jane Wyman can be accused of going a too easy route in her performance but simultaneously she can also be applauded for adding real human emotions to her part instead of disappearing completely under the sugar-coated story. Within her work, she knew how to use the sentimental tone of the story to her advantage and make the material watchable while also suffering from the overall too weak material.

The tone of The Blue Veil is obvious right from the start – when LouLou lies in a hospital bed in a big room with many other women and a nurse brings in a cart full of babies (this may sound strange but this is actually what is happening) only to tell LouLou that her baby is not here and a doctor will talk to her in a few moments, it’s already clear that Jane Wyman’s major task in this part is to grief with as much dignity as possible. The plot of The Blue Veil overall certainly doesn’t do Jane Wyman any favors – the movie is basically a succession of the same scenes over and over again: LouLou finds work, she is happy and takes care of a child (or children) with gentle love and grand understanding until she has to leave again and her heart is broken. LouLou either must leave because a new woman has arrived in the house who wants to take care of the child herself or because she realizes that the child became too attached to her and she must leave for the sake of the real mother – all this gives Jane Wyman the chance to display the expected amount of different emotions. But even though Jane Wyman’s performance constantly follows this expected formula, she still does it on a high level – her performance does not surprise but it does impress. She perfectly understands her material and is able to combine the sweetness of the story with the actual suffering of her character with touching effect. In some ways, Jane Wyman is a rather limited actress despite the range of characters she played – her face mostly knew two different expressions, happiness or sorrow but she knew how to use these limitations. LouLou may not be a very interesting character overall (everything about her fate is so trivial; it never really seems to matter what happens to her or what will become or her simply because the structure of The Blue Veil is so uninterested in all of this. LouLou’s short affair with a man whom she almost marries is another example for this – the love between them comes and goes and never touches the core of LouLou’s personality.) but Jane Wyman is still able to give her substance. A movie like The Blue Veil certainly evokes a lot of different reactions – cynics will probably roll their eyes while others may reach for a handkerchief more than once. But Jane Wyman cannot be blamed for the weakness of the story – she can be blamed for not fighting harder against it but it was her decision to play LouLou with the sentimentality that was expected of her. I may not appreciate this decision but I can appreciate the performance that resulted from it.

Jane Wyman’s wisest decision in her role was to underplay LouLou as much as possible. Like Fay Bainter in White Banners, Jane Wyman crafts her character with quiet dignity and subtle emotions but unlike Fay Bainter, she is given a truly central part that completely carries the picture. The way LouLou was written could easily have turned The Blue Veil into an uninteresting and exaggerated experience – but Jane Wyman’s calmness and beautiful facial expressions kept everything going smoothly. This also helped her to achieve the most important task of her performance – plausibility. When LouLou worries about one her children or her heart quietly breaks when she has to leave, Jane Wyman always stays believable – it would be easy to dismiss her character because of the overly schmaltzy sentiment behind it but in the hands of Jane Wyman, LouLou always wins the respect of the audience. Especially in the scene when LouLou wants to fight for one of her children in front of a judge after she ran away with the boy because his mother had spent her whole life away from him anyway, shows Jane Wyman’s ability to find a true inner life in LouLou – in this scene, Jane Wyman lets LouLou truly fight for the first time as she openly rejects the boy’s real mother and insists on the fact that she is now the boy’s mother after having taken care of him for so many years. It’s a strong scene in which Jane Wyman again balances between cheap sentimentality and honest feelings – and she again does it by underlining this sentimentality while adding a shade of touching realism.

Jane Wyman also handles the aging of her character with grace and beauty. Neither exaggerating her scenes as an old woman nor completely keeping the same acting style, she shows a woman with a lively spirit – even though her age has taken a lot of her strength by now. Mostly, Jane Wyman succeeds in her final scenes – when she meets all ‘her’ children again and is overwhelmed by their love and support. It’s a scene that really shouldn’t work as well as it does because it’s so impossibly sugar-coated but Jane Wyman’s quiet joy makes the viewer feel to actually know LouLou for the first time in this movie. It’s a very satisfying final moment to a performance that offers a lot of touching scenes but also lacked these overall satisfying moments too many times before. As mentioned in the beginning, Jane Wyman suffered from her weak material and very often limits her performance to two different facial expressions but within these limitations she crafted a touching piece of work that is saved by her decision to remain realistic while highlighting the sentimentality of the story and her strong final moments. Overall, the unsatisfying moments that dominate a lot of her work are too strong for a higher grade, but her ability to be moving without annoying and strangely captivating without alienating is still enough for a strong

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Best Actress 1951: Eleanor Parker in "Detective Story"

2011-11-22T00:46:00.001+01:00

In 1950, Eleanor Parker convinced the Academy for the first time during her career and received a Best Actress nomination for her touching and impressive work in the prison-movie Caged. Back in the old days, a leading nomination like this basically established your whole future relationship with the Academy – if you’re leading, then you stay leading. After all, leading means you’re a star. And stars don’t sink to that low, pitiful level of supporting players, no matter how small a part may be! Among the actual Best Actress winners, Jennifer Jones was the first one to receive a supporting nomination after having won in the leading category – just one year after her star-making turn in The Song of Bernadette, she settled for the secondary category for her performance in Since you went Away. This is certainly very surprising since Jennifer Jones was build up as a true leading lady and because her role in Since you went Away is actually the most central one but Claudette Colbert had been a leading lady for more than a decade already and so David O. Selznick probably thought that, if one had to go supporting, it had to be Jennifer. After Jennifer Jones, one needs to look right up to the 70s to find Ingrid Bergman, Maggie Smith or in the 80s Jane Fonda receive nominations in the supporting category. Of course, some winners did get nominated for Supporting Actress before they won Best Actress but after their win, they probably never looked back. Anne Bancroft received three nominations for Best Actress for rather small roles that might have entered the supporting category if they had been played by an unknown actress. Contrary, among the nominees for Best Actress, there seems to be a little more diversity – Geraldine Page jumped back and forth between the two acting categories and Shelley Winters won two supporting awards after having failed in the leading category. And what does all this mean? It means that, with a few exceptions, most actors and actresses back then cherished their leading status by the Academy since it also gave them leading status in Hollywood and vice versa – Rosalind Russell famously declined any campaigning for her supporting turn in Picnic because she wouldn’t want to deny this leading status. So, to sum it all up – once an actress caught the eyes of the Academy members in a certain category, she mostly stayed in this category. And that’s probably the only explanation for Eleanor Parker’s nomination in the Best Actress category for her work in William Wyler’s Detective Story.

Category placement is always debatable and in most cases, fair arguments for both categories can be found – but it’s hard to come up with any reason why Eleanor Parker’s performance as Kirk Douglas’s wife, which consists of maybe 15 to 20 minutes of screen time, was nominated for Best Actress other the fact that her work in Caged the year before had established her as a leading actress. Okay, now with this out of the way, it has to be said that, of course, screen time isn’t a factor when judging a performance – not even one that was nominated in the leading category. After all, many actresses have done a lot with small parts but almost always those parts were either extremely well written or at least gave the actress the opportunity to become a complete show stealer. The truth is that, even though screen time is no indication of quality, a performance is simply judged differently if it is in another category. In the supporting category, a short and maybe even underdeveloped performance can be excused and is even expected – in the leading category, the demands are simply higher and one would expect an actor or actress to not only give a multidimensional and lasting performance but also one that is able to define the movie, change its course and create its atmosphere. If a leading nominee cannot do that, then it becomes a bit difficult – but there is still hope if the performance itself is still so wonderful and outstanding that lack of character development, lack of influence and lack of depth can still be excused. But what about Eleanor Parker? Where can her performance be found in all this? Well, let’s see: does her performance influence the tone of the movie or the story? No. Is there any character development? No. Depth? No. Well, that doesn’t look too good. So is there at least a wonderful, little performance that can overcome these obstacles? Unfortunately not.

First, let’s take a closer look at what the screenplay was giving Eleanor Parker. The Detective Story tells of one day at the 21st police precinct in New York City and the work of Detective Jim McLeod, played with powerful honesty by Kirk Douglas. Various storylines intervene at the police station, telling of the fate of different characters – some are moving, some are shocking, some are entertaining (one of the storylines surrounds newcomer Lee Grant who adds to the strange reception the female performers received for this movie – while Eleanor Parker got a Best Actress nomination, Supporting nominee Lee Grant won Best Actress in Cannes). Among all these storylines, the most central one is McLeod’s fight against an abortionist – not knowing that his own wife has a secret connection to this man. All this already suggests that Eleanor Parker is not a central character but rather one of many – and even among all those, she is shockingly minor. Eleanor Parker appears for the first time right at the beginning of the movie during one of the few outside shots when Mary McLeod comes to see her husband who hadn’t been home for two days. In this short scene, Eleanor Parker and Kirk Douglas establish the relationship between their two characters – they are obviously very happy, their kisses are passionate and they are also trying to get a child. Eleanor Parker may not have much to do in this moment but she immediately presents Mary as the loving and caring wife, a woman who lives to please her husband and finds fulfillment by being his supporting wife. Unfortunately, this is the only time the viewer sees Eleanor Parker during the first 50 minutes of the movie. When she finally arrives again, the movie has already developed its own pace and atmosphere and the arrival of Eleanor Parker does not truly add to this – instead, the character of Mary McLeod feels like a constant outsider, which she obviously is in this police station, but she also feels like an outsider to the whole movie. The revelations regarding her character are never truly as interesting as they could have been because Mary McLeod so completely comes out of the dark into the spotlight in just one second without ever having had the chance to prepare for this moment. Because of this, Mary McLeod never becomes truly her own person – rather, she is always a reflection for the character of her husband. Nothing she does ever feels connected to her as a person but only becomes interesting in the way it will affect Jim McLeod. Detective Story tells about a life-changing day in the existence of Mary McLeod – but all of this is reduced to a variety of whispered and teary-eyed please of forgiveness to a variety of different male characters for a couple of minutes. The movie is not interested in what happens to Mary McLeod but only about how the display of her secret influences the further actions of her husband. For Mary McLeod, this day may be the end of her life as it used to be – for Detective Story, it’s only a means to an end.

If all of this wasn’t bad enough, Eleanor Parker unfortunately not fights the problems of the script and the character but even emphasizes them and adds a few more, too, along the way. Eleanor Parker was a rather melodramatic actress very often but she always displayed a softness, tenderness and kindness that worked in great harmony with her artificiality. In Caged, this acting style helped her to set her character apart and create a memorable and moving person. In Detective Story, this acting style also stood out – but not in the good way. Among all the realistic, brutal and modern performances, Eleanor Parker too much resembles a performer from the past. Again, this could make sense since Mary McLeod is a woman who has no connection to the world she has entered this day and it could also symbolize the distance between herself and her husband but at the same time, Eleanor Parker’s work which turns Mary into a deer caught in the headlights misses all the elements that might have turned her into a deeper character – there is no trace of the woman who has married a man like Jim in the first place, no sign of the girl who had to go to an abortionist in the first place and a too weak and passive characterization to make Mary’s final realization, that she cannot live with Jim anymore, truly believable. Just like the screenplay undervalues the true dimensions of Mary McLeod’s fate, Eleanor Parker does so, too, by reducing her to a different variety of teary breakdowns, teary reaction shots or teary moments of self-realization which all may be moving and occasionally heartbreaking in itself but lack too much dimension in the overall context of the story. Instead of trying to grasp all the different emotions that Mary McLeod may be experiencing at this moment, she limited the character in too many ways. On this single day, Mary McLeod is suddenly confronted again with her past, she begins to see a new, unexpected side in her husband and decides to start a new life without him – but all this is only suggested by the screenplay. In this way, both the screenplay and Eleanor Parker mistreat Mary McLeod – the script reduces her unnecessarily by not investing into the character before putting her in the center so suddenly and Eleanor Parker reduces her unnecessarily by dropping almost every aspect of her personality and simply resting on her ability to drop some tears at the right moment. At the beginning of this review, it was stated that there is no development in the character - this is actually not true because there is a lot of development. In just a few moments, Mary McLeod has to evaluate her past, her present and her future, she has to watch her marriage fall apart and face all the ghosts she had pushed aside for so long. This is actually a lot for any movie character but in Detective Story, this arc is simply too large for the character. The way Mary McLeod is written, she cannot live up to the demands of this arc and the way she is acted by Eleanor Parker, it all happens too much on the surface without any sign of depth.

Even though Detective Story is obviously based on a stage play since all the story takes place inside the police station, it never feels ‘stagey’ since it provides a dynamic and intensity that captivates the viewer easily while jumping between the different storylines with the exact right rhythm and tempo. Unfortunately, Eleanor Parker almost threatens to destroy this tempo – her theatrical crying scenes don’t only lack effectiveness because Mary McLeod is such a thin creation but also because these crying scenes feel too theatrical compared to all other cast members just like her whole performance is too lifeless compared to all her screen partners.

In Eleanor Parker’s defense, it has to be said, as mentioned before, that her scenes itself, taken out of the overall context, somehow work. Her chemistry with Kirk Douglas is surprisingly intriguing and there are some moments when her performance does actually reach a moving intensity – it’s all very simple in her hands but within this simplicity, she achieves some results that actually do create the effect they are supposed to. It’s easy to imagine that her whole performance could have been much more satisfying and actually overcome the limitations of the writing if she had actually dared to leave her own comfort zone and invest all the possibilities the character offered nevertheless – but she played it too easy overall and therefore cannot get more than

Best Actress 1951

2011-11-15T21:32:00.000+01:00

The next year will be 1951 and the nominees were

Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen

Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar named Desire

Eleanor Parker in Detective Story

Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun

Jane Wyman in The Blue Veil

Best Actress 1938 - The resolution

2011-11-15T00:27:00.001+01:00

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

5. Wendy Hiller in Pygmalion

Wendy Hiller achieved to be both completely logical but also strangely inadequate as Eliza Doolittle. The role seems to both over- and underwhelm her and as a consequence she stayed on one note for most of the time. Still, she saves her performance in parts with her own personality that is certainly right for the role and her own instincts which make her mostly do the right things, even though unfortunately often the wrong way.

4. Fay Bainter in White Banners

Fay Bainter sprinkles with charm and warmth and it is not hard to believe that her smile, her support and her understanding can brighten up the live of anybody she ever meets. It’s neither a complex performance nor a complex role but Fay Bainter does find the right tone, the right face and the right approach to this character, creating some beautiful moments, making her actions and intentions believable and not overdoing the sentiment of the story – she’s strong, believable and loving.

3. Margaret Sullavan in Three Comrades

Margaret Sullavan’s performance is a beautiful example of an actress taking what could basically be considered a throwaway-role and filling it with life, meaning and much more. Her unique screen presence that helps her to appear so completely mature and decisive while also emphasizing the emotional desperation of Pat Hollmann is combined very effectively with her instincts for the role and so resulted in a maybe still limited but much deeper and more captivating performance than expected,

2. Bette Davis in Jezebel

Bette Davis's take on this character is spellbinding, entertaining and unforgettable. Her mysterious screen personality may have prevented her from creating a complete Southern Belle but it turned other moments, even simple ones like walking into a bank, into movie magic. And because of her ability to show various different aspects in Julie’s character while also displaying an honest core, she was also able to make the final moments of Jezebel believable without turning them into hollow pathos.

1. Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette

Norma Shearer’s acting style is not everyone’s cup of tea. But in this case, she has risen to a whole new level of dramatic intensity. When an image of a young Marie Antoinette, rejoicing about her future as Queen of France, is laid over the scene of Marie Antoinette facing the guillotine, it becomes clear on what an exhausting, captivating and heatrbreaking journey she has taken the audience and how epic her achievement truly is.

Best Actress 1938: Norma Shearer in "Marie Antoinette"

2011-11-15T00:25:00.000+01:00

Whenever the queens of the Oscars are mentioned, the names Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn and Meryl Streep are mentioned. And this makes perfect sense since all three of them, at one point in their career, held the record of most Best Actress nomination (and, of course, Meryl Streep still does and most likely will for a very long time). But before these three legendary performers wrote their names into Oscar’s history book, it was Norma Shearer who held the distinction of being Oscar’s favorite performer with a total of 6 nominations until 1938. And it was certainly more than fitting that she received her record-breaking 6th and final nomination which truly turned her into the Queen of the Oscars (even though only for a couple of years until Bette Davis overtook her) for her performance as the doomed French Queen Marie Antoinette who lost her family and ultimately her life during the French Revolution. The Oscar race between Bette Davis and Norma Shearer in 1938 is an extremely interesting one – of course, nobody will ever know how many votes each nominee received but Norma Shearer’s status in Hollywood, the surely still strong sentiment about the death of her husband Irving Thalberg and her popularity with audiences must surely have resulted in a strong number of votes. Of course, on the other hand she surely did not make a lot of friends during her marriage to Thalberg and the royal treatment she received as the ‘Queen of MGM’ which also resulted in a Best Actress Oscar for one of her first talkies undoubtedly put a lot of actresses against her – so maybe her loss in 1938 cannot be exactly considered a surprise. Still, in some ways, the 30s almost belonged to Norma Shearer even though she became largely forgotten during the following decades and rivals like Joan Crawford, who had to play second fiddle during Norma Shearer’s prime, have used her declining fame to great advantage since it enabled them to write her off as an untalented performer who was able to sleep her way to the top. Today, Norma Shearer’s reputation is beginning to improve again and the release of many of her old movies enables a new and comprehensive look at her filmography. And looking at Norma Shearer’s Oscar-nominated performances, one thing becomes clear very soon: her improvement as an actress over the years. During her first talkies, she often displayed a tendency for theatrical over-acting that belonged to the time of silent pictures and she also did not truly know how to use her voice in a natural, unaffected and believable way. But with time, Norma Shearer developed an unexpected strength as an actress that maybe did not always cover her melodramatic acting style but allowed her to dig surprisingly deep into her characters and very often display an unexpected willingness to completely let go of herself, forgetting all awareness of herself and act truly in the moment. And this strength was never more visible than in Marie Antoinette.

Marie Antoinette is as grand, lavish and pompous as one would expect it to be. Costume designer Gilbert Adrian and set decorator Cederic Gibbons obviously followed their credo ‘more is more’ and filled every frame with opulent design, grandiose sets and extravagant gowns. Marie Antoinette screams ‘epic’ at every second of its running time and doesn’t waste one second pretending anything else. But on the scale of ‘epicness’, Marie Antoinette did not reach a very high level because underneath all the glamour and opulence hides a typical melodrama from the 30s. And in some ways, the central performance by Norma Shearer also offers that typical melodrama from the 30s – she stares into the open space, moves her body very often as if she hadn’t realized yet that the invention of sound had brought a new acting style years ago and uses her face with such exaggeration that one feels the need to move a few feet away from the screen. But the miraculous thing is that all these aspects that usually rather destroy a Norma-Shearer-performance this time completely disappeared in Norma Shearer’s overall characterization. Because in Marie Antoinette, Norma Shearer displayed her ability to act ‘without a net’ – she did not act with visible strings between herself and her character but instead wholly let go of her own control and let her instincts dominate her work. This way, her performance became an overwhelming kaleidoscope of human emotions, from the joy and playfulness of a young girl to the broken spirit of a lost soul.

Basically, a lot of aspects of Norma Shearer’s performance should not work. Her age alone could have been disastrously distracting – Norma Shearer was 36 during the making of the film and certainly looks like it. Robert Morley was 30 but looks actually older than her. And so it could easily have become rather confusing to watch these two actors play characters who obviously have no idea what to do on their wedding night and feel a strange distance that comes from the difference between the ideas of youthful dreams and the reality of royal protocol. And a grown-up Norma Shearer jumping around at the beginning of Marie Antoinette, playing a young girl expressing her childish happiness about becoming the Queen of France is certainly another moment that could have been a complete failure, especially because Norma Shearer played these early scenes with the expected high-pitched voice and overenthusiastic movements that older actors often display when playing somebody younger than themselves. Yes, this all could have easily become a total disaster – but thankfully it didn’t. Norma Shearer may be exaggerating her acting a little but it somehow so wholly harmonizes with the style of her movie that her performance not only becomes immensely captivating right away from the start but also the human and emotional centre of this lavish production. Norma Shearer did not let the production overshadow her work but instead single-handedly crafted the human atmosphere of Marie Antoinette, may it be joy, love or terror. In her performance, Norma Shearer took the role of Marie Antoinette from the usual level of melodrama and carried her to a level of real, honest and shocking human drama. Everything in Marie Antoinette is solved in the easiest way – Marie Antoinette and her husband are portrayed without any flaws, the world outside their palace apparently filled with evil-minded revolutionaries and if Marie Antoinette was a bit too carefree and careless, then only because her husband denied her physical affection for so long. Yes, Marie Antoinette creates an artificial world full of artificial characters – and even Norma Shearer’s performance emphasizes this artificiality and it’s doubtful if her work would have worked in a context outside of Marie Antoinette but simultaneously she also reached a level of realism, authenticity and plausibility that lifted her performance on a whole new level of excellence.

