Best Actress Ranking - Update

Here is a new update. The newly added performance is highlighted in bold. 

Winning performances are higlighted in red.

1. Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939)
2. Jessica Lange in Frances (1982)
3. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950)
4. Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress (1949)
5. Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (1967)
6. Janet Gaynor in Seventh Heaven (1927-1928)   
7. Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
8. Geraldine Page in The Trip to Bountiful (1985)
9. Edith Evans in The Whisperers (1967)
10. Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette (1938)

11. Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939)
12. Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
13. Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth (1998)
14. Bette Davis in The Little Foxes (1941)
15. Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965)
16. Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame (1958)
17. Glenda Jackson in Women in Love (1970)
18. Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
19. Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire (1941)
20. Julie Christie in Away from Her (2007)

21. Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun (1951)
22. Audrey Hepburn in Wait until Dark (1967)
23. Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
24. Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown (1997)
25. Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1978)
26. Greer Garson in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
27. Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959)
28. Meryl Streep in One True Thing (1998)
29. Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (1953)
30. Katharine Hepburn in Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967)

31. Marsha Mason in Chapter Two (1979)
32. Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) 
33. Jennifer Jones in Love Letters (1945)
34. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year (1978)
35. Susan Hayward in My Foolish Heart (1949)
36. Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)
37. Diane Keaton in Marvin's Room (1996)
38. Loretta Young in Come to the Stable (1949)  
39. Mary Pickford in Coquette (1928-29)
40. Sissy Spacek in The River (1984)

41. Shirley MacLaine in The Turning Point (1977)
42. Irene Dunne in Cimarron (1930-1931)
43. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1932-1933)

Vanessa Redgrave as Mary, Queen of Scots in Mary, Queen of Scots

Compared to my original review of Vanessa Redgrave more than six years ago (good God…), my opinion did not change too drastically but Vanessa slipped down a couple of spots nonetheless. I think the reason is mostly that the flaws in her work have become more apparent to me while her highlights do not excite me anymore the way they used to in the past.

It has to be said: while my opinion on Vanessa Redgrave altered only slightly, my opinion on Mary, Queen of Scots itself did change more drastically: while I previously considered it mostly a mess with some fun parts and strong moments, I can now only see the mess. Mary, Queen of Scots is almost an insult to the glorious costume dramas that came before and after it – fake sets, fake costumes and a largely unappealing supporting cast do their best to destroy any good-will right away and the script does its best to ruin anything else. The movie is pretty much a disaster from start to finish (and Ian Holm gives probably one of the worst death scenes of all time – I guess he needs to squeal like Florence Foster Jenkins because he is bisexual?) and only one person manages to leave it untouched: Glenda Jackson, reprising her work as Elizabeth I, is simply unable to be anything less than fascinating to watch and she gives grace, dignity and excitement to her performance when everything around her falls apart.

Vanessa Redgrave unfortunately achieves not the same effect. She starts her performance on a very over-the-top note, fearing for the life or her husband, shouting “I love him” with a high-pitched voice or dramatically screaming “Francois” into the night. All the usual qualities of Vanessa Redgrave, this mysterious aura, her visible intelligence and graceful personality, are lost in this performance. The problem mostly seems to be that Vanessa Redgrave is simply too intelligent to play Mary in her early years – she apparently wants to craft her as some sort of air-headed dreamer who knows no worries and has to learn of real life and politics but this is never achieved. Rather, we get to see an unconventional actress trying her best to give a save, conventional performance without any surprises or depth, appearing both bored and overwhelmed in the process. When Mary greets her new Lords in Scotland and dramatically spreads out her arms and declares “My Lords of the Congregation”, Vanessa Redgrave displays a wide smile on her face that makes me wonder if this is Mary, trying to be charming or if this is Vanessa, realizing how ridiculous the whole thing actually is. Additionally, Vanessa Redgrave has a constantly weird way of rushing her dialogue – she often speaks multiple sentences without a single pause between them, ranging from moments of anger to moments of joy - this might work at some moments of her performance, but becomes rather distracting in others very quickly. 

The screenplay of Mary, Queen of Scots certainly does not do Vanessa Redgrave any favors. Instead, it actually causes the biggest problem of this performance: the script rushes through the stages of Mary’s life, it asks her to be flirty and brave one second, stupid and dependent on others the next, loving her husband, then hating her husband, suddenly showing feelings towards another Lord, refusing to abdicate before naively meeting Elizabeth and finally suddenly wised-up and self-scarifying. The major fault of the movie is that if offers no sense of time – we follow Mary from about 18 to 45 but Mary, Queen of Scots never makes this clear and neither Glenda Jackson nor Vanessa Redgrave seem to visibly age at any point. And because Mary gets thrown into so many different situations without any logical connections, Vanessa Redgrave’s performance never finds a true character in her acting. Instead, she plays Mary different from scene to scene without any flow and at the end of the movie I never have the feeling that I had seen Mary, Queen of Scots but rather Vanessa Redgrave acting different little scenes. Glenda Jackson, on the other hand, managed to actually create a character and her Elizabeth appears like a complete creation. This also results in the probably most curious fact of the movie: the title might be Mary, Queen of Scots but for long stretches of screen time, Vanessa Redgrave almost feels disposable and only rarely does it truly appear to be her movie and the story of Mary Stuart. The character of Elizabeth might be of secondary importance but she easily dominates large parts of the story.