Right from the start, Norma Shearer takes the viewer on an emotional rollercoaster ride – she believably shows the anxiety of a young woman entering a new life that seemed exciting and adventurous at first but only turns out to be dull and limited. It may be odd to see two so obviously mature actors in the parts of such inexperienced teenagers but both Norma Shearer and Robert Morley know how to portray these aspects of their performance without overdoing it – Robert Morley finds the right amount of shyness and frustration in his work while Norma Shearer plays her disappointment, her attempts to bond with her husband and her anger and frustration that she cannot give France an heir with just the right mixture of girlish inexperience and mature decisiveness. This way, both actors managed to create a remarkable chemistry that may not be truly romantic but turns into a believable friendship and Norma Shearer achieved the almost impossible task to display how much feelings Marie Antoinette actually has for her husband – which made their final moments together at the end even more heartbreaking. But the movie makers obviously thought that they could not tell the story of Marie Antoinette without some true romance – enter Tyrone Power to give the female audience something to dream about and Norma Shearer the chance for some romantic close-ups. And again, everything so easily could have gone wrong in this production but Norma Shearer not only handled these parts of the storyline with wonderful clarity in which she refused to turn the scenes with Tyrone Power into typical love scenes but instead always underlined a certain tension, a certain sadness and impossibility but she also found the perfect balance between the scenes between herself and Robert Morley and herself and Tyrone Power – she displayed a strong chemistry with both actors but both are completely different and seem to exist independent from one another while Norma Shearer also makes it clear how much she is thinking of Power in her scenes with Morley and how much of Morley in her scenes with Power. And Norma Shearer also managed to make it completely believable that Marie Antoinette would not only stay with her husband but also develop feelings for him that may not be the same as for the other man in her life but also strong and honest.

Norma Shearer also may have been handed a character that was written too saint-like but she never actively tried to act her like this – instead, she portrayed the ignorance, the single-mindedness and the arrogance of Marie Antoinette with an intriguing honesty. And even though these feelings might have been born out of her anger of rejection and unhappiness (at least in this movie version), Norma Shearer showed that Marie Antoinette was not fully without flaws – her carelessness at various parties at which she is giving away her jewelry during little games or her flirting with various men may mostly serve the movie’s need for some glamour and excitement but Norma Shearer again refuses to take the easy way out and uses these moments to constantly surprise the audience with new shades of her character which never seem like unconnected attempts to deepen the role beyond the page but instead always create a believable and complete flow. But Norma Shearer always knows when to change Marie, when to develop her and when to let her find new aspects of her own personality – she can challenge Madame du Barry during a ball in front of her father-in-law, she can show her loyalty to her husband when he is made King, she can enjoy his little, awkward moments of affection just as much as the passion of Count von Fersen or fight against the intrigues and gossip of the royal court – and does it all splendidly. Norma Shearer runs the gamut of basically every human emotion in her role and does so with a visible willingness to challenge herself, to prove herself, to display her talents while developing them at the same time. She can be intimidated just as convincingly as she intimated herself, she can be arrogant and loving, scheming and helpless, desperate and hopeful. Most of all, Marie Antoinette is a showcase and Norma Shearer truly delivers, but thankfully without ever turning it into pure attention-seeking but always in harmony with the character.

Norma Shearer takes the viewer on an artistically utterly fascinating journey – and all this even before her real tour-de-force begins. Had Norma Shearer mostly found the human drama in the opulent melodrama so far, she rose to a level of dramatic excellence that she never had before – and few actresses would ever after. From the moment she watches her husband as he loses the respect and loyalty of his troops to the scene when she runs around her room, looking for her clothes to pack as the royal family plans to escape the occupied palace, she slowly, step by step, introduces the human drama that is about to follow. And Norma Shearer not only displays these moments but, like few other performances, is able to create such an atmosphere of helplessness, of confinement and desperation that these final moments of Marie Antoinette become almost unbearable in their tension and devastation. In these scenes, she does not become the messenger of the movie’s story but instead shapes and defines the story herself, adds the tragedy and horror instead of projecting it. Her scene when she watches her husband and her children, knowing that this is their last night together, is completely heartbreaking and with her silent suffering, her ‘smile through tears’, Norma Shearer again proved how much she had developed herself from the theatrical and mannered performer she had been at the beginning of the decade. And later, when she listens to the execution of her husband, Norma Shearer once more displayed her willingness to completely surrender herself to the moment, to the context of the story – her head shaking uncontrollably, her eyes so wide with panic that they seem to fall out at any moment, could have been so overdone but Norma Shearer’s instincts perfectly guided her though the scene. But in the last part of Marie Antoinette, Norma Shearer constantly manages to top herself – her delivery of the line in which she asks the men, who came to pick up her son just moments after the execution of her husband, what they just said is one for the ages. No shrill panic, no over-expression – instead, she delivers her line completely calm, almost amused as if she thinks that these men are joking since she cannot believe that they would take away her son now, at this moment. The way she slowly stands up, hiding her child behind her back, trying to fight the men away is done masterfully and her final acceptance of the inevitable, her comfort of her son and her telling him to be brave while clearly dying inside is certainly one of the most shocking and harrowing scenes in movie history. And in a later scene, she gives one of the most unforgettable displays of silent acting ever put on the screen when Marie, alone in prison, recognizes an old friend coming to say goodbye – her disbelief, her shame, her fear, her desperation all wash across her face in just a few seconds. It’s a towering moment that brings the exhausting journey of Marie Antoinette to a tragic end.

I admit that Norma Shearer’s acting style is not everyone’s cup of tea – very often not even mine. But in this case, she has completely won me over. Her slight smile as Marie Antoinette is brought to the place of execution could have been played so easily but Norma Shearer finds so many different emotions in this expression that it seems impossible to mention them all. And when an image of a young Marie Antoinette, rejoicing about her future as Queen of France, is laid over the scene of Marie Antoinette facing the guillotine, it becomes clear how epic her achievement truly is. For all this, she receives

YOUR Best Actress or 1944

2011-11-10T22:28:00.000+01:00

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Barbara Stanwack- Double Indemnity (33 votes)

2. Ingrid Bergman - Gaslight (14 votes)

3. Claudette Colbert - Since you went Away & Bette Davis - Mr. Skeffington (2 votes)

4. Greer Garson - Mrs. Parkington (1 vote)

Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1938: Margaret Sullavan in "Three Comrades"

2011-11-10T22:25:00.002+01:00

In 1938, Margaret Sullavan became a member of a group of many actresses who were not awards magnets in any sense of the word but still well-known and popular actresses who did manage to receive at least one Oscar nomination that would forever enable them to carry the famous expression ‘Academy Award nominated actress’ in front of their name – others are Marlene Dietrich, May Robson, Carole Lombard, Gene Tierney, Dorothy McGuire, Julie Harris, Ava Gardener or Doris Day. In the case of Margaret Sullavan, it’s a small tribute to a very underrated career even though Three Comrades is certainly not among her most well-known performances – rather, her work opposite James Stewart is mostly remembered today, especially her role as Klara Novak in Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop around the Corner. But the height of Margaret Sullavan’s critical success did most certainly come in 1938 – not only the Academy recognized her but also the New York Film Critics who gave her their Best Actress Award and apparently the donations for organizations fighting against tuberculosis went up significantly after American audiences watched Margaret Sullavan die from it on the screen. This one nomination maybe did not change the curse of Margaret Sullavan’s career – she never again received another nomination but it adds to her overall reputation as a talented and a strong performer who should not be as forgotten as she probably is today.

Three Comrades tells the story of three friends in post-war Germany and of one woman, Patricia Hollmann, who enters their life and eventually marries one of them. This description already suggests what can be expected of the character of Pat Hollmann – she is the girlfriend, the woman, the wife, the obligatory female presence in a movie mostly about men. And yes, these expectations do come true – Margaret Sullavan plays a part that has been played countless times and sometimes gets nominated for an Oscar even though the actress almost always suffers from the limitations such a role brings – there is almost always hardly any character at all, no development, no depth, especially if the actress misses a strong screen presence to fill some of the emptiness of the character with her own personality. So yes, just like Fay Bainter in White Banners, Margeret Sullavan faced a limited character in Pat Hollman – she mostly exists in relation to the three male characters, she rarely gets a chance to develop her own personality and lacks the typical screen time of a leading player. But – yes, Margaret, here comes the but – sometimes an actress is able to overcome these limitations and not only fill the part with her own spark but actually add to the character, bring more layers to it and create something beautiful to watch – despite all the obstacles. And this is what Magaret Sullavan did as Pat Hollmann in Three Comrades. There is something about this visibly intelligent and thoughtful actress that enabled her to create something very tragic, disturbing, moving and captivating in her character. Her voice, her eyes and her looks somehow turn her into a mix of Bette Davis, Romy Schneider and Greta Garbo and even though she may lack all the fascinating qualities that these actresses usually display, she is still much more than just ‘the woman’ who adds some emotional tragedy to an otherwise rather straight and direct story.

In her role, Margaret Sullavan uses the ultimate fate of Pat Hollmann to great effect because she handles it with so much subtlety – Pat knows that she is dying and this is clearly and obviously influencing her life and her character but it does not prevent her from finding joy and happiness. Margaret Sullavan demonstrates how Pat always seems to think inside her head if something or someone is worth her time since she cannot waste it – death is always flowing above her but never dominating her. From the moment she gets out of a car at the beginning of Three Comrades, Margaret Sullavan makes it clear that Pat is not a two-dimensional character but a deeply troubled and at the same time strangely uplifting person. In her role, Margaret Sullavan does not truly deepen Pat by suggesting at countless untold backstories but rather by simply emphasizing her present and her thoughts about the future and what it might bring to her – and what will remain unreachable forever. In some way, Margerat Sullavan keeps the character of Pat constantly in the dark – she rarely opens up and shows a more intimate side but mostly keeps her feelings outside but simultaneously, Margaret Sullavan achieved to actually do show a deeper and more meaningful side to Pat simply by focusing on her obvious worries and the pain she is carrying around inside. She shows that Pat is neither an empty shell waiting for the inevitable end nor a woman who is destined to get everything out of life before it is over – rather she portrays her with a serious but also loving side that covers a hidden melancholia under it. Pat has accepted her fate – death may constantly be on her mind but she learnt to push that thought aside even though it is never completely gone. Pat is also a woman whose fate has made her strong but also lonely – she clearly longs for an emotional connection with somebody but she also feels guilty because she knows the position she is in and how it will affect anybody close to her. That way, Margaret Sullavan avoided to turn Pat into a victim of her own fate and instead crafted her independently from the ultimate outcome of the story without downplaying it at the same time.

Margaret Sullavan’s performance in Three Comrades mostly consists of two tasks – add the necessary amount of tragedy and create a female love interest. And she not only fulfilled the first task but thanks to her strong characterization and her mysterious screen presence was able to add a constant amount of secrecy to her role. And this also helped her to become more than a female love interest – she never lets the male characters of the story, even though they are its center and constantly redefine it, overshadow her work or her character but uses all her scenes very wisely to create strong presence that is able to maybe not dominate the movie but be one of its strongest assets nonetheless. She lets Pat become a whirlwind of different emotions and reactions but always very calmly and contained. And she also chose a very simple yet very effective way to let Pat become more than ‘the woman’ of the story – by letting her become the fourth comrade. Margaret Sullavan is not the typical love interest as she is neither charming in the usual sense of the word nor overly erotic and not even actively trying to get married or even get attention. She clearly did not expect love to come to her and Margaret Sullavan never portrays Pat as a truly desirable woman since she constantly downplays her appeal. Her chemistry with all actors is always more that of a friend and she’s the kind of woman that would never break up a group of men but instead becomes a part of it She perfectly fits into the group of male characters and that way displays an even greater appeal – she manages to be completely natural, relaxed and non-caring which beautifully contrasts with the seriousness of the part. In her role, Margaret Sullavan is very mature and manages to be both light and seriousness. This way, she was able to be a romantic dreamer, a best friend and a true companion.

The biggest miracle in Margaret Sullavan’s performance is the fact that she was actually able to find so many layers in her role because, as mentioned at the beginning, it is a very thin and underwritten part. But, considering the nature of the role, she does achieve various beautiful successes that may never turn into something truly amazing but are still remarkable nonetheless. But most of all, Margaret Sullavan truly created some unforgettable moments during the last part of her performance – her quiet acceptance, her beautiful display of love and happiness, her ability to find so much magic in such a tragic scene is truly heartbreaking. And even surprising since the inevitability of that scene had been clear right from the start.

In the end, Margaret Sullavan’s performance is a beautiful example of an actress taking what could basically be considered a throwaway-role and filling it with life, meaning and much more. She shows that Pat Hollmann is a woman who is longing for something else while having accepted her tragedy at the same time. Her unique screen presence that helps her to appear so completely mature and decisive while also emphasizing the emotional desperation of Pat Hollmann is combined very effectively with her instincts for the role and so resulted in a maybe still limited but much deeper and more captivating performance than expected. For this, she receives

Best Actress 1938: Fay Bainter in "White Banners"

2011-11-09T12:42:00.000+01:00

It’s certainly very interesting that so many actors and actresses who made Oscar-history have basically become completely forgotten by now. Luise Rainer was the first actress ever to win two acting awards – but apart from people actually interested in the Oscars, who does actually remember her? And the name Fay Bainter isn’t exactly common knowledge, either. But she, too, was the first one to achieve a very remarkable feat that has been copied only a few times since 1938 – being nominated in the leading and the supporting category in the same year. And in the case of Fay Bainter, this is even more special because she is foremost one of those typical supporting actresses who almost never got a chance to truly shine in a leading role – other wonderful actresses like Gale Sondergaard, Mercedes McCambridge, Alice Brady, Jane Darwell, Ethel Barrymore, Anne Revere, Gladys Cooper and many more know about this, too. And so it’s refreshing to see Fay Bainter not only being given a leading part but also receiving an Oscar nomination for it – she was neither an overnight sensation in 1938 nor a veteran finally getting her share of the spotlight but instead simply an actress who managed to impress enough Academy members with her two performances to earn two nominations. Nothing more and nothing less. In the supporting category, she won the Oscar for playing Bette Davis’s worrying and suffering aunt in Jezebel while her performance as a mysterious woman who becomes a cook and housekeeper for an overworked science teacher and his family earned her a leading nod (which she lost against Jezebel herself, Bette Davis). All this makes her nominated work in 1938 surely a little bit more interesting than it otherwise might be – but at the end, it’s all about judging her work independently. So, what about her performance in White Banners?

Anybody who has seen Jezebel (and I suppose that’s more than those who have seen White Banners) knows that Fay Bainter is a very warm and earthy, but also elegant and dignified actress who is able to express a lot of inner pain and troubles with heartbreaking facial work that never is too obvious nor too subtle – and that way extremely effective. Jezebel is mostly a one-woman-show for Bette Davis but Fay Bainter’s sad face as she either watches Julie disgrace herself in various situations or worries about her well-being is among the most memorable aspects of the entire production. But Fay Bainter is also an actress whose effects seem to be stronger when her appearances don’t dominate her movie – she is able to create very memorable moments but she also suffers from a certain limitation that very often reduces her performances to two different expressions in which she either looks sad or gives an encouraging smile. In a supporting role, these limitations are not too noticeable because they are enough to fill her performance with enough depth and energy to bring her character to life but in a larger part, a feeling of repetition starts to grow after a while. In the case of White Banners, this feeling is strengthened by the fact that the part of Hannah Parmalee adds to this impression since it’s a role that benefits from Fay Bainter’s acting style but also even more underlines the limitations of both the performance and the character. This means that Fay Bainter fills the small range of the role with her beautiful acting style and screen presence – but does not widen her in any way. Because of all this, this performance might easily have turned into a two-dimensional and narrow portrayal, resting on the sentiment of the movie – but Fay Bainter thankfully knew how to use her own limitation to her advantage. So yes, her acting style may feel underdeveloped at times but at the same time she excelled within these limitations – combined with her warmth, charm and loveliness, she was able to give a very mature, loving and touching performance that works in great harmony with the movie’s sentimental nature without feeling like a manipulating attempt to win the audience’s sympathy.

In some ways, the character of Hannah Parmalee resembles the most beloved nanny of all times, the magical Mary Poppins who appears out of nowhere to take care of a chaotic family. Hannah Parmalee, too, appears out of nowhere as she suddenly stands in front of the house of Mr. and Mrs. Ward – she actually only wants to sell apple peelers but just a few moments later she is already cooking the dinner and washing the dishes. In these early moments, Fay Bainter is surprisingly honest in her portrayal – the woman who is walking into the Ward’s home isn’t some kind of saintly angel but a worn-out, cold and exhausted person who has obviously been living a hard life so far. Unfortunately, this interpretation soon gets lost when the movie starts to treat Hannah exactly as this saintly angel, a woman who not only helps Mrs. Ward to run her home but also becomes a guidance for their daughter and a constant voice of encouragement for Mr. Ward who is inventing an ‘iceless icebox’. Fay Bainter does all this with an expected performance that misses every bit of complexity but what she misses in depth, she makes up for with warmth and charm. The character of Hannah Parmalee only exists to improve the lives of the Wardens but Fay Bainter truly understands to fill all these little moments of her performance with her own loveable screen presence. She is like a combination of a wise and warm grandmother and a supportive best friend and even though her facial work may often seem like a never-ending repetition, she still avoids to lose her grip on the character simply by displaying this support and this worrying with honesty and seriousness. Fay Bainter may to a certain extent miss a needed spark that would enable her to portray more different emotions at the same time and that way find a little bit more complexity in Hannah, but she still knows how to portray these single emotions and thoughts that are the driving force behind her character. When Hannah convinces Mr. Ward to go on with his work, with a fierce determination in her voice, Fay Bainter shows how much strength is actually hidden behind her dignified face and her calm voice and in her work, it is always believable that Hannah may have such strong and yet so subtle influence over the other characters of the story. Hannah may be very selfless and noble but never to a point where she appears to be lacking her own personality. And she is also completely believable in all her worries about the Warden’s daughter and she always knows how to create her character accordingly to the seriousness of the situation. She can be standing outside the house in the cold, worrying about the health of a close person, or sell the old furniture of the Warden’s to get them some extra money – all simple moments but somehow enlightened by Fay Bainter’s beautiful simplicity. She may never surprise in these moments or create a truly three-dimensional character but to watch her worry and suffer is somehow incredibly heartbreaking because her face was simply made for these kind of close-ups. She perfectly knows how portray her character with the utmost dignity without making her preachy or arrogant.

But step by step, White Banners reveals that there is actually something hiding underneath Hannah’s constant friendliness and support – years ago she gave birth to a child out of wedlock and is now trying to find some closeness to the boy who has turned into a young man and the boyfriend of the Ward’s daughter. This storyline allows Fay Bainter to actually widen Hannah a bit and give her some extra looks of sorrow and grief that she doesn’t play in the usual way but this time tries to hide, soften and cover. When Hannah meets the father of the boy again, Fay Bainter, just like in the earlier scene with Mr. Ward, shows that she can act with much more fire and energy if she wants to – her plea to him to keep quiet about the boy’s real extraction, her determination to remain unknown is striking to watch and provides the movie’s best moments.

When Hannah leaves the household of the Ward’s again in the end, it becomes clear that she is, after all, not truly Mary Poppins – meaning that Hannah is the kind of character that seems to be forgotten the moment she leaves the scene because Fay Bainter always shines whenever she is on the screen but does not have a lasting, truly unforgettable appeal. Yes, singular moments are hard to forget (just like with her work in Jezebel) but these are always individual scenes that are highlightened by the context of the story – but the character herself feels strangely separated from these moments, remaining rather pale and slowly becoming forgotten. Fay Bainter does have the power to be truly memorable – but somehow the character of Hannah does not.

Overall, Fay Bainter sprinkles with charm and warmth and it is not hard to believe that her smile, her support and her understanding can brighten the live of anybody she ever meets. It’s neither a complex performance nor a complex role but Fay Bainter does find the right tone, the right face and the right approach to this character, creating some beautiful moments, making her actions and intentions believable and not overdoing the sentiment of the story – she’s strong, believable and loving. For this, she receives

-

Best Actress 1938: Wendy Hiller in "Pygmalion"

2011-11-04T00:10:00.001+01:00

The story of Professor Higgins who makes a bet that he is able to turn the common flower-girl Eliza Doolittle into a true lady by teaching her to speak perfect English is probably well-known all around the world – but not necessarily because of the original play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw but rather because of the later musical version My Fair Lady which is among the most beloved and successful musicals of all time. And if that wasn’t enough, the movie version of My Fair Lady took home 8 Academy Awards and connected the characters of Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle forever with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn. But a ‘beloved’ movie does not automatically indicate ‘acclaimed movie’. Yes, My Fair Lady did sweep the awards in 1964 and critics adored the way George Cuckor brought the musical extravaganza to the screen but today, My Fair Lady is often considered one of the more overrated movie classics and especially the performance of Audrey Hepburn is often called one of the weakest efforts of her career – while critics in 1964 mostly complained about her non-singing, movie fans today often criticize her inability to become a truly believable flower girl because her charm, poise and grace are always visible and her attempts at a Cockney accent are often considered too over-the-top. Because of all this, Wendy Hiller’s performance in the original 1938 movie version of Pygmalion is often considered a superior effort, a kind of insiders’ tip since she was not a glamorous star but a British character actress who could be both – the common and the transformed Eliza. Do I agree with this? Let’s find out!

Right from the start, Wendy Hiller shows that her physics are just right for the part of Eliza Doolittle – her hard but strangely captivating face, her strong voice and her whole body language serve the character well and craft Eliza Doolittle as the common, uneducated flower girl she is supposed to be. Wendy Hiller does not possess the natural sweetness that Audrey Hepburn displayed in 1964 but Pygmalion and My Fair Lady actually strive for different goals – even though My Fair Lady consists of basically all the original dialogue (with some songs added in between), it’s still a much brighter and more entertaining look at the story of Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, filled with more focus on a possible romantic relationship between these two characters. In 1938, Pygmalion appears much darker, more grown-up and neither Wendy Hiller nor Leslie Howard intended to turn their characters into loveable outsiders. Her Eliza Doolittle isn’t the kind of amusing girl she would become in the musical version but instead a more realistic and flawed character, a woman who does her best to survive on the streets of London and doesn’t care about how she might seem to others. In this aspect, Wendy Hiller clearly understood Eliza Doolittle and she can easily be admired for being so honest in her portrayal of both the early, unrefined Eliza and later the more self-assured, independent Eliza who not only found a new way of speaking but also a new way of thinking. She also never overdid any aspects in the transformation process – again, My Fair Lady is a grand spectacle and so it made sense that Eliza Doolittle turned into a beautiful, elegant lady but Pygmalion is much smaller and tries to be more realistic and because of that Wendy Hiller did the right thing by always keeping true to the original Eliza – in her work, Eliza Doolittle discovered a new world and a new life but this does not mean that she completely changed. There is a new intelligence in her, a new view on the world and also Professor Higgins but she is not a new woman who completely cut all the connections to her old life and her old existence. On the contrary, Wendy Hiller used the former life of Eliza Doolittle as a foundation for her transformation and displays that Eliza did not completely change but rather develop, becoming a combination of her old life and the new life Professor Higgins taught her.

All of this does sound as if Wendy Hiller did indeed succeed in turning the character of Eliza Doolittle into a wonderful triumph – but there is also a different side. Wendy Hiller may know what to do with Eliza Doolittle – but she often did not know how to do it. Her own appearance and screen presence and her clear understanding of her material helped her to give a performance that is certainly right from a technical point-of-view – but as right as her work seems on the surface, it feels rather shockingly empty on the inside which puts Wendy Hiller in the interesting situation of inhabiting the character without acting the character. Most of all, she constantly seems to rush through her role as if she wanted to get off the set as quickly as possible. This way, she missed almost every chance the script offered her to either deepen the character of Eliza or underlining the tone of the story. Actually, both Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller miss almost every single chance for humor or drama that the script is offering to them. Neither has the ability to let a joke unfold its effect, going from one line to the other without barely any pause between them, either over- or underplaying their dialogue and that way missing their chance to turn their characters into full human beings. Wendy Hiller behaves like Eliza Doolittle and speaks like Eliza Doolittle but she never becomes Eliza Doolittle. Her acting stays too much on the surface of the character and the story which results in a performance that never realizes all the possible potentials that were given to it. Wendy Hiller often focuses on one single emotion or feeling per scene, overlooking the drama in comedy moments or forgetting the comedy during the drama and that way hardly doing anything at all. She walks through the movie with all the right movies but she mostly feels like a disciplined dancer who knows all the right movements but forgets to put any meaning into them.

Pygmalion mostly suffers from the fact that Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard have absolutely no noticeable chemistry. Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison knew how to work together to show two people disliking each other immensely but still growing closer and closer together. Neither Leslie Howard nor Wendy Hiller achieved the same in Pygmalion. Their constant fights and insults come and go without every defining effect since both seem to act almost independent from each other. Of course, it should normally not be necessary that these two characters develop a strong relationship or that the actors portraying them develop a believable chemistry simply because Pygmalion is originally not supposed to be a love story. Professor Higgins may show Eliza Doolittle a world beyond Covent Garden and beyond the limits of her own mind but he also symbolizes a certain type of man, of class who cannot accept human beings unless they are a product of his own demands. It’s a fight of classes and of the sexes, and a very serious one in which both characters try to keep their dignity and their own point-of-views. So yes, Pygmalion is not the romantic My Fair Lady but a certain kind of chemistry between two leads in a movie is necessary, especially if the relationship between these two lead characters is the foundation of the whole movie. And, of course, the fact that Pygmalion is not the same romantic story as My Fair Lady is only half the truth – because even though My Fair Lady is often accused of its ending in which Eliza Doolittle returns to Professor Higgins, this ending had already been added to the story in the movie version of 1938. But in this case, it comes so sudden, so unexpected and even…unwanted. The way Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard portrayed their characters, there is basically no reward in seeing these two come together at the end. It may be that Wendy Hiller wanted to portray a more independent and dominant Eliza but she also had to consider what was expected of her during the final moments of the story. Maybe this suddenness even makes sense because the question always remains if these two characters will ever be able to stay together but this is a question for the future – as for the presence, Wendy Hiller simply failed to build Eliza’s final decision on any believable foundation.

The whole process of turning Eliza Doolittle into a lady is done without any truly interesting moments – oh, they would be there but both Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller fail to see them in their work. Only when Eliza Doolittle for the first time ‘tries’ her new personality during a tea party of Professor Higgin’s mother does Wendy Hiller find a shining moment. Her awkward delivery of Eliza’s learned lines and finally the story about her aunt and those who ‘had done her in’ shows that, if she took more careful attention at her material, she was able to bring a more captivating side to Eliza. But this one scene remains the only highlight in her work and even during her later, more dramatic moments she again feels too much like an actress reading her lines since she puts almost no feeling or emotion into her words. This way, the fate and the awakening of Eliza Doolittle becomes never as interesting as it might have been. In a way, the audience might look at Eliza Doolittle like Professor Higgins does – a bit appalled, slightly amused, but always distant and never truly interested.

Wendy Hiller achieved to be both completely logical but also strangely inadequate as Eliza Doolittle. The role seems to both over- and underwhelm her and as a consequence she stayed on one note for most of the time. She saves her performance in parts with her own personality that is certainly right for the role and her own instincts which make her mostly do the right things (but unfortunately the wrong way). Most of all, Wendy Hiller is a too subtle actress for this kind of character. The technical aspects of her performance may be fine but she never truly connects – maybe her work would have impressed more with the distance of a stage than the personal intimacy of a movie. So, for her work that is both correct and wrong, in which her instincts are always right but her acting mostly distant, uninspired and shallow, she receives an overall grade of

Best Actress 1938: Bette Davis in "Jezebel"

2011-10-30T22:22:00.000+01:00

After Dangerous won her an Oscar she mostly considered a ‘consolation price’ for not having been nominated for her star-marking performance in Of Human Bondage the year before, Bette Davis suffered the same fate Luise Rainer would suffer two years later – finding that an Oscar win was considered a good way by producers to take an acclaimed actress and give her weak material in the hope that critics would not notice the weakness because of the involvement of an Oscar-winning actress. Luise Rainer surrendered to this treatment and left Hollywood for good only a short time after she had become the first two-time winning actress in Oscar history (of course, her personal problems and dislike for the Hollywood way of life did not exactly encourage her to stay either…). Bette Davis also left Hollywood – but only to fight against the studio system that was forcing her to play parts she did not want and were not worth her talents as an actress. Even though she did not win the legal battle that followed her departure to Great Britain, she received better material nonetheless and would start a basically unparalleled streak of financial and critical successes which brought her a record five consecutive Best Actress nominations. At the beginning of this stood Jezebel, the movie that would win Bette Davis her second and final Oscar (it certainly must be wonderful to win two Oscars so early in your career but it can’t be much fun to receive unsuccessful nomination after unsuccessful nomination after that) for her portrayal of the head-strong, popular but also manipulative Southern Belle Julie Marsden.

Jezebel seems to be a movie that is always standing in the shadow of a much bigger, more spectacular and more famous saga of the old South that amazed the world one year later – Gone with the Wind. And yes, the comparisons are easy to make – a headstrong Southern belle who ruins the lives of many because of her selfish character, the love of her life who is married to another woman and the whole structure of the movie which puts the actions and doings of this woman into its center. Even David O. Selznick wrote to Jack Warner how unpleased he was about Jezebel since he saw it as a movie that featured a lot of scenes and characters similar to his upcoming Gone with the Wind. Well, he surely didn’t need to worry – until this day, Gone with the Wind is the classic of classics, a timeless masterpiece and while Jezebel surely has its fans and admirers, it doesn’t even come close to its ‘bigger brother’. And Vivien Leigh has also basically defined the character of the Southern Belle so strongly that hardly any other approach at this character has a chance to shine simply because the comparisons will always be made. But Bette Davis did, after all, attack this kind of role one year before Vivien Leigh did and even though Julie Marsden is no Scarlett O’Hara, Bette Davis was given very strong material and brought the character of Julie to life with a very impressive combination of fierce strength and tender loveliness. So maybe a comparison with Vivien Leigh’s Scarlett O’Hara would not do Bette Davis’s performance any favors – but performances should only be judged on their own merit and considering that Bette Davis was entering the most celebrated period of her work, it’s no surprise that her performance is strong, memorable and captivating.

Bette Davis was an actress who could easily go overboard. She knew that she was different in her willingness to attack all her parts with uncompromising honesty and dedication – and she was very eager to make sure that everybody else knew so, too. That’s why very often her performances tend to go over-the-top because Bette Davis may have known what she could do but she did not really know how to use her gifts – she did not seem to have the instincts that told her when to hold back or when to decide that ‘less is more’. Instead, she always wanted to display that her characters are larger than life and that she had no problems to show her characters as unpleasant, appalling or plain shocking. This talent and this willingness of Bette Davis was both her greatest advantage and her greatest flaw – because in the hands of a director who was not able to handle Bette Davis and guide her in a way in which she used her instincts and talents without exaggerating them, her performances could easily enter the dangerous territory of incredibility, fulsomeness and overall rather resemble an out-of-control wild animal than a talented actress. Because of this, it was certainly a wonderful coincidence that Jezebel marked the beginning of Bette Davis’s collaboration with director William Wyler. Like few others, William Wyler knew how to handle Bette Davis and how to use all her talents and gifts for the advantage of the movie and the character she was playing. It might have often taken up to 50 take to get a scene right but Bette Davis apparently did not mind because she knew that he was guiding her the right way and therefore also respected his decisions. A less skilled director might easily have let Bette Davis ‘do her thing’ and considering the emotional structure of Julie Marsden, this might have led to an over-the-top and uncomfortable portrayal but the combination of Wyler and Davis turned out to be a wonderful success that they would repeat later with The Letter and The Little Foxes.

Jezebel is certainly a star-vehicle – Fay Bainter won a well-deserved Oscar for her supporting role as Julie’s worrying aunt but the whole movie is completely focused on its leading lady, highlighting her performance and her eyes at every possible moment and using the supporting cast as one huge vessel that only exists to feed her lines and let her character go through various different scenes of emotional intensity. But Bette Davis was indeed an actress who could carry such tasks – because in 1938 she already completed trusted her own talents and the strength of her own work. She knew what she could do and William Wyler helped her to do what would work. So many scenes are displayed with an intriguing subtlety by Bette Davis that works much better than any grand emotions would ever have – her reaction to Pres’s introduction of his wife which she only registers with a slightly surprised ‘Your wife?’ while everything is happening behind her eyes or her way of manipulating Pres to take her to the ball in her red dress by questioning his ability to defend her honor are moments that turn Julie into a very engaging character who is able to fascinate the audience despite her questionable actions. Bette Davis constructs Julie as a woman who is too confident of herself and constantly likes to tease those around her, especially Pres. She uses every chance to question his love or find new ways to test his devotion as if she is trying to make sure that she is always ahead of him, unwilling to become a ‘little wife’. Julie is a woman who is unable to control herself – she often reacts out of spite, out of anger or out of frustration. In this way, Jezebel often treats the central character in a rather disappointing way – everything about Jezebel seems to indicate that Julie is to blame for all that is happening and that she deserves every bit of misery in her life. But Bette Davis succeeds in showing Julie’s inner depth and how she is unable to stop herself, overestimating her own power and influence and that way keeps the character’s dignity and fascination alive. Bette Davis clearly has her fun with this role – maybe because Julie, too, likes to do what she feels is right and likes to test the limits of her own abilities. When she arrives late for her own party and then enters the room in her riding dress, it's a perfect symbiosis of character and actress loving what they do at this moment.

Bette Davis knows how to guide Julie through her many personal ups and downs. The look on her face when she enters the ball room and slowly changes from spiteful pride to real fear is done beautifully and her close-ups also turn this whole sequence into the movie’s most memorable moment. Her dance with Pres is basically the end of her life as it used to be – she gambled and she lost. She lost the respect of the town, her own power, her self-confidence and the love of her fiancée. The movie again may take too much pleasure in humiliating Julie at this moment but Bette Davis knows how to play the scene without letting Julie become a defeated victim of her own doings. And in the following scene she shows how Julie is again unwilling to bend her own character to prevent the inevitable break-up with Pres. Bette Davis especially knows how to combine the fake pride of Julie with her hurt feelings and desperation and that way makes the later scenes when she kneels in front of Pres and asks him to forgive her in an attempt to win him back both chilling and believable – Bette Davis has so far shown a lot of strength in Julie but also weakness and the recognition of her own flaws. But the vulnerability of Julie is never visible for a long time as the arrival of Pres with his new wife again turn her into the old, manipulating and short-tempered woman that has already ruined her own life once before. Bette Davis biggest accomplishment in the second half of Jezebel is that she never makes it unbelievable that Julie does indeed love Pres – the scene in the garden could easy have seemed like an attempt by a spoiled child to get a precious toy only because another child is playing with it. But Bette Davis always shows that, behind her strong pride and anger, Julie does act out of love and the hopelessness of her own situation. Moments like her singing with the slaves or her attempt to prevent a duel between two men only emphasize the impression that Julie is constantly acting both out of honesty and resentfulness.

The ‘Southern Belle’ is certainly a great character for every actress. It allows her to be lovely and dangerous, honest and pretending, charming and repellent, fascinating and disappointing. And to make all this work, the actress needs to display a huge amount of personal strength and personality because she needs to make it understandable why this woman always gets away with her doings, why she always becomes the center of attention and why she can basically manipulate everyone the way she wants without hardly any consequences. Bette Davis certainly had this overpowering screen presence and she used it very wisely for the part of Julie – but sometimes she did not fully grasp the complexities and demands of the role. This means that she knew how to project the both manipulating and lovely woman and the structure of Jezebel turns Julie into an ‘outsider’ rather often as most people mostly see through her intentions but Bette Davis sometimes did not fully give reason to the still very important popularity of Julie Marsden. Even in her most relaxed and charming moments, Bette Davis’s Julie appears to be mostly acting, even looking down on those around her – while this is certainly true to her character, a bit more convincing joviality at this moment would have been needed. It seems that another comparison with Vivien Leigh is necessary – she perfectly understood how to create Scarlett O’Hara as a woman who is clearly playing with everyone around her but possessed all the necessary character traits to get away with it. Bette Davis’s own powerful screen presence sometimes seemed to get in the way of the delicacy of Julie Marsden.

But in the case of Bette Davis in Jezebel, these are complaints on a high level. Her overall take on this character is spellbinding, entertaining and unforgettable. Bette Davis’s mysterious screen personality may have prevented her from creating a complete Southern Belle but it turned other moments, even simple ones like walking into a bank, into movie magic. And because of her ability to show various different aspects in Julie’s character while also displaying an honest core, she was also able to make the final moments of Jezebel believable without turning them into hollow pathos. Her overall performance does not quite make the cut to a 4,5 but she gets as close to it as possible. So, her beautiful and enchanting performance receives a very strong

Best Actress 1938

2011-10-27T09:49:00.004+02:00

The next year will be 1938 and the nominees were

Fay Bainter in White Banners

Bette Davis in Jezebel

Wendy Hiller in Pygmalion

Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette

Margaret Sullavan in Three Comrades

Best Actress 1944: The resolution

2011-10-26T22:44:00.000+02:00

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

5. Bette Davis in Mr. Skeffington

In her attempt to turn Fanny into a charming and lovely socialite while also showing her many flaws, Bette Davis crafted a most unfortunate creation, rid of any appeal or logic and that way unable to carry such a long and character-driven story. She clearly saw the tasks she was given with this role but her way of bringing this character to live is often a failure and sometimes even unbearable.

4. Claudette Colbert in Since you went Away

Claudette Colbert gives an effective, charming, sometimes moving, sometimes humorous performance that isn’t necessarily a great achievement in acting but still a delightful and memorable pierce of work, especially considering how underwritten and underused the character of Anne Hilton actually is.

3. Greer Garson im Mrs. Parkington

Greer Garson may not truly create something otherworldly in her performance but the sheer energy and naturalness she shows in this part is enough to praise her for having done so much with so little. There is warmth, wisdom and strength in her portrayal and she also combines the woman of the present-day scenes perfectly with the woman of the flashback scenes.

2. Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight

Ingrid Bergman found a wonderful way to use an acting style that is both modern and ‘old Hollywood’ to give a performance that remains constantly impressive because of both the technical outside and the emotional, three-dimensional inside. She turns Gaslight into a dark and suspenseful ride, fulfilling the tasks of the story while adding her own personality and screen presence to craft a powerful and lasting presence.

1. Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity

Barbara Stanwyck added the needed mysteriousness and eroticism to the role but she was not afraid to show a more vulgar and common side in her character which helped her to achieve a much more realistic and three-dimensional performance. She lies to the audience about Phyllis while telling them the truth at the same time. A very engaging, dangerous and spellbinding performance.

Best Actress 1944: Claudette Colbert in "Since you went Away"

2011-10-26T22:38:00.000+02:00

Almost all reviews of Since you went Away compare Selznick’s American home front sage to the Best Picture winner of 1942, the British home front saga Mrs. Miniver. And why not? Both movies take a look at families during World War II and both feature a strong mother-figure who must hold her family together. The big difference are the circumstances that these families and women have to endure – Mrs. Miniver had her husband by her side but she had to worry about her oldest son who had joined the Royal Air Force and she also had to capture a German pilot in her kitchen and suffer through various air-rids before the movie is over. Claudette Colbert’s Anne Hilton on the other hand benefits from an ocean between her home and the European battlefields so there need to be no worries about Nazis in her kitchen or bombs above her head. But unlike Mrs. Miniver, Anne Hilton has to mourn the absence of her husband who has gone to fight in the war and left her with her two daughters. For a movie, the story of Mrs. Miniver certainly offers much more interesting aspects and plots since war is a much more real and tangible presence. Since you went Away focuses on the day-to-day life of a family without a husband and father and had to include various subplots that feel rather unnecessary very often but without them the movie could never have achieved the running time of 172 minutes – which probably would have upset David O. Selznick very much since a long running time can only mean epic and epic can only mean Oscar. But in 1944, Academy voters were looking for in another direction and instead of war they voted for singing priests and instead of a strong and caring mother they voted for a wife slowly driven insane by her husband.