All this was now a lot of negativity and I do believe it is justified. But I will also say that there are positive aspects as well that need to be highlighted. Vanessa Redgrave might not find a character in her performance and focus on the single scenes but she does work well in many of them. Obviously, not all of them – it actually takes quite some time for Vanessa Redgrave to warm up. Most of her early scenes in France and the beginning in Scotland show her pale and uninteresting, trying hard but unsuccessfully to give emotional intelligence to her work. Despite her natural and charming screen presence, Mary’s lightness and coquettish behavior fail completely but she does become more impressive in her later dramatic scenes. Almost bursting with hate at the arrogance of her brother, scheming her way out of a trap by her husband or later drugging him and then comitting adultery right next to his sleeping body, Vanessa Redgrave becomes a much more dominant presence as the movie goes on even if she still might change too often from scene to scene. She most of all comes to live when the misery of her character increases. She is touching when she begs her love not to go out and fight, tense when she tells her brother she will die as Queen and almost heartbreaking when she lets Mary, despite her calm exterior, look with fear at the scaffold where she is about to die in a few moments.

Most of all, however, the highlight of Mary, Queen of Scots are the two moments that apparently never happened – the meetings between Elizabeth and Mary. What is most amazing about these scenes is that they are completely not what you expect. Considering the movie’s reputation as ‘royal camp’ or ‘royal bitch fight’, everyone would most likely assume that their scenes together are the highlight of this. But this is wrong – in the hands of Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson, these scenes are surprisingly subtle and moving, full of character development instead of superficial insults and surprisingly quiet in tone despite the occasional emotional outburst. These scenes proof that neither Vanessa Redgrave nor Glenda Jackson are actually actively trying to come across as camp – if the movie can be accused of that, it is actually the men who are responsible for it. Both Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson are the calm centers of an over-the-top storm around them – and even if Vanessa Redgrave did not achieve to create a real character, she still has to be applauded for resisting (mostly) the chances to be as exaggerated as her surroundings (at least as the movie went on). Even more remarkable about these scenes between Glenda Jackson and Vanessa Redgrave is the fact that, despite having been constantly overshadowed while not sharing a scene with her, Vanessa Redgrave actually leaves the stronger impression when acting opposite her co-star. That is not to say that Vanessa Redgrave is the better actress or the bigger personality (I would say they are equal in both departments) – rather, she really benefits from the screenplay at these moments. In their first scene, Vanessa Redgrave, even if she again binds various sentences together without gasping for air once and rushes through her lines faster than needed, creates a spellbinding impression as she openly displays her hate for Elizabeth but the best moments of her performance come in their second meeting when Mary rejects all of Elizbeth’s attempts and offers and explains how she is willing to die now and that it is Elizabeth who has to kill her. Vanessa Redgrave delivers her lines in these moments quietly and calmly but with strong accusations and convictions nonetheless. These moments are not enough to completely erase the memory of the often clumsy performance that came before them but they are enough to look at her work as a whole with a certain satisfaction.

It’s a pity that after all these expensive and big costume Dramas of the 60s, a fascinating story such as that of Mary and Elizabeth was given such a poor vehicle. I guess it’s not wrong to see a strong level of sexism as movies about Kings or Kings and Queens are always given the truly royal treatment while a story about Queens and only Queens appears to have been filmed in some old warehouse between some old props. Mary, Queen of Scots might have been given two fascinating actresses – but as this ranking shows, that’s not always a guarantee for success.

And a hint to the next performance that will be ranked:

YOUR Best Actress of 1971

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Jane Fonda - Klute (42 votes)

2. Glenda Jackson - Sunday Bloody Sunday (12 votes)

3. Julie Christie - McCabe & Mrs. Miller (7 votes)

4. Vanessa Redgrave - Mary, Queen of Scots (4 votes)

5. Janet Suzman - Nicholas and Alexandra (2 votes)

Thanks to everybody for voting!

Best Actress 1971 - The resolution

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

5. Janet Suzman in Nicholas and Alexandra

Because the screenplay so rarely lets Alexandra have her own moments to express a more layered side, Janet Suzman took things in her own hands and used the small moments of the movie to show that Alexandra is both Empress and woman. But while she doesn’t do anything wrong there is the constant feeling that she simply could have done more. She suffers nobly and expresses poise and grace, but the tasks of the script simply don’t challenge her as much as most of the other actors.

4. Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots

                     

Vanessa Redgrave elegantly and intelligently builds the arc of her character and dominates her part of the storyline with ease and passion. She works well with what she is given and even adds a little more with a thought through and entertaining performance but the story of Mary, Queen of Scots never becomes as thrilling, fascinating and tragic as it could have been. The main reason for this seems to be that while Vanessa Redgrave acts beautifully from the outside, there is something missing on the inside. Instead of crafting a character that believably makes history, she lets history and the script dictate her what to do.