Since you went Away is certainly an interesting movie that serves as a time capsule for the time it was made in and therefore is presented with a lot of honesty and realism while also adding an expected amount of sentimentality and patriotism. But even though, the story mostly lacks focus when it comes to what it wants to present and very often the movie shifts from a story about a family during war time to a teenage romance or a comedy and it mostly guides its character and cast through overly constructed plots and situations. There is also a reason why Since you went Away is not called 'Mrs. Hilton' – it is a much stronger ensemble movie than Mrs. Miniver and does not present the character of Anne Hilton as its true center. Rather, Since you went Away focuses on Jennifer Jones as the oldest daughter of the family and it also never gives Claudette Colbert the same dramatic opportunities and moments as Mrs. Miniver did for Greer Garson. This lack of true depth or character development made it necessary to cast an actress in the role of Anne Hilton with enough earthy charm and personality to prevent the character from dropping too far into the background. And Claudette Colbert was certainly the right kind of actress for this kind of part.

Ten years after she won an Oscar for her role in the legendary comedy It happened one Night, Claudette Colbert received her third and final Oscar nomination for the much more conventional part of Anne Hilton. This character certainly benefited from Claudette Colbert’s screen personality even though it did not allow her any truly grand steps as an actress. In her part, Claudette Colbert is mostly reduced to re-acting, very seldom is she allowed to anchor any moments of the story and whenever she does find herself in the center of attention it is mostly for obligatory dramatic scenes. She does handle those scenes well, no question about it, but they never help her to make a bigger impact on the overall storyline. But all this does not mean that Claudette Colbert is invisible in Since you went Away – her strong screen presence and talent as an actress certainly prevent this but as the movie goes on, she does became a more and more fleeting presence even though she uses every bit of her screen time wisely. Claudette Colbert’s biggest misfortune is that the part of Anne Hilton not only offers no true challenge for her but the structure of Since you went Away also works in a way that makes her absence never truly noticeable – Anne Hilton is not the kind of character one misses when she not onscreen, rather she comes and goes without any changes in the overall tone of the movie.

Still, Claudette Colbert is a lovely and strong presence in Since you went Away and even though she may not be its emotional centre she still was able to craft a strong, loveable, caring and three-dimensional human being while gliding through the story with undeniable elegance and charm that helped her to add that little extra spark to Anne Hilton which also was visible in so many other of the characters she played. The husband of Anne Hilton, who is so sorely missed during the entire movie, is already gone when Since you went Away begins. In the movie’s first scene, Claudette Colbert shows Anne sorrows, worries and pains as she comes home after she said goodbye to her husband and has to face her house and her life without him. Claudette Colbert’s facial work in this moment is certainly excellent as she projects all the different emotions that Anne Hilton is experiencing at this moment but her voice-over during this scene is just a tad too melodramatic and sometimes rather distracts from the seriousness of the scene instead of emphasizing it. A crying scene when she is alone in her bedroom also does not truly work in the dramatic context it is supposed to do because her crying feels rather exaggerated, as if Claudette Colbert was still the spoiled Ellie Andrews, and the musical score also underlines the scene with a rather cheery melody as if the movie wants the audience to laugh about this woman because she is basically helpless without a man at her side.

Claudette Colbert improves her performance as the movie goes on, especially after Joseph Cotton entered it as a close friend who openly admits that he has more feelings than friendship. The plot itself may seem rather forced but Claudette Colbert and Joseph Cotton have a wonderful chemistry together and never exaggerate the drama in their scenes – instead, both actors treat their relationship with humor and dignity and the storyline allows Claudette Colbert to shine in what she does so well: be earthy, elegant, charming and real at the same time. She also works nicely with Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple as her daughters, playing the kind of mother a lot of children can only dream of – understanding, loving, guiding and full of joy and life. Especially her scenes with Jennifer Jones provide Claudette Colbert with various dramatic moments that contrast nicely with her otherwise charming and humorous work – when she has to tell her daughter some terrible news, Claudette Colbert manages to be just as moving as Jennifer Jones, showing a mother experiencing all the pain of her daughter at this moment.

So, Claudette Colbert is always strong whenever she is on the screen and actually asked to do something with her character but overall the part suffers from the conventional storytelling that does not see in Anne Hilton anything more than a wise and caring mother (even though the storyline with Joseph Cotton adds some welcome ‘pep’ to the proceedings) and presents her only with limited opportunities and challenges. Claudette Colbert knows how to craft her character and how to show a woman who is simultaneously missing her husband, organizing her family, charming an old friend, worrying about money and the future and must keep up a façade of strength and courage for the sake of her children. But all this happens mostly scene by scene, always depending on what the screenplay actually asks of her. Claudette Colbert does leave the movie on a high note, so – the scene when she discovers a Christmas present from her husband and is overcome with emotions, joy and sadness, is a wonderful example of old Hollywood melodrama done completely right.

Overall, Claudette Colbert gives an effective, charming, sometimes moving, sometimes humorous performance that isn’t necessarily a great achievement in acting but still a delightful and memorable pierce of work, especially considering how underwritten and underused Anne Hilton actually is. For all this, Claudette Colbert receives

Best Actress 1944: Bette Davis in "Mr. Skeffington"

2011-10-24T22:56:00.002+02:00

In 1943, Bette Davis’s husband collapsed while he walked down a street and died a few days later. It was revealed that his death was caused by a skull fracture and Hollywood’s biggest star had to testify before an inquest about her knowledge of an incident that might have caused his injury. Various sources report that Bette Davis did not know of any incident while others mention that she stated that her husband fell down a stair some time ago. A definite answer was never found and an incidental death was declared. Bette Davis apparently wanted some time off after this personal tragedy but was convinced by Jack Warner to start on her next film, Mr. Skeffington. Filming was unsurprisingly not easy for her – or for anyone else. The famous temperament of Bette Davis was apparently on full mood during this production and her outbursts, demands and complaints caused a lot of tension on the set. Such emotional tension might often lead to the creation of a brilliant performance but critics were not fully convinced this time – the Academy might have given her another nod for her work but Mr. Skeffington marked the end of her era as Hollywood’s most celebrated and powerful actress. She did not receive another nomination during this decade and slowly lost more and more of her fame and appeal until All about Eve brought her back into the spotlight.

All about Eve is actually a good place to start this review. You might wonder why since this movie was shot 6 years after Mr. Skeffington. But All about Eve is such a legendary and well-known movie which almost everybody has seen in their lifetime while Mr. Skeffington is a rather forgotten piece of work. And so, for all those who have not seen Mr. Skeffington and want to know more about Bette Davis’s performance in it, let me paint you a picture with the help of Margo Channing. There is a very famous scene in All about Eve in which Margo Channing finds out that Eve Harrington had been made her understudy without her knowledge. Margo storms into the theatre – but pretends not to know anything about Eve nor about the fact that she arrived much too late. But Margo Channing, even though a great actress, cannot fool anyone – her chirpy voice, her exaggerated smile, her big eyes all make clear that this woman is only pretending at this moment when she says things like ‘What’s all over?’ or ‘Eve? My understudy? I had no idea.’ Well, imagine Bette Davis using this acting style for 145 minutes – and you have her performance in Mr. Skeffington.

Pauline Kael famously wrote about Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man that he was ‘humping one note on a piano for two hours and eleven minutes.’ This review also perfectly sums up Bette Davis’s performance in Mr. Skeffington – with one big difference. In her case, she is humping the same wrong note on the piano. In my review of Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie I wrote that, in order to create a very eccentric, unusual and unconventional character an actress constantly has to walk a thin line between authentic and implausible, between larger-than-life and exaggerated, between domineering and oppressive. And while Maggie Smith did all this wonderfully right, Bette Davis did all this shockingly wrong. It’s easy to see what she was trying to archive – her Fanny is an empty-headed socialite, a woman who has no thought in her head apart from worrying about her looks and her beauty but Bette Davis so completely overdid her interpretation that she is not even able to see the line separating character and caricature anymore. Of course, an ignorant and gold-digging socialite could certainly be played in many different ways but Bette Davis for some reason decided to show Fanny as a collection of wide eyes and a high-pitched voice that delivers every line with an exaggerated naivety and that way made herself completely unable to create this character as the woman that is described, presented and supposed to carry this story. ‘She always look so…extreme’ – words from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie but also very fitting for Bette Davis in Mr. Skeffington. But in the case of Maggie Smith they were used to describe a woman who does not fit into her conservative environment and were spoken by another movie character. In the case of Bette Davis they are spoken by me and they are not used to describe a character not fitting in but an actress not fitting in. I know that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder but it’s simply shocking how Bette Davis could look so appalling only two years after she had done Now, Voyager and showed the world for always what a unique beauty she truly was. In Mr. Skeffington, her whole look is so unexplainably off-putting, a combination of Bette Davis’s own way of presenting her character and a make-up team that must have either been blind or on a personal vendetta against Bette Davis. In Now, Voyager, I could have accepted other characters calling her the prettiest girl in town, in Mr. Skeffington these words are only the top of a mountain full of problems. Considering that Bette Davis looks like Baby Jane in some early parts of the movie it simply cannot be taken seriously when other women want to look like her and wonder how she keeps so beautiful. As I said, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder and I don’t blame Bette Davis for her looks in this movie since she looked so incredibly beautiful two years earlier but I blame her for exaggerating her acting so much that even her looks suffered from it since her facial work in Mr. Skeffington is very often almost grotesque – again, it’s commendable that she did not present Fanny as the typical Southern-belle-character and was not afraid to show her emptiness and shallowness without even trying to make her appealing in any way but by showing the true nature of Fanny to the audience she forgot to show a more pleasing, charming and winning side in the context of Mr. Skeffington. A high-pitched voice and big eyes may project all the internal flaws of Fanny but they don’t help to turn her into the most sought-after girl in town.

Bette Davis obviously wanted to show the superficiality of Fanny and to her defense, the character as written does exist of nothing else than superficiality. When her brother tells her that he is going to Europe, her answer is only a wondering ‘But isn’t there a war going on there?’. It is an incredibly challenging task for an actress to play such an empty-minded character in a way that is captivating the audience and it becomes even more challenging when the character is such a collection of fussy mannerisms and theatrical eccentricities – Bette Davis clearly saw the tasks she was given with this role but her way of bringing this character to live is often a failure and sometimes even unbearable. I always come back to Maggie Smith’s Jean Brodie because she’s such a perfect example of how to do right what Bette Davis did wrong – Maggie Smith knew where to stop, she know how to project that exaggerated acting style for an entire movie without ever losing the reality of her character. Bette Davis on the other hand lost the battle almost right from the start – her way of flirting with all the men at a party or later acting all coquettish with Mr. Skeffington to save the honor of her brother rather resembles a 40-year old Julie Marsden acting like a 12-year old on drugs. In her attempt to turn Fanny into a charming and lovely socialite while also showing her many flaws Bette Davis crafted a most unfortunate creation, one rid of any appeal or logic and that way unable to carry such a long and character-driven story. The movie makes you wonder if Bette Davis had become a parody of herself by 1944 – the big eyes, the eccentric behavior or her high-pitched voice all seem to indicate that she is running on auto-pilot, trusting on the effect of her performance and keeping the same tone in her voice, the same look in her eyes and the same delivery of her lines for the entire movie without any shades or nuances.

Bette Davis’s flat interpretation of this woman almost always comes at the expense of any true drama or character development. This superficial performance may seem very appropriate for such a superficial character – but Bette Davis’s unappealing performance does not consist of any noteworthy emotional honesty or depth which, even a character like this, needs to project in order to become believable. Bette Davis’s performance remains artificial even when it is supposed to be real. The biggest compliment she can receive is that she is at least consistent in her work because this makes it clear that Bette Davis certainly had a very clear idea of who Fanny was and how she wanted to present her – but as mentioned in the beginning, the challenge of the part lies in the ability to make Fanny both real and artificial and Bette Davis did not find this balance in her performance. She can be applauded for her decision to not go the easy route with Fanny but she cannot be applauded for the way she tried to realize this difficult route.

The part of Fanny is certainly an interesting one and offers an actress a lot of challenges – she goes from a beautiful socialite to an ugly, disease-ridden lonely woman who recognizes the truly important things in life while going along. And a role like this usually fits Bette Davis like a glove and there are some instances when she actually does find a human being underneath her own performance – but all these moments happen so rarely and are simply overshadowed by the dominant grotesque nature of her work which makes Geraldine Page appear tic-less. The frustrating truth of Bette Davis’s performance is the fact that her instincts are so often right – she shows the ugly sides of a supposedly beautiful woman until she shows the beautiful sides of a supposedly ugly woman. Her performance also becomes much more mannered as the movie goes along and again it makes sense that Fanny tries to maintain her youth with a coquettish behavior but all of Bette Davis’s instincts are never turned into a performance that bring them to life. It can be said that everything Bette Davis did was part of her character but, as mentioned before, she crossed the thin line between ‘success’ and ‘failure’ far too often.

I thought for a long time about the possible rating for this performance. Performances that receive a three are called ‘unsatisfying’ while performances with a 2,5 are called ‘disappointing’. And while I admire Bette Davis for doing something different with this role, all the aspects mentioned in this review are certainly a reason to call this performance a big disappointment. So, the grade for Bette Davis’s work is

Best Actress 1944: Greer Garson in "Mrs. Parkington"

2011-10-22T02:35:00.000+02:00

Somehow, Greer Garson always seems like a perfect product of the 40s. Very often she projected that typical, rather dated acting style from those years, a certain melodrama that dominates her performances and includes long stares into the open space, very controlled body movements, a posing in front of the camera and a tendency to milk every scene for dramatic effect. But Greer Garson had one, no two important advantages over other actresses from that era that helped her to become a product of her time while appearing strangely timeless, too – namely the ability to combine her acting style with a certain naturalism that enabled her to appear surprisingly fresh and spontaneous and a huge amount of charm that carried most of her work and made it possible for her not to rely only on her talent for melodrama but also to fill her character with poise, sweetness and dignity. She never had to rely on over-the-top crying scenes or hysteric breakdowns to command the screen – the phrase ‘less is more’ was certainly the credo of her acting performances. And this combination of charm, naturalism, subtlety and obvious melodrama resulted in performances that are almost always entertaining and lovely to look at even though they may never truly appear like truly grand achievements. From a modern point-of-view, most of her work may appear rather harmless and limited, even though also satisfying enough to make it understandable that she used to be such an Oscar darling during her reign. But more than her old-fashioned acting style it is the quality of her movies has damaged the reputation of Greer Garson over the years. By 1944, she would probably have been nominated for reading the phone book – even though she was clearly capable of more. But for an actress of her status it does seem confusing that she was so seldom cast in movies that truly deserved her. Next to her, Bette Davis is the only other actress to have received 5 consecutive nominations for Best Actress. But Bette Davis starred in Jezebel, Dark Victory, The Letter, The Little Foxes and Now, Voyager – all of them classics in their own way and hardly forgotten. Greer Garson made her Oscar-run with Blossoms in the Dust, Mrs. Miniver, Madame Curie, Mrs. Parkington and Valley of Decision. Mrs. Miniver is at least a winner of the Best Picture award, even though a rather forgotten one, but the rest of these movies are standard melodrama without any true recommendable features apart from its leading lady. This does not mean that these movies resemble pictures like Sophie’s Choice or Monster which are also average movies but with overpowering lead performances. A Greer-Garson-movie is always a rather dated, lifeless and unremarkable experience, even with Greer Garson’s charming presence. And these dated and unremarkable movies also did hardly ever offer this actress truly challenging parts but mostly let her do what she did best – be gracious, charming, shed some tears and hold her head in the right angle in front of the camera.

This all sounds maybe rather confusing. Was she a good actress or a bad actress? Well, the answer is easy: definitely a good actress but she’s always caught in her own limited range and never as great as one might expect her to be, considering her overall 7 Best Actress nods. And what about her role as Susie Parkington in the not very cleverly titled Mrs. Parkington? Well, the movie itself is the average Greer-Garson-vehicle – and even among them it is rather sub-standard but it also offers the wonderful realization that Greer Garson could truly rise above her material sometimes even when she still did not move herself outside her own comfort zone. Mrs. Parkington receives all its energy and emotional content from Greer Garson and she single-handedly prevents the movie from collapsing under its own melodrama and pretentiousness. Mrs. Parkington only exists to prevents the leading actress with a flashy part but it forgot everything else – from a well-written screenplay to an appealing supporting cast (with one exception) to any other interesting characters (again, with one exception). So basically, her performance should not differ very much from most of her other turns, Oscar-nominated or not. And in a lot of ways it doesn’t – but there is something about Greer Garson’s work in Mrs. Parkington that somehow comes together so beautifully entertaining, moving and captivating that she that her performance, even though in no way unique or a step out of her comfort zone, feels somehow more impressive than it usually does. Again, this does not mean that this performance will secure her a place among the all-time greats but she does project such an admirable character out of paper-thin writing that it feels hard to deny her a little more respect than usually.

Mrs. Parkington, as mentioned before, is neither the height of sophistication nor of entertainment. It does what so many movies during the 40s did – tell the story of a woman’s life in flashbacks while the present challenges her with various serious problems and situations. Mrs. Parkington – the movie and the character – ask a lot of Greer Garson; she has to be a young, poor girl working in her mother's guest house who marries a wealthy Major from whom she begins to distance herself until she realizes in the end that she indeed loves him. All this while the present-day Susie has to deal with her spoiled children who certainly did not turn out the way she probably hoped they would have. The movie also covers a large part of Susie’s life – from her days as a young woman to an old grandmother. Yes, it is indeed a showy role and Greer Garson plays it with her usual mix of freshness and old-fashioned posing but still with a stronger emphasis on her natural and charming side than her melodramatic one. When Greer Garson first enters the movie, in her old-woman make-up, the whole performance basically depends on the first few seconds of her work – is she convincing and that way invites the audience to follow her story or does it all appear too unconvincing to be anything else than preposterous? Thankfully Greer Garson did everything right in this first moment – the way she nods at her family which is waiting for her downstairs is so different from her usual graceful self and in just a few moments communicates the feelings of a proud, loveable and lively woman, a woman who undoubtedly looks back at a long and eventful life. Greer Garson captured the spirit of this woman so well in this moment that she creates the foundation of everything to follow in this single scene.

In Mrs. Parkington, Greer Garson certainly faces one of the most curious dilemmas in movie history: she manages to be both too young and too old for her role. But as just mentioned, she solves the dilemma of the old Susie Parkington extremely well – there is warmth, wisdom and strength in her portrayal and she also combines the woman of the present-day scenes perfectly with the woman of the flashback scenes. There are obvious moments when the audience certainly has to wonder how her children could turn out to be such problems but Greer Garson manages to show that Susie is wondering the same, too, and therefore does not need to give an answer because there is none. Greer Garson’s performance does not work quite as well during her early flashback scenes – her age is far too visible in these moments and she sometimes simply lacks credibility as an unsophisticated woman growing up in the middle of nowhere. But Greer Garson again is much more relaxed, open and honest in her portrayal than usual – she does not speak for a long time after the inevitable Walter Pidgeon appeard but the lusty and fascinated looks she is throwing at him make her intentions perfectly clear. Greer Garson also did not overdo these scenes – she did not try to copy girlish charm or teenaged attraction but kept her characterization very low-key. The biggest problems in Greer Garson’s performance come during the early scenes with Walter Pidgeon but she is not to be blamed for them – in Pidgeon, she has an impossibly pompous screen partner, playing a purely despicable character. During what is certainly supposed to be a romantic scene when they are both talking at night on a balcony, they hear a man slap his wife which only causes Parkington to say ‘Ah, he must love her very much’ before he asks Susie if she would like to be thrashed by him. Even Greer Garson seems to be lost in this scene. Later, things get even worse when Susie’s mother dies – a death for which Parkington could be indirectly blamed. But Greer Garson reacts to the news of her mother’s death only with a stern look without any emotional content. But maybe she cannot believe that the script is actually forcing her to listen to Parkington trying to cheer her up by telling her she must come to New York with him. Again, maybe Greer Garson’s lost expression is her inability to find any kind of emotional outlet for a horrible scene like this and it’s hard to blame her but she could have at least tried…Later, she suddenly finds an unexpected shining moment among this insulting plotline. The scene in which Parkington proposes to her is again almost offensive but her delivery of the line ‘Oh, Major Parkington’, which is basically her agreement to his proposal, is as good as it gets under the circumstances, maybe even better. She finds the right amount of surprise, delight, doubt and fear in this short sentence without any sentimental exaggeration.

Later, the chemistry between both actors improves especially because they never play the love between their characters as something pure, unique and eternal – instead, they give a realistic portrayal of a marriage that was half out of love and halt out of convenience while these two different personalities get used to each other. Greer Garson also shows the growth in Susie with slow, logical steps – it’s an inevitable process as Susie needs to find her place in New York’s society and deal with the behavior of her husband which is causing unhappiness and ruin around them. Her sad, painful looks during a ruined dinner party and later the scene when she leaves him because she cannot stand his behavior anymore are done very movingly by Greer Garson. Overall, it’s very impressive to watch how she takes Susie from the naïve, inexperienced girl to a woman who takes her life into her own hands, intervened with the scenes of a wise and loving grandmother.

Greer Garson’s chemistry with Walter Pidgeon may sometimes lack the necessary spark and plausibility but she always works extremely well with Agnes Mooreheard – the aforementioned exception to the unimpressive supporting cast. As a French aristocrat, she gives new life and energy into the movie whenever the two leads lack too much of it. In her relationship to the Baroness, Greer Garson again shows a constant growth in Susie – first, she does not know if she can trust this woman who used to be an important part in the life of her husband and then, step by step, develops a true and meaningful friendship with her.

Greer Garson may not truly create something otherworldly in her performance but the sheer energy and naturalness she shows in this part is enough to praise her for having done so much with so little. The way she constantly blows her hair out her face is maybe a simple and banal characteristic that often comes at the expense of more important emotional reactions but she does it with so much vitality and so often contrasts with her usual screen personality while never leaving her comfort zone that it’s quite simply much more intriguing and entertaining than expected. The audience certainly wonders how a woman who found so much strength insider herself during the run of the movie could accept such behavior from her children – and so the final scene of Mrs. Parkington, when the older Susie suddenly finds her youthful spirit again and decides to act the way she thinks is best, brings the whole character of Susie to full circle. For all this, Greer Garson receives

YOUR Best Actress of 1975

2011-10-18T23:06:00.000+02:00

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Isabelle Adjani - L'Histoire d'Adèle H. (30 votes)

2. Louise Fletcher - One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (20 votes)

3. Glenda Jackson - Hedda (7 votes)

4. Ann-Margret - Tommy (5 votes)

5. Carole Kane - Hester Street (1 vote)

Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1944: Barbara Stanwyck in "Double Indemnity"

2011-10-18T22:57:00.004+02:00

The trivia regarding Barbara Stanwyck’s participation in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity is certainly one of the most interesting and well-known in Hollywood-history. After the actress expressed her doubts about the role since it was so different from the characters she usually played, Billy Wilder simply asked her ‘Well, are you a mouse or an actress?’ Definitely a wonderful question that should have been asked much more often in the old days of Hollywood when so many actors and actresses were afraid to play roles outside of their carefully constructed screen image. And so, Barbara Stanwyck said yes to what would become the signature performance of her career in Hollywood’s most famous film-noir.

Barbara Stanwyck is an actress who doesn’t have the same lasting effect as other actresses from her era, like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn or Ingrid Bergman. But the reason is not that she didn’t offer the same amount of talent – because, oh, she did! – but because there was never something truly ‘Barbara-Stanwyck’-like about her. Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn had such strong personalities which they brought to every role they played – no matter how deeply they sunk into their parts, their performances are always a ‘Bette-Davis-performance’ or a ‘Katharine-Hepburn-performance’. This does not mean that they couldn’t disappear into their parts – because, oh, they did – but it means that they always left their mark on the characters they played. Barbara Stanwyck was different simply because she lacked that strong, unmistakable screen presence – don’t get me wrong, she possessed a lot of strength on the screen but she never felt truly unique or one-of-a-kind. Because of this, she was able to disappear into her parts like very few actresses from her time did – she could be a supportive mother, a sassy moll, a terrified murder victim or a cold, manipulative femme fatale. Of course, the success of all these performances varied – some are strong, some are weak – but Barbara Stanwyck always became one with the character she was playing. There is a reason why so many people can easily imitate Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn or Ingrid Bergman – but how would you imitate Barbara Stanwyck? And so Barbara Stanwyck might have been nervous about playing a role like Phyllis Dietrichson, a cold woman convincing an insurance salesman to help her kill her husband, but it was no surprise that she was fully up to the task adjusting her own acting style to the character she was playing and the movie she was appearing in. Well, but how did she use this ability in regards to actually crafting and playing this character?

Double Indemnity is a movie that not necessarily makes it easy for the actors appearing in it. The script follows a very clever idea but it suffers from the fact that the dialogue is sometimes almost unbearably exaggerated in the way it constantly presents clever one-liners, double entendres, tough talk and much, much more. On top of that, the characters in Double Indemnity rather resemble a cardboard, missing true life and recognizable humanity. So, the screenplay of Double Indemnity could easy have ruined the entire experience – if there hadn’t been an outstanding director and actors who were able to give the characters the life and depth they missed on the page. Billy Wilder created the perfect atmosphere to make the story of Phyllis Dietrichson and Walter Neff believable – that undeniable ‘film noir’-atmosphere, an aura that isn’t real but a stylized creation. And if a director is able to achieve the tasks the screenplay has given him, then it results in a perfect symbiosis – and then also the screenplay, that exaggerated, undeveloped screenplay, turns into something wonderful. The trick is that only if the atmosphere of a film noir has been successfully created the screenplay can unfold its magic – if the director is not up to the task, everything will only seem like a cheap melodrama from the 40s instead of a timeless classic. Well, as mentioned before, Billy Wilder was certainly up to the task of creating this unique world of Double Indemnity – so what about the actors? Were they able to take their thin characters and play them in a way that turned them into human beings that are both real but simultaneously just as surreal as their environment? Thankfully yes. Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson both perfectly understood their material, the screenplay’s guidelines and Billy Wilder’s vision and that way delivered very strong performances that wonderfully contributed to the success of the movie. And, of course, Barbara Stanwyck did so, too.

In her work, Barbara Stanwyck perfectly combined the realism of her own acting with a very stylized approach – everything about her, from the way she uses her eyes right down to the movement of her body, works together to create a woman that can be seen as both: realistic and surreal, able to stand as a rational creation while appearing to be something right out of a dark fairy tale. With her performance, she was able to combine the need for realism to carry the plot with the need for stylized substance to carry the style of the movie. Phyllis Dietrichson is a character that can exist in the world of Double Indemnity just as well as in a more realistic, authentic context. But even beyond that, she inserted various different interpretations into Phyllis Dietrichson and was able to project them all the same time. She never tried to turn this woman into something extraordinary, a cold-blooded symbol of evil, but instead always keeps her extremely ordinary, even appalling as the story moves along. She is not an elegant and mysterious Lady McBeth but rather a spoiled and lazy woman who wants her own comfort above everything else. And it’s thrilling to see how Barbara Stanwyck gives reason after reason why this woman should neither be trusted nor be admired while also turning her into an endlessly fascinating creation. The fact that Barbara Stanwyck could make this woman completely common and unique at the same time is surely a grand achievement that helped to turn Double Indemnity into such a classic. Because Barbara Stanwyck does not only present these two point-of-views on her character at the same time, but she also develops them both as the movie moves forward. Phyllis Dietrichson may appear extremely fascinating at first but the more one watches her, the more she turns into a repellent creation – but mysteriously Barbara Stanwyck herself remains strangely unaffected by that. Phyllis Dietrichson may appear common and loathly but Barbara Stanwyck always remains completely watchable and captivating as she has complete control over Phyllis, her transformation into her and her distance from her. This is also shown by Barbara Stanwyck’s ability to make Phyllis so incredibly…ungifted. When she fist tries to seduce Walter or especially during her scene at the insurance agency after the death of her husband, it becomes clear that Phyllis is not a woman who can hide her true feelings completely. Her complaints about the treatment she receives at the agency are done by Barbara Stanwyck with a brilliant double-meaning as she acts in a way that always makes it clear that Phyllis is hiding something but this is only clear because the audience knows the truth. At the same time, she tries her best to be as convincing as possible at this moment but it's understandable if the character of Edward G. Robinson senses that something is not right. Barbara Stanwyck manages to always make Phyllis an amateur, maybe a very gifted one but still an amateur, an impatient woman trying her best to get her wishes fulfilled but often too simple and obvious, unable to deliver all the necessary techniques for the aims she wants to achieve. She doesn’t make her intentions a secret when she meets Walter as Barbara Stanwyck shows that Phyllis is naïve enough to believe that she could either fool Walter or win him over in a few seconds. Everything about her Phyllis seems like a cover – but there isn’t much underneath it. Barbara Stanwyck is not afraid to show how empty Phyllis Dietrichson really is. Phyllis isn’t a woman that is trying to hide the deeper truth inside her because there is not much depth or truth inside of her. Barbara Stanwyck lets Phyllis become much more authentic whenever she is acting according to her own instincts, free from danger, judgment or even view – her facial work during the scene in which she is hiding behind a door is an outstanding sight that perfectly mirrors the tension of the scene while somehow also showing how much Phyllis is enjoying this moment, the thrill of the danger and the intimacy of the crime that bound her together with Walter.

As already mentioned, the screenplay offers the biggest obstacle for Barbara Stanwyck – not only is the character of Phyllis strangely underdeveloped and presented as a woman that only exists to hate her husband but Double Indemnity also puts her into various situations that could easily destroy almost any performance. A lot of times movies want to make the audience believe that two people could fall in love at first sight – by now, this cliché has been presented so many times in so many different movies that it somehow became believable. But Double Indemnity asks of Barbara Stanwyck not only to make Fred MacMacMurray’s Walter fall in love with her but becomes obsessed with her and accept her proposal to kill her husband – all pretty much during the first scenes of the movie. No actress should be able to make such a plot believable – but if the story lacks credibility here, Barbara Stanwyck does not. She does not try to make the premise of the plot believable at this point but instead focuses on the interconnection between herself and Fred MacMurray. And again, both actors are able to completely merge in the atmosphere of their movie and that way create a credibility in their story that a lot of actors would have failed to do. Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis is not sexy in the traditional meaning of the word – the horrible wig, the strangely cut cloths, her hardened face that never appears truly soft all create a woman that is almost rid of any true admirable features but Barbara Stanwyck managed to find a level of mature eroticism in Phyllis that allowed her to make everything about her plausible. She doesn't need to be sexy because she is actually much mure. She and Fred MacMurray basically turned the first half of Double Indemnity in one long sexual act – from their foreplay to their first intimacies to the growing heat and tension of the plot. And if their plan develops like an sexual intercourse, then Barbara Stanwyck’s face during the scene in the car tells very clearly when Phyllis reaches her climax. That little smile, that satisfied look in her eyes, that complete pleasure, projected with so much subtlety, is an unforgettable moment. During the whole movie, Barbara Stanwyck knows how to use her face most effectively to display desire, sneer, hate and lust. With this, she always underlines the tension of Double Indemnity perfectly.

It’s easy to see why this performance became a role model for all femme fatales to follow while never having been copied – Barbara Stanwyck added the needed mysteriousness and eroticism to the role but she was not afraid to show a more vulgar and common side in her character which helped her to achieve a much more realistic and three-dimensional performance. She lies to the audience about Phyllis while telling them the truth at the same time. A very engaging, dangerous and spellbinding performance that receives

Best Actress 1944: Ingrid Bergman in "Gaslight"

2011-10-13T22:16:00.000+02:00

Even though she did not win an Oscar for her work during 1945, it was always considered Ingrid Bergman’s year. Her work in The Bells of St. Mary’s, Spellbound and Saratoga Trunk only further cemented her reputation as Hollywood’s biggest and most celebrated star. But in some ways, 1944 had already been an Ingrid-Bergman-year, too. After her roles as Lisa in the Best-Picture-winner Casablanca and as Maria in the movie version of Ernest Hemmingway’s For Whom the Bell tolls failed to win her the golden statuette in 1943, she probably would have won for any kind of role in 1944 as Academy members must have been dying to honour her for her talent, her charming personality and her status as one of Hollywood’s most shining stars. But in 1944, Ingrid Bergman did not just offer any kind of role to the Oscar voters but probably one of the showiest in movie history as a woman who is haunted by the dark memories of her aunt’s murder and then slowly starting to lose her mind after she moved into her aunt’s old home. Very seldom must an Oscar win have been such a done deal as in this case – the combination of Ingrid Bergman’s popularity and the nature of her role made her an easy Oscar winner and it’s hard to imagine that past champions Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis and Greer Garson or the Oscar-less Barbara Stanwyck had a true chance for the win.

Gaslight is a movie that wants to be a lot – a psychological thriller, a crime story, a love story, a character study, a domestic drama, sometimes even a comedy. Such a mix of many different genres could usually leave actors rather helpless about what they are actually supposed to do with their character, especially if the movie itself doesn’t know how to handle its different genres. But thankfully Gaslight is a masterful and perfectly realized piece of work, a movie that develops like a slow nightmare, becoming more and more surreal and threatening as the story movies along. A lot of this is owed to George Cukor’s direction and the dark and gloomy atmosphere with which Number 9, Thornton Square, has been created but most of all, Gaslight is a character-driven story in which the tone and the mood of the story almost completely depend on the performances by the two central actors. And among these two central actors, it is Ingrid Bergman who really lifts Gaslight to such a high level of excellence, developing a co-dependence in which she constantly benefits from the strong material she is given while creating a feeling of desperation, helplessness and lost innocence that haunts and improves the entire movie from start to finish. In her performance, she does not only serve the tension of Gaslight but also develops something beneath the suspense, a believable character, a true and honest creation that fits into the aura of the movie but beyond that also exists as an independent foundation for a less suspenseful and more authentic and human focus. In other words, her character is not only a flat device in service of the movie’s aims but became a full circle, complete from all angles. Ingrid Bergman created Paula Alquist as a woman who is much more than a scared, fearful and obedient creature – thanks to her strong screen presence, her performance became very dominant despite the nature of the role and that way she turned the fight of Paul Alquist, her fight against her own mind, into a much more intriguing, shocking and memorable odyssey than other actresses might have. The 1940 version of Gaslight showed that the role of Paula may be extremely showy but this does not mean that a performance automatically turns into something special – Diana Wynyard’s mousy, hectic, lost and often weak performance feels too calculated, too pale and too uninterested, even for a character who is basically all these things. Ingrid Bergman on the other hand filled her performance with a vast amount of energy, even in Paula’s weakest moments, and always kept a tight grip on her and her intentions – it may be a calculated performance in some parts but Ingrid Bergman’s acting style always feels so spontaneous, so ‘in-the-moment’ and so unaffected that she is never in danger of appearing like the puppet master who is pulling Paula’s strings, leaving this role to Charles Boyer as her husband.

The role of Paula demands of Ingrid Bergman to give a performance that is both very emotional but also very technical. And she manages not only to succeed in both parts but also combine them. Her wide eyes, her fearful whisper, the panic slowly creeping into her eyes when she begins to hear footsteps above her head are all done masterfully but these technical aspects never turn her performance into a masque because she always makes Paula’s emotions perfectly clear – not only her fear, but also her doubt, her search for explanation and ultimately her growing suspicion. With small steps, Ingrid Bergman shows how Paula slowly changes from fearing the past to fearing an unknown present and finally to fearing a very well-known person. When Joseph Cotton’s character tells her that she knows very well who is making the noise above her, Ingrid Bergman doesn’t let Paula react with fierce disbelief but rather a helpless denial, a last try to hide the truth she already knows because just as much as she fears her own decline she also fears the consequences of the truth since it would smash her life into pieces and shows that everything she used to believe was only a lie. In this way, Ingrid Bergman does not forget that Gaslight is not only the story of a woman who believes that she is going insane but also the story of a false marriage, of misused trust and betrayal. In all these aspects, Ingrid Bergman has a wonderful screen partner in Charles Boyer with whom she also shares just the right chemistry – what starts as love soon becomes a child-like dependence, mistrust, suspicion, fear and even hate. Of course, Charles Boyer’s performance never makes it a secret what is going on in Number 9, Thornton Place, which was a very wise decision not only by him but also by the screenplay since it gives the story a psychologically much more interesting angle - Gaslight never asks ‘Who?’ but instead focuses on Paula’s personal battle for survival and the loss of love she is experiencing.

Right from the start, Ingrid Bergman’s performance creates the suspension of Gaslight – even though her acting style never feels calculated, she still has a lot of control over her character. And she uses this to demonstrate how Paula is constantly suffering from the memories of her aunt’s murder and how these memories slowly begin to torture her. During the first half of the movie, Ingrid Bergman beautifully demonstrates how Paul is trying to find a different life even though she is unable to forget the past, still sensing that her past is not finished with her. Later, Ingrid Bergman shows a certain change in Paula, she seems to become more relaxed as happiness and love begin to fill her life. And then, step by step, she again changes her – first, she develops a certain nervousness, a shyness that prevents her from leaving the house she both fears and loves as it offers her security but is haunting her at the same time. Paula is caught in a vicious circle in which she is constantly being told that she is losing her mind until she believes it, too. It could be very easy to dismiss Paula as a character simply because she comes from a time when a woman could be such an easy and almost willing victim for a man simply because she believes his words more than her own thoughts – but Ingrid Bergman’s performance makes it almost impossible not to be absorbed by Paula’s fate.

Ingrid Bergman also made the admirable choice not to let Paula appear like a deer caught in a trap to win the audience’s sympathy. She lets Paula’s fears and terrors always be very private since they happen so secluded in the privateness of her own home. She also never lets Paula appear weak by nature – she actually shows that there is a lot of strength in her but she is being mentally attacked exactly at her one single weakness, her fear of her house and the memories she has of it. Because of this, her final confrontation scene is easily the highpoint in her whole performance simply because it sums up everything about Paula so perfectly. The combination of Ingrid Bergman’s technical strength with her emotional clarity creates a fascinating finale to this exhausting journey.

In this performance, Ingrid Bergman did a lot more than rely of the effects of her technical brilliance. She gave a reason to Paula’s actions and fears, makes it understandable why she fears her maid and even begins to doubt herself. Nothing that Paula apparently does makes any sense and so it’s only logical to see her struggling with her illogical actions. Ingrid Bergman underlines this with a lot of acting choices that might be expected but are still thrilling to watch – her break-down at the piano party, her inability to read a book as she keeps hearing the voice of her husband in her head, her quiet walk, her half-closed eyes, her own voice that turns more and more into a whisper as she herself turns into a mere shadow of herself – it’s all done with marvellous determination that is equally shocking, entertaining, fascinating and worrying. She runs a vast scale of emotions, often in just a few seconds – she can change between begging her husband like a child not leave her only to explode with fear just a few moments later, she can laugh and dance like a little girl only to be terrorized by the thought of having taken down a picture from the wall the next moment. Ingrid Bergman took a very passive part and turned it into the motor of the story – nothing that Paula does seems to be by her own will but she is still the most deciding character in the movie thanks to Ingrid Bergman’s ability to give a fervid characterization of such an introvert woman.

Overall, Ingrid Bergman found a wonderful way to use an acting style that is both modern and ‘old Hollywood’ to give a performance that remains constantly impressive because of both the technical outside and the emotional, three-dimensional inside. She turns Gaslight into a dark and suspenseful ride, fulfilling the tasks of the story while adding her own personality and screen presence to craft a powerful and lasting presence. For this she receives

Best Actress 1944

2011-10-01T07:47:00.000+02:00

The next year will be 1944 and the nominees were

Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight

Claudette Colbert in Since you went Away

Bette Davis in Mr. Skeffington

Greer Garson in Mrs. Parkington

Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity

The ranking of the judged performances so far...

2011-10-01T00:41:00.001+02:00

5 new performances enter the ranking of the Best Actress nominees!