3. Jane Fonda in Klute

Jane Fonda clearly knows Bree and what she feels and thinks. While a lot of scenes with her feel forced into the movie and don’t really connect with the rest, Jane Fonda has the ability to turn Bree into one logic creation. It’s only her performance that holds everything together and shows the fear and terror of Bree just as effectively as her insecurity and worries. But the combination of Jane Fonda's constant awareness while acting and her shortcomings as an actress prevent her from giving a fully realized performance and characterization.

2. Glenda Jackson in Sunday Bloody Sunday

In Sunday Bloody Sunday, Glenda Jackson perfectly combined her screen presence with the emotionally unsatisfied Alex. She intelligently explored all the aspects of her character, her background and her past, her thoughts and emotions, her hopes for the present and for the future and gave a heartbreaking and yet encouraging performance that creates some unforgettable images.

1. Julie Christie in McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Julie Christie gives a wonderfully crafted, passionate and almost lyrical performance that brings this complex character to a glorious life – a mystic creation with many shades and edges. Constance Miller is the sort of character a poet would write about and Julie Christie’s performance knows exactly how to add a certain amount of mystery in her character without over- or under doing it. Everything she does, every movement of her body, her hands, her face, adds to the enigma but the result feels never controlled. A fascinating portrayal that is able to catch all the aspects of the character without ever fully exploring them.

Best Actress 1971: Julie Christie in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller"

Constance Miller and Alma Brown – two women from different times, but both trapped in a traditional world of men. And both characters in movies that impressively and unforgettably destroy the illusions of this traditional world. And because both are the only women of importance in this world they had to find a way to cope with the men around them and try to hide their tender characteristics behind a trough and strong exterior.

Eight years after Patricia Neal received an Oscar for bringing Alma Brown to live, Julie Christie received her second Best Actress nomination for playing Constance Miller in Robert Altman’s classic anti-Western McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Constance is a tough and experienced ‘dame’, or as she puts it, a whore who travels to the frontier lines to help John McCabe set up a brothel. While McCabe has already established an average brothel that serves its function, Mrs. Miller takes a different approach – she emphasizes the importance of comfort and sanitary conditions. She knows that success will come if the men get something different (and better) than everywhere else. And it surely doesn’t take long before their establishment brings in a lot of Dollars.

Constance Miller is a rare ray of light in an otherwise dark and dirty world. While she is actually a part of this world, there is also something in Julie Christie’s looks and acting that sets her apart from her surroundings and creates a fascinating characters that both denies and symbolizes the world she lives in. Perhaps more than in any other of Julie Christie’s performances, her work here depends on the images that she and Altman project. She has created some wonderful images in her career from the loneliness of Fiona Anderson sitting in a chair in an empty room to the bored desperation of Diana Scott walking through an empty castle – but never again will she be as unforgettable as at the end of McCabe & Mrs. Miller when Constance is lying in a Chinese opium den, starring at a glass egg which she is slowly rolling around in her hand. It’s a thrilling sight of a woman who is still as mysterious as she was in the beginning. The character of Mrs. Miller seemed to have become accessible for the viewer during the run of the story but at the end we have to realize that she is still an enigma, a woman who appeared out of nowhere and changed a certain way of life. If Marry Poppins had been a whore, too, she might have teamed up with her – together they could have cleaned a lot of brothels.

Julie Christie excelled in these images of characters, being alone in a world that doesn’t seem to understand them. The wonderful shot of Mrs. Miller, walking alone at night outside her brothel, is another one of those thrilling images that beautifully flows along with the story and style of the picture. In McCabe & Mrs. Miller, she constantly shows a woman who seems to be alone even when she is interacting with other characters.

Just as captivating as this final shot is her introduction, the image of Mrs. Miller as she arrives for the first time in Presbyterian Church, a sudden sight of sophistication and elegance in an unlikely place. Never before has Julie Christie’s unique voice and her distinct accent been more fascinating – her wonderful English pronunciations certainly don’t fit into her environment but it again serves to set her character apart.

But Julie Christie and Robert Altman don’t reduce Constance Miller to an arrangement of images. Instead, Julie gives a wonderfully crafted, passionate and almost lyrical performance that brings this complex character to a glorious life – a mystic creation with many shades and edges.

Constance Miller is a whore. She is very frank about that but she couldn’t be more different from all the girls who work at the brothel. She is charming, graceful – and most of all, smart. She certainly doesn’t have the manners of a real lady (the way she eats her foot is definitely proof for that), instead she is very practical about everything. She may run the show but she is also willing to work just like the other girls do – the only difference is that she is charging more. In her approach to the part Julie Christie shows that Constance, even though she is not old, already has a lifetime of experience behind her. But it seems that some day in her past she realized that she had much more to offer than just her body.