Here is how I rank the 133 judged performances so far (new additions in bold):

Best of the Best

01. Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves (1996)
02. Marion Cotillard in La Môme (2007)
03. Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939)
04. Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice (1982)
05. Jessica Lange in Frances (1982)
06. Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)
07. Luise Rainer in The Good Earth (1937)
08. Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday (1950)
09. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950)
10. Meryl Streep in A Cry in the Dark (1988)
11. Geraldine Page in The Trip to Bountiful (1985)
12. Bette Davis in All about Eve (1950)
13. Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
14. Joan Fontaine in Rebecca (1940)
15. Imelda Staunton in Vera Drake (2004)
16. Judy Garland in A Star is Born (1954)
17. Katharine Hepburn in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
18. Bette Davis in Dark Victory (1939)

Really Fantastic

19. Brenda Blethyn in Secrets and Lies (1996)
20. Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (1967)
21. Frances McDormand in Fargo (1996)
22. Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth (1998)
23. Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939)
24. Louise Fletcher in One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
25. Isabelle Adjani in L'Histoire d'Adèle H. (1975)

Fantastic

26. Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby (2004)
27. Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
28. Sophia Loren in La Ciociara (1961)
29. Ingrid Bergman in Höstsonaten (1978)
30. Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman (1978)
31. Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story (1959)
32. Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass (1961)
33. Elizabeth Hartman in A Patch of Blue (1965)
34. Julie Christie in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
35. Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
36. Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple (1985)
37. Annette Bening in Being Julia (2004)
38. Catalina Sandino Moreno in Maria Full of Grace (2004)
39. Glenda Jackson in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
40. Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story (1940)
41. Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge! (2001)
42. Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
43. Kristin Scott Thomas in The English Patient (1996)

Really Great

44. Edith Evans in The Whisperers (1967)
45. Simone Signoret in Room at the Top (1959)
46. Kate Winslet in The Reader (2008)
47. Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)
48. Eleanor Parker in Caged (1950)
49. Sissy Spacek in In the Bedroom (2001)
50. Fernanda Montenegro in Central do Brasil (1998)
51. Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist (1988)
52. Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
53. Laura Linney in The Savages (2007)
54. Greta Garbo in Camille (1937)
55. Julie Christie in Darling (1965)
56. Jane Fonda in They shoot Horses, don't they? (1969)

Great

57. Jessica Lange in Sweet Dreams (1985)
58. Deborah Kerr in The King and I (1956)
59. Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married (2008)
60. Carroll Baker in Baby Doll (1956)
61. Grace Kelly in The Country Girl (1954)
62. Susan Hayward in Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947)
63. Jodie Foster in The Accused (1988)
64. Geraldine Page in Interiors (1978)
65. Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965)
66. Rosalind Russell in Mourning Becomes Electra (1947)
67. Glenda Jackson in Hedda (1975)
68. Samantha Eggar in The Collector (1965)
69. Emily Watson in Hilary and Jackie (1998)
70. Bette Davis in The Letter (1940)
71. Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle (1940)
72. Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love (1998)
73. Ellen Page in Juno (2007)
74. Julie Christie in Away from Her (2007)
75. Jean Simmons in The Happy Ending (1969)
76. Meryl Streep in Doubt (2008)
77. Bette Davis in Now, Voyager (1942)
78. Halle Berry in Monster's Ball (2001)
79. Meryl Streep in Out of Africa (1985)
80. Piper Laurie in The Hustler (1961)
81. Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth (1937)
82. Geneviève Bujold in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
83. Liza Minnelli in The Sterile Cuckoo (1969)
84. Geraldine Page in Summer and Smoke (1961)
85. Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria (1982)
86. Judi Dench in Iris (2001)

Very Good

87. Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver (1942)
88. Melissa Leo in Frozen River (2008)
89. Joan Crawford in Possessed (1947)
90. Jane Fonda in Klute (1971)
91. Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959)
92. Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday (1953)
93. Carole Kane in Hester Street (1975)
94. Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (1953)

Good

95. Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina (1954)
96. Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones (1954)
97. Simone Signoret in Ship of Fools (1965)
98. Sissy Spacek in Missing (1982)
99. Meryl Streep in One True Thing (1998)
100. Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)
101. Maggie McNamara in The Moon is Blue (1953)
102. Diane Keaton in Marvin's Room (1996)
103. Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year (1942)
104. Greer Garson in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
105. Anne Baxter in All about Eve (1950)
106. Janet Gaynor in A Star is Born (1937)
107. Leslie Caron in Lili (1953)
108. Audrey Hepburn in Wait until Dark (1967)
109. Angelina Jolie in Changeling (2008)
110. May Robson in Lady for a Day (1933)
111. Irene Dunne in Love Affair (1939)
112. Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
113. Janet Suzman in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)
114. Ingrid Bergman in Anastasia (1956)
115. Jane Wyman in Magnificent Obsession (1954)
116. Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas (1937)

Okay

117. Ava Gardener in Mogambo (1953)
118. Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)
119. Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)
120. Anne Bancroft in Agnes of God (1985)
121. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year (1978)
122. Nancy Kelly in The Bad Seed (1956)
123. Rosalind Russell in My Sister Eileen (1942)
124. Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter (1947)
125. Katharine Hepburn in Guess who's coming to dinner (1967)
126. Martha Scott in Our Town (1940)
127. Ann-Margret in Tommy (1975)
128. Katharine Hepburn in The Rainmaker (1956)

Unsatisfying

129. Dorothy McGuire in Gentleman's Agreement (1947)
130. Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1978)
131. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1933)
132. Katharine Hepburn in Morning Glory (1933)

Disappointing

133. Melanie Griffith in Working Girl (1988)

Best Actress 1975 - The resolution

2011-10-01T00:39:00.001+02:00

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

5. Ann-Margret in Tommy

Ann-Margret is bad, she’s good, she’s memorable, she’s forgettable, she jumps from one scene to another without any creation of a character but still comes out as the most recommendable aspect of Tommy at the end. Hardly any other performance is so confusing and makes it so hard to rate for the sheer awfulness that surrounds it, the sheer over-the-topness that almost destroys is and the sheer dedication that saves it.

4. Carole Kane in Hester Street

Carole Kane plays Gitl with the right amount of silence and self-confidence but Hester Street is such a small frame for her work that it constantly seems to hold her down. But she still guides Gitl through her process of growing independence from her husband with a beautiful amount of emotional confusion and fills the limitations of her role beautifully.

3. Glenda Jackson in Hedda

Glenda Jackson may be harmed both by the limits of her movie and the limits of her acting which never explored the full character of Hedda but focused mainly on her sinister side but the results are still strangely satisfying, mainly because of Glenda Jackson's own screen presence and impressive talents which allowed her to give an exciting and memorable performance.

2. Isabelle Adjani in L'Histoire d'Adèle H.

Isabelle Adjani gave a brilliant and haunting performance that stands as one of the most memorable and effective displays of human downfall ever presented. She never tried to hide the limitations of her role but instead presented Adèle’s constant lies, her almost rational way of inventing stories, her growing obsession and loss of stability as a thrilling journey which she realized with a subtle and provoking piece of work.

1. Louise Fletcher in One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

Louise Fletcher turned Nurse Ratched into a force to be reckoned with without making it noticeable, letting all the evil happen behind her stone-faced façade. This way she let her become a thrilling enigma, a woman whose thoughts and intentions always remain in the dark and are therefore impossible to grasp. It may be that Louise Fletcher benefited from the way the character was written and presented but it's still her presence, her face, her voice and her ability to show so much with so little that brought Nurse Ratched to live and made her an everlasting part of movie history.

Best Actress 1975: Carole Kane in "Hester Street"

2011-10-01T00:33:00.000+02:00

In Oscar history, Carole Kane certainly belongs to the group of actresses that only evoke a ‚Who?‘ when their name is mentioned but this one-time nominee at least found success on TV (winning two Emmy Awards) and lately won new fans with her turn as Madame Morrible in the Broadway-hit Wicked or a guest appearance on the TV-series Two and a Half Men. She also had a small but memorable part in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall so she did not completely disappear again like so many Oscar nominees do. Or even winners – just ask this year’s champ Louise Fletcher. But while the actress herself managed to keep a maybe low but still successful level of visibility, her Oscar nomination feels rather obscure and largely forgotten today. Hester Street may have been the highpoint of Carole Kane’s success and recognition as an actress simply because an invitation to the Oscars is the crowning achievement of every career (okay, co-nominee Glenda Jackson may disagree) but the movie was probably already forgotten again after her nomination was announced. But a low degree of popularity has never been an indicator of a movie’s actual quality and so it’s no surprise that Hester Street is a very well-made and engaging motion picture that wins most of its quality from the realism with which the story and the characters are presented.

The story of Hester Street surrounds a group of Jewish immigrants who left their old home in Europe behind and started a new life in New York at the end of the 19th century. In the center are Yekl and his wife Gitl who both react very differently to their new life – Yekl immediately accepts the ‘American way of life’ and does his best to become a part of his new country while Gitl wants to keep their traditions intact and wants to maintain their old way of life even if it means separating themselves from their new environment. Carole Kane who usually appears to be so completely off-beat compared to other actresses found a very conventional character in the role of Gitl – the obedient and silent wife who does her best to please her husband. But very soon Gitl becomes a much more three-dimensional role when she finds herself in the middle of her own desires to live her life the way she was taught to and the desires of her husband to fit into this new society as quickly as possible. In his eyes, he is living the way he wants, free from the conventions of their old home. But Gitl demands the right to live the way she wants, too – according to traditions, conventions and unwritten rules that have guided the life of her and her ancestors for centuries. Tension arises between them and very soon Gitl will have to decide between the life she wants to have and the life she is leading with her husband.

Two aspects of Carole Kane’s work define the character of Gitl – first, her ability to beautifully convey her inner pain and second the slow transformation she is displaying as Gitl begins to oppose the rules, insults and humiliations of her husband. In the first part of the movie, Carole Kane actually never gets to show the obedient and loyal wife because her husband, who has gone to America before her, has already adjusted himself so much to his new life that tension and misunderstanding dominate their new life from the first day that Gitl followed him. But Carole Kane’s quiet and subtle work makes it clear that Gitl has always been a woman who accepted the role that society has given to her, she is silent, living to serve and willing to allow her husband’s actions and demands. But everything changed for her after her arrival in America – and unlike so many other ‘loyal wives’ that have been presented in motion picture history, Gitl realizes that she needs to get away from her husband to find true fulfillment in her life.

As mentioned above, Carole Kane worked especially well to display the initial obedience in Gitl and later the blossoming of her own character when Gitl begins to speak and think for herself. Right from the start, Carole Kane shows the love and loyalty Gitl feels towards her husband – her joy when she sees him for the first time after her arrival is done very beautifully and immediately helps to establish both Gitl and Carole Kane as an intriguing presence in Hester Street. Carole Kane also has a believable chemistry with her co-stars and especially the relationship with her husband, the anger and frustration, feels very authentic. Later, she movingly displays Gitl's new life in New York – a life that basically only happens in a small apartment as she never goes out into the street because she keeps feeling like a stranger and is unwilling to change herself the way Yekl did. She refuses to take off her wig, keeps speaking in Yiddish and prefers to surround herself with people who think and feel like her. Carole Kane uses all these early moments for some effective scenes in which she shows only with her eyes and her sad face how much Gitl is suffering in her new life, not able to understand her husband and not willing to give up everything she believes in. Carole Kane’s soft and delicate voice adds to the characterization of Gitl as a very tender and loving person who is lost in a new world she doesn’t understand while her husband slowly escapes her, too.

And later, Carole Kane begins to demonstrate the second most important aspect of Gitl and believably shows a woman who is slowly finding her own character. Gitl begins to rebel against her husband after she couldn’t win him back, even having tried to buy a love potion. The most moving and memorable moment in her performance comes when Gitl got a new haircut and wants to surprise her husband – but he still thinks she is wearing her wig and he wants to tear it off her head which causes Gitl to break into tears and shout that this is her own hair and that she has enough. The divorce that follows seemed inevitable right from the beginning of the movie but Carole Kane made the wise decision to show the change in Gitl only in very small steps – Gitl doesn’t change completely, she just cannot live the life her husband wants anymore. Gitl is not happy about the divorce but she doesn’t regret it either and Carole Kane continues to play Gitl as the quiet and tender woman because that’s what Gitl is – Hester Street presents the very interesting concept of a woman deliberating herself by staying exactly as she is. Most movies do rather the opposite – showing a woman who finds a new, undiscovered personality inside herself, only waiting to break free but Gitl is not like this as she only wants to lead the life she is used to. The ending of Hester Street shows that Gitl finally walks out on the street, without a wig, but she needed somebody else, somebody who was able to combine the new world with the old one. Because of this, the consistency in Carole Kane’s performance is a very important aspect for the character of Gitl and Carole Kane succeeded to show that Gitl actually learned a lot during the run of the movie but it did not change her as a person. The fact that Carole Kane showed this development in Gitl while also demonstrating that Gitl does not want to develop at all is a beautiful and touching achievement, especially because it was done so very subtly.

The character of Gitl certainly does sound very challenging and intriguing and Carole Kane found a touching and beautiful way to bring her to life but at the same time she also made her limitations often rather obvious – there is always the feeling that more could have been done with this role and that Carole Kane did not use her limited material to her own advantage as co-nominees Louise Fletcher and Isabelle Adjani did the same year. Carole Kane’s performance has no true flaws but the material she is given doesn’t allow her to become overwhelming either. It is a small and touching role in a small and touching movie but without any hints at a deeper truth – Carole Kane plays Gitl with the right amount of silence and self-confidence but Hester Street is such a small frame for her work that it constantly seems to hold her down. But also Carole Kane herself often feels too underdeveloped in her part – she is touching but there is always the feeling that she could have done more. She guides Gitl through her process of growing independence from her husband with a beautiful amount of emotional confusion but she always seems to stop one step before she could have reached a level of true greatness. In his review, dinasztie compared Carole Kane’s work to that of Luise Rainer in The Good Earth – certainly an interesting observation since both women played silent and obedient wives but where Luise Rainer was able to tell the whole story of O-lan’s life with just one look, Carole Kane stayed too much on the surface. Luise Rainer showed how a stereotypical part could be turned into an epic achievement – Carole Kane surrendered to the limitations of the role, even if she filled those limitations beautifully. Still, it’s a moving and tender portrayal of a memorable character that receives a strong

Best Actress 1975: Glenda Jackson in "Hedda"

2011-09-28T18:58:00.001+02:00

The love affair between Glenda Jackson, movie critics and the Academy is certainly one of the most interesting in Oscar’s history. Glenda Jackson basically appeared out of nowhere and won her first Oscar for her critically acclaimed performance in Ken Russell’s Women in Love. From this moment on, everything she did seemed to be impeccable. Not only was she constantly praised for everything she did, may it be in movies, on TV or on stage, but this level of appreciation seemed to go much higher than this – she was called ‘the intellectual’s Rachel Welch’ and therefore praising Glenda Jackson was not an option because not praising her would have disqualified you as ‘ignorant or simply stupid’. The first thing Art Carney did after Glenda Jackson presented him with his Oscar was to say ‘Thank you, Glenda’ as if singling her out would tell everyone that he, too, is among her loyal subjects. Glenda Jackson’s famous turn as Elizabeth I seems to be the perfect synopsis for her career – during her reign, she was basically unchallenged. Everything she did could not be praised high enough and every performance she gave seemed to top the previous ones. But just as quickly as her reign started, it was already over again. Her appeal and power over critics and Academy voters helped her to receive a second upset Oscar for her unlikely turn in the sex comedy A Touch of Class but her change of image again was welcomed by everyone who saw it. But after this win, things apparently began to change. Academy members apparently respected her enough to vote for her the second time in only four years but voting on a secret ballot and then see this vote actually turn into a win are two different things. Somehow, this second Oscar win was the turning point and the level of appreciation began to sink to a lower level and her reign ended – of course, she would later leave acting behind her and become a member of the British parliament but she did keep acting during the 70s, 80s and the beginning of the 90s without any more true further acclaim. A New York Film critics award was given to her in 1981 for her work in Stevie but the movie had already been in competition for an Oscar nomination in 1978 – without any success. Maybe Maggie Smith’s quote ‘Glenda Jackson never comes and she’s nominated every goddamn year’ in California Suite the same year was too true for Academy members. Glenda Jackson’s open dislike of the Oscars was probably another reason why she never returned as a true contender. And so she became a rather forgotten two-time Oscar winner who was not able to keep herself in the spotlight like other actresses from her era, like Jane Fonda or Ellen Burstyn.
Okay, all this talk may seem pretty meaningless – after all, Glenda Jackson did receive another Oscar nomination after her upset win. But the low level of enthusiasm after her nomination is announced at the 1976 Academy Awards surely speaks for itself and it’s doubtful if Glenda Jackson had been able to score a nomination for the small and largely ignored Hedda if 1975 had offered more female performances Academy members could have responded to. But does this mean that her nomination was undeserved? Let’s find out, shall we?

Like every fictional character, Hedda Gabbler is open to interpretation and different characterizations. Blanche DuBois can be played like a tragic victim of circumstances as Vivien Leigh did in 1951 or with more aggressive sexuality as Jessica Lange later did in a TV-version. Eleanor of Aquitaine from The Lion in Winter can be aggressive and unforgiving or desperate and helpless or maybe even both. And also Hedda Gabbler can either be a cruel and merciless manipulator of circumstances or a weak, helpless and mentally unstable creature who tries to gain some strength by using the little power she has. Considering that this characterization was given by Glenda Jackson it is no surprise that Hedda shows a strong, manipulating, domineering and almost obsessive title character. This is based on the fact that one thing becomes rather obvious while watching various performances by Glenda Jackson – her limitations. Of course, she is one of the most fascinating actresses that ever graced the screen – her strong, sharp voice, her overpowering screen-presence and that irresistible charisma that helps to make her characters so engaging even when they obviously should not be trusted helped her to become a truly unique and memorable character actress. But she used all these aspects of her own character for almost every character she played. Katharine Hepburn is often accused of having played every role in the same way but she always displayed an unforgettable range of emotions, making her characters strong and weak, common or exceptional. Glenda Jackson almost always focused on the strong and no-nonsense sides of the women she played – yes, she covered drama and comedy and excelled in both and she also gave performances that showed a softer, more delicate side in her acting and in her characters (mostly A Touch of Class and especially Sunday, Bloody Sunday) but she very seldom feels to truly disappear in her characters and leaving her own characteristics behind her. That is to say, Glenda Jackson never left her own comfort zone and instead of truly adjusting herself to the women she played used her strong screen presence to adjust the characters to her style of acting – but all the aforementioned qualities of Glenda Jackson helped her to excel in this comfort zone, never truly having to leave it because the sheer fascination and determination that she was able to display was reason enough to cherish her work. And what does all this mean for her work as Hedda Gabbler? Well, Hedda sometimes feels like Glenda Jackson on autopilot – she portrays Hedda with all her usual qualities and characteristics but even Glenda Jackson on autopilot is still a thrilling experience mostly because she, as mentioned before, knows so perfectly well how to adjust her characters to her own acting style.

Hedda Gabbler is an extremely exciting part for any actress and for Glenda Jackson it seems almost tailor-made because Hedda is such a silent force, a woman who feels no mercy or regret, who enjoys the downfall of others and who can wait in the dark of her mind for the right time to come. Right from the start, Glenda Jackson shows a woman who despises the life she leads – when other characters leave the room, Hedda just grunts, making it clear how superior she feels to everyone else and how she is only thinking about ways to improve her own situation. In her characterization, Glenda Jackson turns Hedda into a vessel of her own attributes and that way crafts a woman whom she clearly understands and guides with clarity and complete determination. In this way, Hedda may not appear like a true challenge for Glenda Jackson but she so wonderfully sinks to the lowest levels of human behavior with her, using her domineering presence, her sneering smile and the biting dialogue to form a woman who may have been played more complex and more mysterious by a more daring actress but still stands as an exciting and intriguing creation nonetheless. Despite Hedda’s constant boredom with everything around her, Glenda Jackson was still able to fill her with a marvelous energy, a true inner life, a restless soul who would like to retire but is unable to until life goes the way she wants it to. Hedda is a woman who wants to get as much out of life as possible and when she has to be married to a man she obviously doesn’t love there should at least be some financial compensation – but also this plan soon begins to fail and so she has to take various dark steps to fulfill her own needs and wishes. Glenda Jackson’s Hedda does never seem to act only out of necessity – but also because of pleasure. In this way, she makes her a very intriguing villain as she, like Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched, never gives an answer to why she enjoys the manipulation of the people around her. When Hedda burns a manuscript and that way destroys the life of a man, Glenda Jackson’s eyes turn into windows to her a very dark soul, displaying the madness that Hedda is experiencing and enjoying in these moments, a sadistic pleasure in ‘burning your baby’, as she calls it.

Glenda Jackson also does some wonderful vocal work in this role. Her talent to use her voice almost like acid always come best when her characters are forced by convention to keep a proper façade and they consequently find delight in sarcastic or little, hidden insults – her delivery of a line about a hat looking as if it belongs to the maid when she actually knows it’s the hat of her aunt is just one such example.

Overall, Glenda Jackson’s performance is a great example of an actress using her own talents and abilities to create a character according to these abilities. Only sometimes, Glenda Jackson’s own screen presence also stands in the way of her performance – she enjoys to create Hedda as such a non-caring woman who never makes her dislike for everything and everyone a secret that it is hard to believe that she is able to find any human contact at all. Her husband may call their house ‘our dreamhouse’ but it’s clear very soon that Hedda does not think so and she also makes no secret of the fact that she does not share his fond memories of his slippers. Glenda Jackson shows how Hedda visibly absorbs every bit of information she can get to maybe use it later and sometimes misses a certain charm that a character like this could have needed to be completely believable. She’s fascinating, yes – but in a dangerous way that is too often too obvious.