And that’s why Constance Miller is mostly a business woman. She knows how to run the show and how to turn an average brothel into a gold mine. She knows that it takes money to make money and she is also able to convince McCabe of her plans without having to use her charm or her looks. She never tries to charm anyone or use flirting to get what she wants, instead, her tough and no-nonsense character lives according to her own rules. When she meets McCabe for the first time and makes her proposition, Julie Christie perfectly uses Constance’s experience and intelligence, her slight arrogance and feeling of superiority and her attraction to McCabe to show a woman who knows that she wants but also what’s best for those who work with her. Right at the beginning, when she looks out the window, she seems like a woman who actually has enough but she keeps going with a strong, practical spirit. For a woman to be taken seriously in this time and place it takes a lot of work – for a whore it seems impossible but Julie Christie makes it understandable and realistic.

When she has started to run the brothel, Mrs. Miller also becomes a mother for the girls. There aren’t many scenes that highlight this aspect but her thoughtful and caring acting in a few moments shows that Mrs. Miller knows how to handle her business and how to take care of her girls. In a different scene she helps a young post-order bride to prepare for her wedding and gives her the kind of advices that can only come from a woman who has had the life of Mrs. Miller. Julie Christie always finds exactly the right way to demonstrate the warmth and love in her character while also showing the strong and dominant side.

Mrs. Miller is also a lover. It doesn’t take long, of course, that McCabe and Mrs. Miller began a relationship together and it’s thanks to Julie Christie’s and Warren Beatty’s wonderful chemistry that these scenes are the heart and soul of the picture. Right from the beginning, Mrs. Miller not only appears like a business partner but also like a jealous wife, even shrill and unpleasant but later, she almost appears like a little girl – insecure, frightened but then loving and glad to lie beside this man. With him, she can be herself and with him, she is everything – when she is arguing with him about him getting out of a gunfight, she begins worried and frightened, then suddenly becomes the business woman again before she turns into a housewife in just a few seconds. Julie Christie wonderfully uses her expressive face under her dominant hairdo to show a woman who has spent all her life thinking about sex but wants to find closeness and love. When she displays a more weak side and shows tears coming out of her loving eyes, it’s an incredibly moving moment. In these scenes, she is the complete opposite of the business woman she was at the beginning. Both Mrs. Miller and McCabe seem ‘real’ in this world, they don’t represent the myth of the Old West, they aren’t Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in High Noon even though they resemble them in some points. McCabe and Mrs. Miller both see the realities of life and think how they can get an advantage out of them. There is something trivial about their relationship but at the same time they appear like soul mates. Mrs. Miller rather wants to see her guy alive than a dead hero. She doesn’t mind if McCabe would run away in the dark or hide in a horse carriage because she sees no sense in fighting for a piece of land.

In this role, Julie Christie combines her wonderful talents for subtle acting with her equally wonderful talent for loud and shrill scenes. But Constance Miller isn’t Diana Scott – she knows when to hold back, when to stop and how to adjust herself to her environment. Julie’s Constance is a very controlled but also passionate character. Thanks to her delicate appearance, there is also a delicacy in her performance that wonderfully brings Mrs. Miller to live and makes her the emotional center of the story even though she is a rather secondary character. Mrs. Miller appears like a woman who would collapse if one touches her but the strength that Julie Christie projects defies every doubt about her. She wonderfully adds a dignity, loneliness, sadness and passion to the atmosphere of the movie but always keeps a mystery in and around her character.

The character is coming to a full circle at the final shot that shows that Constance Miller is also an opium addict. In an earlier scene, she has already taken opium and suddenly showed a big smile on her face and very childlike relaxedness after it. The image at the end is certainly not childlike – at this moment, she is a woman who is losing everything that seems important to her. It’s a picture of an almost unconscious woman who could have been so much more. It’s a swan sang to an era. The reflection on the glass egg resemble the reflection in her eyes – it’s not clear what is happening behind, how much of her experiences stay on the surface and one can’t help but wonder who this woman really is.

Constance Miller is the sort of character a poet would write about and Julie Christie’s performance knows exactly how to add a certain amount of mystery to her character without over- or under doing it. Everything she does, every movement of her body, her hands, her face adds to the enigma but the result feels never controlled. Julie Christie is an actress who seems to work both from within and outside, a perfect combination of technical and emotional method. It’s a wonderful and unforgettable portrayal of a character that could have easily been lost in the proceedings and for this she gets

Best Actress 1971: Glenda Jackson in "Sunday Bloody Sunday"

The role of Alex Greville, a London company employee who is caught up in a complicated love triangle, was originally offered to Vanessa Redgrave who chose to do The Devils which had been offered to Glenda Jackson before. After they starred in movies for which they had been the second choice, they co-starred in Mary, Queen of Scots and then faced each other at the Academy Awards.

Sunday Bloody Sunday is a gripping tale that still captivates, a movie that is a product of its time that allowed these kind of stories while also handling universal and timeless themes – sex, love, desire, loneliness, fear and ignorance. It tells the story of three protagonists and their strange connection: Alex Greville is a working women in London, Daniel Hirsch a Jewish doctor. They know each other loosely even though there is something, or better said, someone, they constantly share: Bob Elkin, a young, attractive and free-spirited artist who goes to bed with both of them. While this is already an interesting set-up, the most fascinating concept of the story comes when Alex and Bob are spending a weekend together and he leaves her for a couple of hours. Alex smiles with a sudden realization and, apparently not-caring, tells him that she is well aware that he is going to meet Daniel. Bob doesn’t deny it and leaves. The fact that both Daniel and Alex are aware that Bob sees them alternately is certainly unexpected but very promising – instead of trying to focus on a secret double life, filled with lies and betrayal, the story openly deals with its subject and so puts the characters of Daniel and Alex in the foreground as the constant questions about their characters and their motives are the movie’s leitmotif. Also Alex’s sister, an unfortunately over-the-top anti-establishment character who lets her children smoke pot, knows about this triangle. It’s a society that is as proud as possible of its own tolerance and anti-bourgeois attitude but it becomes obvious very soon that while Daniel and Alex go along with this, they are both longing for more.

In Sunday Bloody Sunday Glenda Jackson did something that she didn’t do very often on-screen: she allowed herself to be weak. Alex is not the domineering and destructive Gudrun from Women in Love. Even her Vicki Allessio in the sex-comedy A Touch of Class was a rather strong and powerful presence who only in the last minutes showed a weaker side. But Alex is a women whose troubles, sorrows, regrets, fears and doubts are visible in every moment of the story. But since Glenda Jackson never underplays her own strong screen presence, she makes clear very soon that Alex is aware of her own problems – and this is actually her biggest weakness: the fact that she allows herself to be weak even though she doesn’t want to be. Alex is a woman with lots of emotional baggage – an uneasy childhood and a failed marriage have made her rather desperate for love. It’s not clear how the relationship between her and Bob started and how she found out about his parallel relationship with Daniel. But Alex is a woman who, as seen in the scenes when she has to take care of her sister’s children, is trying to be as progressive and anti-bourgeois as possible and so she probably accepted Bob’s behavior as if she couldn’t care less. She wants to fit into these times that seem to accept everything and condemn any sort of tenures and rules. There was probably a time when Alex not forced herself to believe in these things but actually did believe in them. The relationship with Bob seemed probably very easy for her in the beginning – no suspicions, no conditions, everyone is allowed to do as he or she pleases. But her desire for Bob has grown with the time and now Alex is not able to accept it anymore – she wants him for herself. The problem is that Bob is the one who takes full advantage of their arrangement – he accepts no rules, he takes what he wants and only looks for his own pleasure and needs. Both Alex and Daniel put their own needs in the background, they try everything they can to please Bob, to hold him. Both show the insecurity that comes from being in a relationship with a man that swings both ways – both are afraid because neither can give Bob everything he wants.

Glenda Jackson achieves a fascinating result by combining her strong and domineering screen presence with the insecurity and doubts of Alex. She shows that Alex is a woman who should be strong and who should be able to break up with Bob if he doesn’t react to her needs – but she can’t. At the same time, she also isn’t able to tell him about all this – she uses subtle hints, telling him that often people do the things they don’t want to do, she tries to fight with him about his time with Daniel but Bob is too distant from her emotionally. He lives his life according to his own rules and he simple doesn’t care if Alex is angry – because if she is, then he will simply start a relationship with somebody else. Another weakness that Alex doesn’t want – the inability to do anything. She has to fully accept Bob and his views or she loses him. His way or the highway. Sink or swim. It will take some time for Alex to realize that she can and must swim by herself.

Alex is a woman who doesn’t seem able to really face herself and her life. She rushes out of her house and quickly drinks a combination of coffee powder and tap water, she has hardly any furniture – her flat seems as unprepared for stability and longevity as Alex herself. A wonderful example of Glenda Jackons’s talent is that she is able to make Alex understandable. She is in full control of her and does neither try to evoke sympathy nor does she distance herself from the storyline. She plays Alex in a very unspectacular way that constantly shows a simple woman in an unusual situation. Glenda Jackson’s strong presence and constant intelligence in her performance prevents Alex from appearing naïve and stupid and instead creates a deep and layered character who is at crossroad in her life but tries to prevent a decision as long as possible. Glenda shows a strong intensity in her acting that makes it seem that Alex, despite her insecurities and calmness, is like a gun, ready to shoot at any moment. Things don’t just happen to her as Glenda makes sure that Alex always does everything out of her own free will – even if she actually would like something else. She knows that she can’t be happy with Bob but she keeps going. When she cries after he left her to be with Daniel, it’s not easy to say if she cries because she misses him or if she cries because she hates her life. It seems that at the beginning, there are tears of sadness because she really misses him but when she later experiences a break down in her office, this seems to be the time in her life when she finally realizes that something has to change for her. Her affair with another man is certainly not done out of passion or love – it seems that she wants to prove to herself that she is capable of doing a next step, of experiencing sex with somebody else than Bob.