Thankfully, Glenda Jacksons did not make Hedda too strong – she may be a force to be reckoned with but it is just as believable when she suddenly finds herself cornered and her fates suddenly lies in the hands of somebody else. This also helped her to succeed in the most difficult part of her performance – the ending. Even though her character leaves the movie off-screen, she still has to make the actions believable. And Glenda Jackson has created such a strong and dominant woman that it is completely believable when she decides to take her fate into her own hands again without thinking about it twice. She is determined to keep her freedom even if it means giving up everything. Her delivery of her last line in which she congratulates Judge Brack is particularly memorable simple because she almost spits it out, congratulating, mocking and planning to escape him at the same time. Even in these final moments Glenda Jackson kept Hedda strong and the judge of her own fate.

Overall, Glenda Jackson may never truly stretch herself in this role but she perfectly understood to move herself in her own comfort zone and displayed exactly all the reason why she is such a fascinating screen actress. She may be harmed both by the limits of her movie which is basically a disappointing TV-production and the limits of her acting which never explored the full character of Hedda but focused mainly on her sinister side but the results are still strangely satisfying, mainly because of Glenda Jackson’s own screen presence and impressive talents which allowed her to give an exciting and memorable performance for which she receives

Best Actress 1975: Ann-Margret in "Tommy"

2011-09-20T19:44:00.001+02:00

Tommy is…how to end that sentence? There seems to be no adjective that can explain this movie so it may be best to simply say: Tommy is unlike anything else than you have ever seen before. This could certainly sound like a big compliment, like a hymn to creativity and originality but (sorry, Tommy) I don’t mean it like that. I can understand that Tommy may have a lot of fans, some even passionate, but I rarely ever felt so much…anger and annoyance while watching a movie. Tommy feels like such a cheap attempt to create something meaningful, it’s as if the movie makers thought to put as much senseless and chaotic scenes into it as possible and hoped that somewhere along the way someone will think that they actually said something here when in reality they didn’t say anything at all. I can live with empty, meaningless movies, especially when they are musicals, but Tommy appalled me in so many ways that I needed all my self-control to stop me from throwing something at my TV only to free myself from the over-the-top camera movements, the horrible storyline and the never-ending, awful musical numbers (my apologize to all fans of Tommy). I guess I should have expected something like this from director Ken Russell who had already showed his love for extravagant movie-making five years earlier with Women in Love but there was still a lot of style and substance in this one and the actors were at least asked to act instead of posing for one number after another. With Tommy, Ken Russell basically threw everything together that appeared as ‘different’ and ‘unique’ as possible and turned it into an empty, visually appalling concert. Since my first viewing, I have warmed up a bit to the artistic intentions and some of the songs have begun to find their way into my memory but overall, the movie itself remains a red flag for me.

So, what does all this mean for Ann-Margret? Usually, it’s very easy for me to separate a performance from the movie it stars in. I find Sophie’s Choice to be a lifeless and banal production but Meryl Streep still gives one of the greatest performances of the last century. Monster is certainly no masterpiece but Charlize Theron blew me away like hardly any other actress before. And A Star is Born also remains a rather uninteresting experience for me despite Judy Garland’s towering portrayal. But in the case of Tommy, it became very difficult for me to judge Ann-Margret properly simply because the movie does not offer her anything that even comes close to what one would usually expect from an Oscar-nominated performance. It makes perfect sense that Ann-Margret won a Golden Globe for her work – the musical category is simply made for a performance like this but the words ‘Oscar’ and ‘Ann-Margret in Tommy’ don’t truly connect. The problem is that there was nothing that Ann-Margret could have done to give an Oscar-worthy performance – Tommy is a simple sequence of over-the-top musical numbers which swallow everything and everyone in sight and even when an actor is actually carrying such a musical number, the cinematography, editing and horrible execution destroy every good impression somebody could have made. Besides that, the screenplay also does not offer anything that anyone could have worked with – no character, no depth, no growth. And that’s why this nomination is so often referred to as one of the strangest in the Academy’s history – it’s the combination of a movie like Tommy actually convincing a majority of Academy members and the fact that Ann-Margret’s performance is simply so unlike anything else they usually go for. The fact that 1975 is so often considered one of the weakest years ever for this category (even though Louise Fletcher’s and Isabelle Adjani’s performances alone are reasons enough to refute this legend) may somehow explain this nomination but most of all it’s probably the simple fact that Ann-Margret worked her way up the ladder of success with great determination and impressed a lot of people by doing so. That she would be able to turn herself into a two-time nominee must have seemed impossible several years ago but in 1975, enough people were convinced that she earned this title. I realize that I have not really talked about Ann-Margret’s performance yet – does her work itself not justify a nomination? I want to save the answer for my review but I think that her performance itself probably was not the major reason for this nomination simply because I find it impossible to see a lot of Academy members actually making it all the way through Tommy. I do realize that there a lot of people who like this movie, that it was very successful and that the 70s were a decade in which the Academy was certainly changing but still – old Hollywood was still powerful enough and so I think that Ann-Margret’s personality and her Cinderella-like story of success were the major key to her nod for her work as Nora Walker in Tommy.

So, this seems to be the perfect place to actually start talking about Ann-Margret’s performance. Tommy starts just like you would expect a Ken-Russell-movie to begin – with pictures of nature, wild and free, and a couple making love under a waterfall. At some point you would expect Glenda Jackson and a herd of cattle to run by but instead, the tone of Tommy begins to change drastically very soon when Nora Walker and her husband run through fake ruins and Nora retreats herself into a little cage after he is gone to fight in World War II – from this moment on, Tommy becomes a never-ending attack of loud and exaggerated numbers filled with empty symbolism. The major female character in all this is Nora Walker, the mother who sometimes cares and sometimes doesn’t. This may sound like a strange characterization but it somehow fits to describe a character that is written completely differently in every scene and is never allowed to become a true human being. The problem can be summarized in this simple fact: this is not a performance. Tommy does not allow this – instead, Ann-Margret gives a sequence of different impersonations, of single scenes that never connect with each other. Nora Walker seems to consist of 100 different personalities that always change between scenes for no apparent reasons – she is a faithful lover, an adulteress, a worrying mother, a non-caring mother, a bored socialite and much more. Of course, all this sounds like a multidimensional character but she definitely is not – because she never becomes one character. Every scene asks Ann-Margret to give a different interpretation of Nora Walker and she is not able to create something whole out of the many parts (the only thing that does present a consistency are Nora’s looks – Tommy may age from small boy to grown man during the movie but Nora Walker stays as young and fresh as ever). Nora Walker does go through some kind of process during the movie but as mentioned before, it’s only a succession of single scenes that never create one flow but feels constantly interrupted, overthrown or redefined. Tommy is not interested in characters but only in superficiality. But – yes, sometimes the word ‘but’ can also mean something good – the surprising thing is: you simply cannot blame Ann-Margret for all the mistakes in her ‘performance’. Rather it feels like she is constantly misdirected by Ken Russell who seemed to have told her every single day to act this scene like this and this scene like this without ever trying to find Nora Walker in all this mess. It’s obvious that Ann-Margret wanted to do everything that was asked of her and even more. When Russell wanted her to be over-the-top, run her fingers through her hair and scream ‘What about the boy?’ she did that without any hesitation, when he wanted her to run around her room and throw her son through a window, she did that that without any hesitation, when she is supposed to be a non-caring socialite, she did that without any hesitation and when she is supposed to be sad or regretful, she made sure to look like Nora Walker was not only carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders but of the whole universe, too. Yes, Ann-Margret held absolutely nothing back in her role and while everything around her fails under the weight of its own pretentiousness, she appears shockingly honest and even real. In the world of Tommy, she is the one constant, the one aspect you can cling to. Don’t get me wrong – when I say that she is the best thing about Tommy then this does not mean that she is great or even good. Ann-Margret’s performance has so many flaws that you get lost if you want to count them all – but this does not mean that there aren’t also some good things. The thing is, her single scenes always work surprisingly well – in every single scene, she goes as far as humanly possible in her acting without becoming too appalling (something Tommy did not achieve) and she also makes it somehow believable that Nora Walker actually cares for her son (well, whenever a scene allows her to display this characteristic). But as mentioned in the beginning, she does not create a character but simply…moments, actions, completely unconnected to one another. It feels very easy to praise Ann-Margret for everything that is good about her while blaming Ken Russell for everything that doesn’t work – but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if a performance is flawed because of a lack of talent (which isn’t the case here) or misdirection (which certainly is the case here) because what remains is simply one thing: a flawed performance.

‘He doesn’t know who Jesus was or what paying is’, Nora Walker says during one of her more affectionate moments when she watches her son Tommy who became blind, deaf and mute after he witnessed the murder of his father – but these lyrics seems so meaningless since there is no reason to believe that Nora Walker does know that, either. Later, she again pushes her son aside whenever it is possible for her only to become a loving mother again minutes later. In one scene Oliver Reed announces that he found a doctor who could help Tommy while Nora is lying in bed, reading and eating chocolate. Ann-Margret uses this opportunity to show ‘bored, rich Nora’ and delivers the line ‘Let’s see him tomorrow’ as if she couldn’t care less – in the next scene at the doctor’s office Ann-Margret turned Nora into ‘caring, loving mother’ again and uses her close-ups for an over-the-top portrayal of grief and sorrow that contrasts with anything that has been done by her so far in this role. Again, it seems more fitting to blame Ken Russell for all these mistakes but at the end, poor Ann-Margret is the one who has to answer for them.

But – here comes the b-word again and it’s good news, Ann! – even with all the problems in this ‘performance’ it just can’t be denied that there is a certain level of – gulp! – fascination that Ann-Margret achieved in this role. Okay, it’s on a very low level but it’s there. No other performer in the cast is able to achieve this like her – not Elton John, not Tina Turner and not even Roger Daltrey in the lead role of Tommy. Despite her limited screen time and secondary importance to the plot – Tommy is Ann-Margret’s movie. It’s often easy to say that an actress receives bonus points for fitting her performance to the style of the movie. But of course, if the movie is such an over-the-top mess like Tommy, is this a good thing? Well, Ann-Margret is over-the-top, her performance very often is a mess but even with all this, there are some…moments that simply stand out and make it impossible to forget her (in the good and bad meaning of the sentence). All the other actors, the directing, the cinematography, the editing, the screenplay – all this can easily be blamed for the overall failure of Tommy but Ann-Margret somehow escapes this. She seems like the only one who really takes this movie seriously and more often than once presents the only true moments of real emotions and feelings. When Nora is rolling herself in beans and chocolates and penetrating herself with a long pillow it again symbolizes everything that is wrong with this movie but Ann-Margret does not truly appear to be touched by this. Instead, she attacks her role with a very serious aggressiveness while obviously also enjoying the sheer silliness of it all – a combination that helped her to achieve a level of integrity and fascination that could have helped her to leave the awfulness of her movie behind her if she had been allowed to create a real character instead of an always-changing empty vessel.

But –unfortunately, this times it’s bad news – all these positive aspects of her performance do not come from her acting. In this department she does too many missteps, from her over-the-top facial work to her inability to prevent herself from being swallowed by the movie around her too often (Ann-Margret is certainly no Glenda Jackson who was able to fight against Ken Russell and his visions) – but rather from her own personality, from her ability to sell her material no matter how meaningless it is and from her talent to appear utmost serious even in the most laughable situations. She moves, dances and sings so wildly as if her life depended on it and she is able to turn Nora into the most interesting aspect of her movie, despite all obstacles. Of course, Ann-Margret also sings well and has the ability to get the most out of her songs, emphasizing the catchy parts of the melodies and filling her voice with the emotions she is supposed to convey at this moment.

So, Ann-Margret most definitely earned her reputation as being one of the strangest ‘performances’ ever nominated for an Oscar – she’s bad, she’s good, she’s memorable, she’s forgettable, she jumps from one scene to another without any creation of a character but still comes out as the most recommendable aspect of Tommy at the end. Hardly any other performance is so confusing and makes it so hard to rate for the sheer awfulness that surrounds it, the sheer over-the-topness that almost destroys is and the sheer dedication that saves it. When all is said and done, the flaws in this performance certainly outnumber the goods (by far) and usually, a performance like this would get an easy 3 from me but for the sheer…spectacle of it and for being strangely captivating even when she is bad, Ann-Margret gets a little upgrade and receives

YOUR Best Actress of 1969

2011-09-18T21:22:00.000+02:00

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Maggie Smith - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (48 votes)

2. Jane Fonda - They shoot Horses, don't they? (9 votes)

3. Geneviève Bujold - Anne of the Thousand Days (7 votes)

4. Jean Simmons - The Happy Ending (5 votes)

5. Liza Minnelli - The Sterile Cuckoo (4 votes)

Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1975: Isabelle Adjani in "L'Histoire d'Adèle H."

2011-09-18T20:05:00.001+02:00

With awards from the New York Film Critics, the National Board of Review and the National Society of Film Critics, Isabelle Adjani was the kind of critical favorite that seems destined to lose the Oscar in the end because of various circumstances – her movie was too small and too foreign and Louise Fletcher was right there with a strong and dominant performance in the Academy’s favorite motion picture of the year (but it should also be noted that Isabelle Adjani not only lost the Oscar but also the César, so there was quite a lot of diversity in the race that year). 1975 is certainly an interesting year for this category as it is usually considered to be one of the weakest in the Academy’s history and the fact that that a borderline supporting role, a foreign performance, another borderline supporting role in an over-the-top musical and two extremely unseen performances in small movies made the cut this year certainly seems to indicate that Academy members had to look in every direction to find five suitable nominees. But does this automatically mean that it was a weak year? Louise Fletcher as cold-eyed Nurse Ratched certainly added a huge amount of quality to the race that year and another celebrated performance like that of Isabelle Adjani also seems to indicate that that was actually a much stronger year than usually given credit.

It’s easy to see why Isabelle Adjani was such a darling of the award-giving critics that year – hers is a very emotional but also intellectual performance, she carries her movie with ease and self-assurance despite her youth and quite simply had a very showy role which she mastered with stunning dedication. L'Histoire d'Adèle H. tells the story of real-life Adèle Hugo, the daughter of the famous writer Victor Hugo, who suffered from obsessive and unrequited love for a naval officer. Because of this, her story is a constant display of humiliation and self-destruction, a slow process of coming closer and closer to the edge of insanity. Adèle Hugo has caught herself in a trap in which she denies reality while handling this reality with a stunning ease – she understands that her obsessions are not real but she is dominated by them at the same time. All this provided Isabelle Adjani with a carefully constructed character that demanded a performance that both inhabits the passionate and sexual spirit that is lusting after the officer but also an intellectual and thoughtful core which helps Adèle to cope with most situations and always adjust herself to new circumstances – and her performance combined all these tasks with a stunning and almost exhausting realism that is as painful to watch as it is fascinating. Isabelle Adjani possesses an almost magnetic screen-presence and has an undeniable talent for bringing these kinds of characters to life – even at the age of 20 and this way her performance became the complete center of L'Histoire d'Adèle H. and turned a rather ordinary movie into a mesmerizing character study.

Like Louise Fletcher in One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Isabelle Adjani succeeded in the most difficult but also most important aspect of her character – the determination to follow a single idea, to emphasize the limitations of the character and fill these limitations with a fascinating and captivating performance that actually even benefits from the narrow range of the character instead of suffering from it. Louise Fletcher turned Nurse Ratched into a never-ending mystery and never gave an answer to her actions and intentions – and Isabelle Adjani did the same with Adèle Hugo. Of course, both performances come from completely different ends of the acting spectrum – Louise Fletcher underplayed her role to the point of almost being completely emotionless while Isabelle Adjani gave a very emotional and lyrical performance but both actresses understood that their characters are driven by single desires that remain unexplained and both carefully constructed these mysteries as part of their overall performances. The reasons for Adèle’s obsession, for her aggressive love are never explained and thanks to Isabelle Adjani’s performance, there are no reasons for this – her work always speaks for itself and even though she may not fully explain Adèle, she still makes her understandable in her incomprehensible actions and thoughts. She shows that Adèle does not live in her own world – she knows that Albert does not love her, she knows that she is not married to him and that she is following a lost cause but she still proceeds her actions and doings with firm dedication. She follows him under false names, invents one lie after another and does everything to get close to him but once she finally sees him again after a long time she cannot do anything else but put her hand to her mouth, unable to talk, stunned by his presence in front of her. Isabelle Adjani made the wonderful and startling decision to avoid any emotional over-acting in a part that usually screams for it – instead, her work feels very subtle and almost down-to-earth despite its almost dreamlike quality. When she talks to Albert about impossible suggestions, she does it with a performance that remains calm and quiet even when Adèle is loud and emotional. There always seems to appear a greater logic behind Adèle’s intentions that maybe cannot be grasped rationally but helps Isabelle Adjani to add much more depth and dimension to her character than other actresses might have done. When she tells the father of Albert’s fiancée that he is actually married to her, she again talks with this conviction and clarity which shows that Adèle is much more aware of her own doings than others might think. Overall, Isabelle Adjani achieved the admirable task of taking a calculated and intellectual approach to a very emotional and passionate character which helped her to give a performance that seems to escape rational understanding while never distancing itself from it. Isabelle Adjani makes it very clear that Adèle is very much ‘in control’ of her own situation – but only as long as she actually has control. During her scenes with Albert, her acting becomes much more alive and hectic, presenting the desperateness and neediness of Adèle and her inability to connect with Albert the way she would like to. And also in various other moments, she shows how thin the aura of self-assurance around Adèle is – when a man in a bookstore gives her a book from her father or she is told of Albert’s behavior at a party, she also retreats into a more vulnerable and delicate part of her character which cannot handle reality as it is and fights these impressions with anger or tears. Here, Isabelle Adjani again demonstrates how much Adèle is able to understand reality around her, how she is actually able to deal with it but only in her own way and how she always gets lost when she cannot decide the terms of the situation. Her obsession for her love but also her own influence goes so far that she even sends a prostitute to Albert, only to make him happy and control his behavior in a way she can accept.

Isabelle Adjani gives a performance that gives her almost endless opportunities to display a wide range of emotional states which she all handles with beautiful and shocking dedication – the way she reads the letters to her father, with a decisive voice that constantly repels any suggestions, how she remembers the death of her sister, talks to Albert late at night or constantly re-thinks her options is a tour-de-force that overwhelms with its open and clear presentation of such a deep, withdrawn and troubled woman. It’s also a tour-de-force that was handed to Isabelle Adjani on a silver plate – Adèle is the kind of character that must be a dream for any actress since it allows such a variety of emotions but Isabelle Adjani must always be recommended for choosing such a controlled characterization which never went overboard in its display of insanity and obsession. She shows how unstable Adèle is inside but how she found a way to handle this instability until it all becomes too much for her – but even in the end, when Adèle truly begins to lose her mind and becomes a shadow of herself, walking through the streets of a strange city, almost unconscious, not noticing anything around her, she never exaggerates these moments but always stays true to her own interpretation and also the tone of the movie which never tries to gain either sympathy for its main character nor glorify her obsession – both the movie and Isabelle Adjani present Adèle’s journey as a slow downfall which cannot be stopped since Adèle herself seems to see this path right from the beginning, unable to change her fate since her obsession does not allow her anything else.

Despite her youth, Isabelle Adjani gave a brilliant and haunting performance that stands as one of the most memorable and effective displays of human downfall ever presented. She kept herself in perfect control over every aspect of Adèle’s character while giving a performance that always feels like a stream, slowly going along, changing directions and tempo without truly changing its nature. She never tried to hide the limitations of her role but instead presented Adèle’s constant lies, her almost rational way of inventing stories, her growing obsession and loss of stability as a thrilling journey which she presents with a subtle and provoking performance that is much more effective than any over-the-top-acting could have ever been. She beautifully understood the thoughts and ideas of her character and turned her into a fascinating enigma. For this, she gets

Let's celebrate Louis!

2011-09-02T10:42:00.000+02:00

Well, the incredible events are really happening fast now, aren't they?

After Sage I now want to applaud Louis who achieved the incredible task of seeing and reviewing all Best Actor nominees on his blog! What an amazing and exciting achievement for which I send all my respect! So, go over to his blog and take a look at the men if you're tired of the women!

All the best Louis and many congratulations!