But even though Alex tires to gain new strength during the run of the movie, it is, in the end, Bob who again makes the decision as he goes to America and leaves both Alex and Daniel behind. For Alex, this is finally the wake-up call and she refuses to be there when he comes back. In an outstanding scene that belongs to the best that Glenda Jackson has ever done, she sums up all her feelings and speaks all the things that have so long already been inside of her – if Alex is like a gun, this is the moment she finally shoots. So far she thought that anything would be better than nothing but now she has come to a point where nothing has to be better than anything. Glenda Jackson makes the viewer always aware that this is not a liberating moment for Alex – she is not happy about her own decision now but hopefully, she will be able to recover someday and find something new for herself. Alex is a woman who makes up her own mind and then sticks to her own decision. Just as she chose her relationship and suffering with Bob, she now chooses to finish it.

Glenda Jackson, even though a fascinating actress, sometimes feels a bit too limited in her talents because of the strength she brings to all her parts that sometimes prevents her from finding different sides in her characters. But in Sunday Bloody Sunday she perfectly combined her screen presence with the emotionally unsatisfied Alex. She intelligently explored all the aspects of her character, her background and her past, her thoughts and emotions, her hopes for the present and for the future and gave a heartbreaking and yet encouraging performance that creates some unforgettable images. Her body language is filled with self-doubt and fear, her voice is a little more shaky and contained, her face much softer than usual. That way she portrays a woman who should actually never get into the kind of situation she is in but Glenda Jackson gives enough reason to make her motives believable. A wonderful, powerful and yet delicate performance that gets

Best Actress 1971: Vanessa Redgrave in "Mary, Queen of Scots"

Mary, the ill-fated Queen of Scots and Alexandra, the ill-fated Empress of Russia, have two distinctive things in common (besides their royal status) – a tragic death and the fact that they were both turned into Oscar-nominated characters which resulted in the meeting of these two women who lived in different times and places at the Academy Awards 1971. While Alexandra died from a firing squad together with her whole family, Mary died the way most royals did back then – beheaded. Her execution was the final chapter in her life-long fight against Queen Elizabeth I for the throne of England.

While Empress Alexandra seems to be rather a footnote in (movie) history, the character of Mary Stuart is almost as irresistible for actresses like that of her nemesis Queen Elizabeth I. It’s not difficult to see why since Mary offers basically all the same possibilities of great movie acting as Queen Elizabeth I – royalty, suffering, dominance and she also adds an underdog status, an overcoming of obstacles that ends with tragedy and the eternal mystery if her character is good or bad.

But even though Empress Alexandra might not be as interesting to actresses, she at least got the last laugh since she had been portrayed in a grand, historical epos – Mary Stuart’s 1971 vehicle, Mary, Queen of Scots, unfortunately was a royal soap opera that focused on a two-hour long cat fight between two women who, as history tells us, never even met.

Glenda Jackson is Joan Collins is Alexis Carrington is Queen Elizabeth I.
Vanessa Redgrave is Linda Evans is Krystle Carrington is Mary, Queen of Scots.

Filmed in sets that couldn’t look more fake in a high-school production, Mary, Queen of Scots is certainly not destined for greatness. And like basically all productions around this topic, it also put in not one, but two meetings between the Queens since the audience can’t be expected of watching two actresses scheme and fight against each other without ever sharing the screen.

So, the movie Mary, Queen of Scots itself leaves much to desire but what about its leading ladies? Here is where Mary Stuart got the last laugh as she was portrayed by the (by now) legendary British actress Vanessa Redgrave who right from the start of her career showed talent and poise in every performance. And it was only a matter of time before she, like almost every actor or actress from the island, took on a royal part from British history. And there are surely lots of part that make sure that Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Peter O’Toole and all the others will always have a job.

But even though these royal parts are always juicy and demanding, even the greatest actors and actresses can’t rise too high if the material is keeping them down as Cate Blanchett showed in her second outing as Queen Elizabeth I. And unfortunately for Vanessa Redgrave, the script never enabled her to really rise to the occasion – but also her own performance has various problems that make it hard to completely admire it.

She began her performance with a rather strong emphasis on the hysterical side of Mary who lives in France and constantly fears for her husband’s life. When he eventually dies, her mother-in-law uses the opportunity to send her away and Mary returns to Scotland. When she isn’t allowed to cross England on her way, this already begins the tension between her and Elizabeth I.

The first parts of the story have an equal focus on Elizabeth I and Mary and shows their dislike for each other and how they plan their next steps. As the movie goes on, Mary eventually becomes the clear center of attention and her story and fate is put in the foreground.

As mentioned before, both Glenda Jackson and Vanessa Redgrave suffer from the rather bad writing they are given but they both possess such strong personalities and dedication to their craft that the results are still satisfying. While Glenda Jackson, after having appeared on television in Elizabeth R, can obviously do Elizabeth I in her sleep and still create a fascinating character, Vanessa Redgrave doesn’t achieve quite the same level. Her work sometimes feels too rushed for its own good – she obviously knows how to handle the dialogue, how to appear royal but also human, how to display all the sufferings and problems of a Queen but also a woman and how to create the right amount of tension in her scenes with Glenda Jackson but Mary never really feels complete. Vanessa Redgrave runs all the right emotions and expresses the right amount of girlish foolishness and womanly intelligence but the results somehow lacks a certain ‘Je-ne-sais-quoi’ to become really outstanding. For one, the character of Mary makes it hard for Vanessa Redgrave to really shine. While she is given a lot of opportunities to show her talent for subtle and over-the-top acting in situations that go from arriving in Scotland like an inexperienced school girl, being threatened in her own palace, drugging her husband and then cheating on him in the same room and barricading herself in a tower, neither the writing nor Vanessa Regrave’s performance ever make her as captivating and intriguing as Glenda Jackson does Elizabeth I. The main reason for this seems to be that while Vanessa Redgrave acts beautifully from the outside, there is something missing on the inside. Instead of crafting a character that believably makes history, she lets history and the script dictate her what to do. It never feels that Mary is really acting out of her own ideas and believes but rather that Vanessa Redgrave is following the script with a competent, but uninspired performance. This also shows in the fact that she never really explores Mary’s motives for her actions but simply presents them as historical facts.

But there is still a lot to admire in her work. Just like Janet Suzman, royal arrogance and dominance come very easily to Vanessa Redgrave. Her whole body language, her high chin and stubbornness perfectly portray her royal descent and her own opinion of herself.

Vanessa Redgrave also is able to fill her part with a certain amount of comedy. The way she says ‘Working, always working’ to her advisor when she enters his room just moments after his lover (who will become Mary’s husband) left the room, is a wonderful example of brilliant comedic line delivery as she is able to make the sentence both funny and innocent – funny for the audience and innocent as Mary is oblivious to what just had happened in the room.

Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson, even though they only share the screen twice, work very well together as each of them does their best to create a woman as different from the other one as possible. While Glenda’s Elizabeth I is cool, intelligent, a great strategist who watches like an eagle over her kingdom and over her enemies, Mary is rather non-caring, sometimes too impulsive, naïve and inexperienced, a little like a sparrow, a woman who is used to a better life than the one she is leading in Scotland – the look on her face when she sees her now home tells everything. Mary doesn’t really possess anything that would qualify her for a Queen except her blood – but this blood is all she needs to be self-assured in her position. She displays a certain arrogance that isn’t really arrogance but an inbred attitude of not-caring. At the same time, she lacks the ability to mistrust those who are closest to her and so Vanessa Redgrave can show the surprise in Mary every time things turn against her. Unfortunately, Vanessa’s performance doesn’t really capture all the naivety and inexperience of Mary as she always demonstrates a huge amount of intelligence in her performance. Vanessa Redgrave is an actress who almost always creates characters who seem to be observing everything around them, who are always aware of what is happening and like to think one step ahead. This isn’t really working for her in Mary, Queen of Scots.

In her scenes with Glenda Jackson, Vanessa Redgrave reaches the highpoints of her performance. In their first meeting, she finds exactly the right amount of fake friendliness that quickly turns into hate and anger while in their second meeting, she unforgettably shows how Mary has decided for herself to find superiority in acceptance of her own fate. By accepting her own death, Mary is free of Elizabeth – nothing she can do or threaten her with has any effect on Mary anymore. Vanessa Redgrave gives a lot of dignity to Mary as she walks her final walk and movingly portrays a woman who is willing to die for her cause and her religion.

Vanessa Redgrave elegantly and intelligently builds the arc of her character and dominates her part of the storyline with ease and passion. She works well with what she is given and even adds a little more with a thought through and entertaining performance but the story of Mary, Queen of Scots never becomes as thrilling, fascinating and tragic as it could have been. In the end, Vanessa Redgrave gets

Best Actress 1971: Janet Suzman in "Nicholas and Alexandra"

Janet Suzman surely got a royal treatment for her first appearance on the big screen – she played the part of Empress Alexandra, wife of Czar Nicholas, in the opulent and lush Nicholas and Alexandra, the over three hours long story of the last Russian Czar who, together with his family, faced a gruesome death after the Russian revolution.

Big, prestigious pictures like Nicholas and Alexandra are usually very popular with the Academy and so it’s no surprise that it received a nomination for Best Picture. Along for the ride was Janet Suzman whose previous nominations during the award season were limited to the category of ‘Promising newcomer’, a polite way to say ‘Come back when you paid your dues’. But her nomination for Best Actress at the Academy Awards is surely no surprise when one considers that, beneath all the royal gowns and queenly attitude, is a character the Academy loves: a supportive wife and suffering mother.

Times change, revolutions come and go, wars are declared and defeats accepted – but the character of Alexandra changes surprisingly little during all these events as the health of her family and, for a certain period of time, the support of her dubious friend Rasputin are the most important aspects of her life.