Best Actress 1975: Louise Fletcher in "One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest"

2011-08-26T20:32:00.003+02:00

What do Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn, Angela Lansbury and Geraldine Page have in common? They are among the many actresses who rejected the role of the sadistic, manipulative and unforgiving Nurse Ratched in Milos Forman’s One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and that way made it possible for the unknown Louise Fletcher to come out of nowhere and win the Best Actress Oscar for her take on this infamous character – a highlight that would be the only one in a career that could never benefit from this Oscar win and Louise Fletcher disappeared again just as quickly as she had arrived. In fact, right after her Oscar win she already admitted that she had not received any good movie offers since One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest – it was probably the unlucky combination of being type-cast and not having shown enough talent or personality for leading roles that prevented her from ever becoming a bigger star. Because the role of Nurse Ratched, as fascinating as she may be, did not allow Louise Fletcher to either display a wide variety of emotions nor proof that she could carry a picture since her role is relatively short compared to other winners and nominees in this category – another disappointment for Louise Fletcher who also had to spend some of her post-Oscar-win time defending herself against accusations that hers was actually a supporting role and that only a weak year like 1975 could have allowed her to win in the leading category…maybe people thought that Nurse Ratched would be strong enough to stand all those accusations but Louise Fletcher actually suffered pretty much from them and she also had to defend herself even before the Oscars when last year’s winner Ellen Burstyn went on TV and urged Academy voters not to vote for Best Actress because of the lack of good female roles – maybe Ellen Burstyn’s heart was in the right place when she made this plea but it was certainly a slap in the face of the nominees and it’s understandable that Louise Fletcher made her anger about those remarks publicly known.

So, this start for this review already made it clear that the role of Nurse Ratched brings back this old, never-ending argument – leading or supporting? I don’t want to have this argument here since it makes a) no sense since the race is over and done and b) no satisfying answer will ever come from it since arguments could be made for both categories. Yes, Louise Fletcher does only have limited screentime and a limited character to accompany it but her role is undoubtedly of great importance for the whole story and, like Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, an unforgettable counterpart to the central character of the movie. Okay, the same arguments could be made for Vanessa Redgrave in Julia but the structure of Julia and One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is very different and Louise Fletcher a larger presence in hers than Vanessa Redgrave. Okay, and I have started the argument…let’s just say that some performances cannot be categorized easily – and if an actress enters the leading category despite a lack of screentime, she risks to be judged lower simply because she may not have enough opportunities to craft her character and become the strong presence that a leading player needs. I have complained about this myself – some performances simply lack too much depth and power because of the size of the part and therefore are not truly able to compete with other, more fully realized performances. But sometimes it happens that an actress is able to overcome these obstacles and create an intriguing and exciting character that is able to show how much careful attention and preparation can help to dominate a movie even if the character is largely absent. Other winners for Best Actress who achieved this are Luise Rainer whose Anna Held could easily have disappeared in the extravagant, three-hour long The Great Ziegfeld if it hadn’t been for Rainer’s witty, charming, funny and heartbreaking interpretation or Frances McDormand whose role as Marge Gunderson is even rather short in a movie which isn’t very long to begin with but the unique humor, line-delivery and facial work she used did nothing less than create one of the most unforgettable movie characters of all time. In these cases, those actresses not only turned their material into gold (that’s something also supporting actresses can do) but they also let their characters become such powerful and dominating presences that the screentime becomes of secondary importance when deciding if this is a supporting or a leading performance (unlike Vanessa Redgrave – in her case the screentime does give the answer even if she may be a powerful and important presence). And Louise Fletcher also belongs in this group. In the part of Nurse Ratched, she had both an advantage and a disadvantage against Luise Rainer and Frances McDormand – on the one hand, she benefited from the fact that her movie presented her with a character that was already written as extremely fascinating and of central importance while Anna Held and Marge Gunderson were rather a part of the whole. But on the other hand, these two characters were allowed to be explored, crafted and realized – Luise Rainer and Frances McDormand could construct these women themselves while Louise Fletcher was basically given a certain type of role that required her to follow a certain path and never leave it, forbidding her any experiments with the part and therefore limiting her in her interpretation. So there are a lot of riddles in this performance – does Louise Fletcher make Nurse Ratched fascinating or is it the other way around? Is she only a vessel for her words and the system she symbolizes or does Louise Fletcher herself create the character and turns her into such a subtle ambassador of evil? The answer is not easy but what can be said is that Louise Fletcher perfectly gave a face to an almost faceless woman, a disembodied presence floating above her ward – her success in this part was that she took this character which, even though intended to be a powerful presence, could have been easily overshadowed by the central storyline surrounding Jack Nicholson’s McMurphy and turned her into one of the most mysterious and intriguing movie villains of all time. Maybe Louise Fletcher benefited from the fact that Nurse Ratched is such a juicy character but she is also a limited character, mostly sitting in a chair, hardly moving at all and it was up to Louise Fletcher to give these scenes the intensity it needed, to turn Nurse Ratched into a force to be reckoned with without making it noticeable, letting all the evil happen behind her stone-faced façade – a task she was wonderfully up to.

In the universe of One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Louise Fletcher’s performance is by far the most interesting aspect – yes, Jack Nicholson gives one of the best performances of his career and is able to combine the comedy and the drama of the movie in his work and from this point of view gives probably the most accomplished performance of the cast. But Louise Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched presents such a thrilling enigma, a woman whose thoughts and intentions always remain in the dark and are therefore so hard to grasp – all this turns her into a character which provides endless opportunities for speculating and guessing. The truth also is that all this could have become very boring very soon since a character which leaves too many questions unanswered could easily loose the interest of the viewers but Louise Fletcher’s soft-spoken and cold-eyed performance in which her face becomes almost like a masque of stone was able to prevent this from happening and combined the riddles of the character with her own talent to appear either like a caring nurse or almost a goddess of wrath without changing her facial work for one second.

Nurse Ratched is a two-dimensional character without any emotional clearness or depth – she only exists in the world of the hospital, it’s impossible to imagine this woman in the ‘outside world’. Apparently she and Billy’s mother are friends but it’s almost impossible to imagine Nurse Ratched in a private life, involving friends or a family. When she leaves her ward, she seems to fall into a dark hole until she appears again in the next morning. All this could have harmed the character but the script and Louise Fletcher perfectly understood to use this two-dimensionality of Nurse Ratched to create a villain without any reasoning, who doesn’t even give one hint at some kind of backstory or a more private, hidden side. The question ‘why?’ is constantly floating above her but is never answered.

Since Louise Fletcher spends most of her on-screen time sitting in a chair, most of her acting is done by her face – a face that is rid of any emotions. All expressions are torn away from it when Nurse Ratched watches her patients, forcing them to speak about things they don’t want to and then enjoys the discussions that arise among them and in which the patients show a constant state of mockery and self-loathing. Only sometimes her face seems to change a bit, a little smile seems to escape when she is satisfied with her results or she calculates her next steps. But even more, Louise Fletcher can change her appearance so easily – in some moments she looks almost delicate, pale and small but in other scenes her face appears almost vast, red with anger and her body surpassing everyone else around her. The other important aspect of her work is her voice – again, she can deliver her lines very soft-spoken, friendly and thoughtful but there is always an almost threatening undertone that suggests a greater truth and during the final scenes of the movie, her voice changes to a more ‘obvious’ evilness when Nurse Ratched cannot find any other way to keep control over the ward than open threats.

Probably the most important aspect of Louise Fletcher’s performance was the fact that her underplaying of Nurse Ratched helped her immensely to establish the character as a very untypical villain – in fact, there could even be the question if she is a villain at all. In some ways, Nurse Ratched seems rather to be a symbol of efficiency, a woman who tries to keep control in her ward and does not tolerate the rebellious McMurphy and the effect he has on the other patients. But this is the power that actually allows her to keep such tight and complete control over her ward and her patients – her ability to appear strict but not evil makes her the unquestioned symbol of accepted suppression. Nobody, not the patients nor the other workers at the hospital, see anything else than a woman who does her job since she gets her personal joy from very little things – like letting the men get their hopes up about voting if they are allowed to watch baseball on TV while she already knows that they will not get enough votes. She likes to see them get excited with anticipation only to destroy it a few seconds later. She enjoys the complete power she has over the men, her unquestioned authority developed in an environment that has no means to reject it. She never does anything ‘obviously’ evil and that way escapes any accusations – until the end when she discovers that McMurphy is close to destroying her precious authority. Bullying her patients with uncomfortable questions and controlling their lives is all she has so when McMurphy gets them to cheer at a TV that doesn’t show anything and that way gives them back their own will and ideas, Louise Flechter thrillingly shows the hidden anger burning inside Nurse Ratched. And during a later session, when one of the men keeps standing up despite the fact that she prohibits it, she lets her lose her self-control for the first time, shouting at him ‘You sit down!’ – in this moment, Louise Fletcher’s head almost becomes like a skull, covered with anger and rage. In this way Louise Fletcher quietly, almost unnoticeable develops Nurse Ratched – the calm and confident woman from the beginning slowly begins to lose her power over her patients and needs to find new ways to keep her authority intact.

Louise Fletcher’s most chilling scene comes at the end when she sees how the rebellious, anti-authoritarian McMurphy is destroying the structures that have enabled her to keep her power. Billy’s refusal to feel ashamed, the cheers of the other patients, her dirty cap – it all represents the fall of her power and Louise Fletcher thrillingly shows how Nurse Ratched is thinking about her options at this moment, finally deciding that only open threats can re-erect her authority. Acting against all morale principles, she informs Billy that she will tell his mother about what he did even though she must expect the consequences of her doings. The final look she gives McMurphy at this moment, after Billy has been dragged away, shouting and screaming, tells him that she, after all, has beaten him. But even after all these incidents on her ward she still is in charge at the end – again this underlines the power of Nurse Ratched as she apparently found a way to let her own actions disappear and lay all the blame on McMurphy while also silencing all the other patients who witnessed the event.

It’s not clear if this is a case of brilliant acting or brilliant casting or brilliant writing allowing a limited performance to impress because of the fascination of the character – but something brilliant happened nonetheless. It may be that Louise Fletcher benefited from the way the character was written and presented but it's still her presence, her face, her voice and her ability to show so much with so little that brought Nurse Ratched to live and made her an everlasting part of movie history. Her ability to use the one-dimensionality and the limited determination of Nurse Ratched and turn it into a thrilling piece of work is surely a wonderful achievement for which she receives

Best Actress 1975

2011-08-24T10:00:00.001+02:00

The next year will be 1975 and the nominees were

Isabelle Adjani in L'Histoire d'Adèle H.

Ann-Margret in Tommy

Louise Fletcher in One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

Glenda Jackson in Hedda

Carole Kane in Hester Street

Best Actress 1969 - The resolution

2011-08-23T13:25:00.003+02:00

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

5. Liza Minnelli in The Sterile Cuckoo

Liza Minnelli is the emotional, but also intellectual core of this movie and carries it with ease and naturalness on her shoulders. She does not re-invent the free-spirited character she is playing but still gives her own, touching and beautiful interpretation of it and her performance is ultimately very warm, memorable, beautiful and occasionally heartbreaking.

4. Geneviève Bujold in Anne of the Thousand Days

With her believable display of royal status and of strength in a woman who must constantly hold her own against a man who wants to control every aspect of her life and her easiness of delivering Anne’s constructed lines without losing their emotional core and her ability to display charm and happiness just as effectively as anger and fear, Geneviève Bujold surely got a lot out of a part that could easily have been lost in a movie that is actually about her.

3. Jean Simmons in The Happy Ending

Jean Simmons delivered a very touching performance in a challenging role that took good use of her own characteristic screen presence and charisma. She showed the few ups and many downs in Mary Wilson’s life and while most of her performance seems to follow a standard formula for depressive characters, she still mixed it with various refreshing and unusual acting choices from which The Happy Ending benefited greatly.

2. Jane Fonda in They shoot Horses, don't they?

As Gloria, Jane Fonda was able to use her usual screen presence and acting style and create a character without falling into the traps of her own deficiencies as an actress because Gloria is a character that benefits from the strength of the movie and the strength of the remaining players and also does not overexpose Jane Fonda and that way gave her just the right amount of both support and screen time to use her own talents with great effect. The final results is a very natural and haunting performance beautifully fitted to the dark and haunting atmosphere of the movie.

1. Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Maggie Smith handles comedy and drama with equal ease, she is a leader, a victim, a lover, a manipulator, she's entertaining and provoking at the same time and she commands the screen with so many outstanding scenes that the end result is quite simply one of the most fascinating tour-de-forces ever put on the screen.

Best Actress 1969: Liza Minnelli in "The Sterile Cuckoo"

2011-08-23T13:24:00.000+02:00

Just like Jane Fonda became a truly independent actress in 1969 by parting herself from the name of the farther, Liza Minnelli also turned herself into an acknowledged actress with her turn as the free-spirited, cheerful but also sad and insecure Pookie Adams in The Sterile Cuckoo. Apparently, her mother Judy Garland was very positive about the part and Liza Minnelli’s possibilities with it but unfortunately died before the movie was released. But just as she predicted, critics reacted very positive to this performance and an Oscar win might have appeared very likely but the upset win by Maggie Smith delayed Liza Minnelli’s Oscar dreams – but only until 1972 when she won the award for her career defining turn as Sally Bowles in the classic musical Cabaret.

Cabaret is a good cue at this moment – when one hears the words ‘Liza Minnelli’ and ‘free-spirited’, isn’t the character of Sally Bowles that first images that comes into ones head? Yes, in some ways the part of Pookie Adams appears like a warm-up by Liza Minnelli in which she prepared for the most famous role of her career but The Sterile Cuckoo presents a character that may be similar to Sally Bowles in some ways but is ultimately also very different. Both women are very out-spoken, they aren’t afraid to open their mouth and say what they feel or quickly come up with some story if the situation demands it. Both women enter a relationship with a rather insecure, conventional man whom they fascinate with their unconventional behaviour and character. And both woman are, beneath the surface of fun, cheerfulness and the constant urge to either talk or do something, highly insecure, afraid of rejection and basically little girls trapped in the body of a desirable woman and unable to really open their characters up – so instead of truly wanting to find a relationship, both Sally and Pookie are rather looking for approval, for guidance and for security. So, yes, Liza Minnelli’s Oscar-nominated performances are rather alike in various aspects – but there are also differences. Sally Bowles has her own agenda, she likes to get ahead in the world even if that means parting from the things she truly loves – she’s a woman who has mastered the technique of overshadowing her own feelings and emotions with a masque of playfulness and loveable eccentricities. Pookie Adams has no such ambitions and she is rather desperate for any kind of human contact which she just can’t seem to find or hold. She is living a very lonely life and it’s never truly clear if she pushes others away by choice or involuntarily.
But all those comparisons are certainly not helpful when it comes to judging the individual performances. But what can be said is that Sally Bowles is certainly Liza Minnelli’s personal masterpiece which is probably also the result of the fact that Cabaret is a movie that gives her much more to work with, much more chances to impress and a character that allows her to be much more irresistible, careless and entertaining than ever before. The Sterile Cuckoo on the other hand suffers from a rather undecided script and while it gives Liza Minnelli a lot of opportunities to use her natural charm and spacy personality, it also holds her back at various moments and doesn’t allow her to develop such a full character as she would with Sally Bowles.

Right from the start, The Sterile Cuckoo and Liza Minnelli make sure that Pookie Adams appears as free-spirited as she can be. During her first scene, she suddenly introduces herself to Jerry while they are both waiting for their bus to their colleges and immediately everything about her screams the words ‘unconventional’,
‘unique’, ‘different’, ‘intriguing’ or ‘unusual’. Later in the bus, these first impressions are strengthened when Pookie displays her ability for making up all kinds of stories and lies in the face of a nun while still keeping her charm and that unique freshness. During the bus ride, she keeps making up stories about her and Jerry whom she had introduced to the nuns as her brothers and she combines those stories with other sentences or remarks that are totally out-of-place without making a single stop between them, jumping from one topic to the next, constantly talking or asking questions. It’s basically everything you would expect from this kind of character and the way Pookie is written it’s clear that the author was very proud his creation but it all could have become annoying very easily – not because of the nature of Pookie’s character but rather because everything about the way she is written is so full of clichés and stereotypes. But there is one aspect that helped Pookie Adams to survive all this and become a captivating and later heartbreaking character – Liza Minnelli. She has the unique charm and appearance to sell this character, to make her believable and to let her become a real, three-dimensional human being. In her hands, Pookie is much more interesting and mysterious than the script would have suggested and she also has the talent to constantly show that Pookie’s personality is not a natural part of her but rather something she uses to both keep people away and get closer to them. Liza Minnelli always displays the loneliness in Pookie – when she and Jerry are visiting a bar and she tells him that all the girls who have lived with her in a room have moved out again very quickly and nobody is really interested in talking to her, Liza Minnelli does not make it truly clear how much Pookie understands in this situation but she does show on her face how deeply insecure she is at moments like this. Pookie likes to call everyone she does not approve of ‘weirdo’ – or better, everyone who does not approve her. Liza Minnelli never makes it clear why Pookie is such a lonely girl, why she is not truly able to connect with others but she manages to make it understandable – somehow, her Pookie possesses both a lovely spirit but also a very difficult character, she can be very hard to accept, especially when you are not charmed by a woman like her. With all this, Liza Minnelli always avoids to play Pookie free-spirited just for the sake of making her free-spirited (the scene in an empty sports hall in which she pretends to fall only to laugh at Jerry afterwards would have been a disaster without Liza Minnelli’s charm) – instead, she displays how Pookie finds no other way to express herself, even in more serious scenes and moments.

Liza Minnelli finds various beautiful, silent moments in her performance which help her to craft the complexities and the inner life of Pookie Adams – when she covers herself with leafs during a little trip to the beach, when she sits in a church, lies down in a cemetery or simply remains silent for a few moments, dropping the masque from her face and showing the simple hopes and fears of her character. Pookie Adams was created to break the viewers’ hearts and while the movie and the character are sometimes too underdeveloped to completely succeed in this aspect, Liza Minnelli still achieved a lot. Her face can express thousand emotions at once and few other actresses can combine the joy of life with a fear of life like her. Her Pookie is a lost soul, almost like a woman who had to suffer a lifetime of misery and yet she is still young and only at the beginning of her way through the world. Somehow she has turned into a woman who lives a life of loneliness and pretends not to care about even though she clearly longs emotional and physical connection. In Liza Minnelli’s performance, Pookie Adams becomes a character who is both realistic and almost dreamlike because of all her contradictions and unusualness.

Unfortunately, Liza Minnelli does not truly work very well with her male co-star – both actors seem more concerned with their own work than creating the necessary chemistry which ultimately also harms Liza Minnelli’s performance in some parts. The combination of this lack of chemistry and the underwritten character never make it clear just why Pookie is so focused on Jerry. From the way the movie presents this relationship it seems as if she was trying to get close to him even before she spoke to him for the first time but neither the movie nor Liza Minnelli ever give any explanation for this. Also in the later scenes, the relationship does not truly develop in a way that explains her love for him – sure, Liza Minnelli portrays very well how much Pookie is looking for any kind of closeness and affection but she does not explain why this has to be Jerry. And so, her most famous and celebrated scene in which Pookie calls Jerry on the phone and goes through a firestorm of emotions by basically begging him to stay with her, has never truly connected with me the way it probably should simply because the relationship that is so close to fail at this moment never convinced me as working to begin with. But even though, there is no sense in denying how powerful Liza Minnelli is in this scene – a conversation on the phone is always a welcome opportunity for an actor to show off his skills since there is no partner to share the screen with and the character can so be played in a much more honest and open way. And Liza Minnelli’s talent for always appearing completely natural and making her character so complete helps her immensely in this scene – she believable goes from anxiety to fear, from desperation to false hope, from tearful breakdowns to sad smiles and does without ever exaggerating Pookie’s emotions since she has earlier displayed just how extrovert she truly is. Pookie does not hide her feelings at this moment and yet there still remains the feeling that the audience has not even learned ten percent about this woman yet.

The Sterile Cuckoo is a movie that does not exist to tell a certain plot but it rather only wants to tell a little story about two people and how their pats met and parted. Because of this, Liza Minnelli cannot truly follow a certain guideline in her performance but rather has to use every opportunity, every dialogue, every monologue and every wordless expression to craft her character – and she does so very beautifully even when sometimes the limits of the screenplay prevent her from going all the way. But even despite various obstacles in both the movie and the performance, Liza Minnelli still manages to be both touching and captivating, she possesses the gift for creating complex character in the most simple ways and so beautifully crafted a woman without any social skills, who depends on the kindness of strangers, who tries be lead a life that enables her to be who she really is but who also is too afraid to drop the masque she is constantly wearing to protect herself from rejection or disappointment.

Liza Minnelli is the emotional, but also intellectual core of this movie and carries it with ease and naturalness on her shoulders. She does not re-invent the character she is playing but still gives her own, touching and beautiful interpretation of it. Because of all this, Pookie Adams does not need to hide herself next to Sally Bowles since both women are unique creations and even though Liza Minnelli reached the peak of her professional career in Cabaret, her turn in The Sterile Cuckoo is warm, memorable, beautiful and occasionally heartbreaking. For all this, she receives