Because the screenplay so rarely lets Alexandra have her own moments to express a more layered side, Janet Suzman took things in her own hands and used the small moments of the movie to show that Alexandra is both Empress and woman. Whenever her husband seems to mistrust his own instincts or lets others influence his decisions, Alexandra tells him ‘You are the Czar’ in the most natural voice that is never threatening or appalled but simply declares a God-given fact. With this, Janet Suzman tells the whole, never-mentioned backstory of Alexandra and shows that she is a woman who has always been in a royal position, who believes in a God that made her husband Czar and her the Empress, who believes that she is part of a superior class. Neither of this is done in an unlikable or arrogant way but simply with a total conviction. This is the only life that Alexandra knows and her upbringings never let her believe or suspect anything else. This way, Janet Suzman wisely and intelligently explored a side that nobody else in connection to the movie seemed to have been interested in. Even though the story is called Nicholas and Alexandra, the Empress seems to be the rather forgotten character. Nicholas, wonderfully played by Michael Jayston, is the character who undergoes so many changes, who has believes that become doubts, who literally has to carry the weight of his country on his shoulders. For large sections of the movie, Alexandra is gone from the story and whenever she appears again, it’s mostly in connection to her children or Rasputin. But while it’s easy and legitimate to criticize Janet Suzman’s impact on the story, there is no need to complain about what she does with the little material she is given.

The biggest worry in Alexandra’s life is the health of her only son who suffers from hemophilia – an illness that he inherited from his mother. This guilt, that Alexandra is always carrying with her, and the fear for the life of her son, are the biggest motivations of Alexandra’s actions and thoughts. Janet Suzman is quite moving in her scenes of fear and worries and shows the human behind the royal protocol, a woman who is a loving mother while never forgetting that she is also an Empress and, as such, must keep her dignity and composure. In a moment that perfectly balances these aspects, the Czar and his wife return from a party, both aware that their son is ill – they walk into their palace, trying to hide their feelings until the doors are closed behind them and they suddenly rush up the stairs in their son’s room. Most impressive are Janet Suzman’s acting choices whenever the sickness of her son is affecting her in public. When she gets the news that he is ill while she is sending soldiers off to war, her face is like a masque that has suppressed every personal feeling since she was a child – but the fear and panic are quite visible in her eyes. Again, Janet Suzman doesn’t draw any attention to the behaviors of an Empress but shows it as the most normal thing. But still, Janet Suzman never shows what makes Alexandra think and act. Is she really blind to the changing world outside the palace? In some ways, Alexandra is the one steady factor in this story, a rock of undying principles but her intentions are never fully explored. In Janet Suzman’s performance, Alexandra never seems lightheaded but the acting and the actions of the character drift too far apart sometimes.

Besides playing a fearful mother and supportive wife, the biggest task of the story for Janet Suzman is to make the strange relationship between Alexandra and the grim Rasputin believable. And it’s again thanks to her understated and intelligent performance that Alexandra never appears dumb or gullible in her beliefs that Rasputin possesses a magic power. She simply shows a woman who is reaching everywhere to find safety for her son and becomes more and more fascinated by this seductive man. Unfortunately, both Janet Suzman and the script wasted an opportunity here to explore a darker side of this relationship.

Janet Suzman’s chemistry with Michael Jayston remains rather predictable and uninteresting for most of the plot. They show a loving and devoted couple while keeping up the façade of the royal protocol but their scenes together are never as captivating as the movie makers think they are. For Nicholas and Alexandra, there are good times and there are bad times. It’s mostly the good times that suffer from lifeless acting and writing but when the tragedy begins to show, their chemistry improves. Unforgettable is the moment when Nicholas comes home from the war to find a new Russia and a royal family under arrest – his pleadings for forgiveness and breakdown while his wife can’t do anything but cry and break down, too, is a wonderful moment and shows that Alexandra too, is suffering from the change in the country – more than has been visible so far. The images of a frightened Empress, walking through her palace, looking out of the window if her guards are still there to protect her, didn’t really allow Janet Suzman to explore these feelings.

When the movie goes on and the situation becomes more and more dangerous for the royal family until they are imprisoned, Janet Suzman gets to display an expected variety of fear and suffering but, just as she did before, her character stays mostly in the background while it is again her husband who contributes the most moving and memorable moments of the story. It’s sometimes frustrating to watch Janet Suzman slide elegantly, but hardly noticeable through the tragedy of the story as it feels as if she didn’t even try to show a greater impact. But she again finds a small moment to create a lasting image – when a young man tells her that she should be happy that she is still alive after she complained that she isn’t allowed to take all her things with her, Janet Suzman shows a look on Alexandra’s face that demonstrates how her whole world and beliefs are falling apart as she has to accept this talk and, most of all, feels the truth and danger behind it. On the other hand, her final moments with her husband, their last night together, surely shows an unexpected tenderness between two people who, even in private, aren’t used to show their feelings, but the moment is too short and Janet Suzman again overshadowed by her co-star.

Janet Suzman maybe doesn’t do anything wrong in her part but there is the constant feeling that she simply could have done more. It’s certainly not a compliment when the best scenes of the movie are those that don’t involve her. She’s an Empress? Check! She’s a mother? Check! She’s a wife? Check! But while Janet Suzman gets to show the royal façade and the woman behind who keeps the royal façade up even in her private life, it all comes together rather lifeless and uninteresting. She suffers nobly and expresses poise and grace, but the tasks of the script simply don’t challenge her as much as most of the other actors. She is the center of attention during the more lifeless parts of the story and constantly slips in the background during the captivating parts. A competent performance that achieves what it wants to achieve but doesn’t go beyond that. For this, Janet Suzman gets

Best Actress 1971: Jane Fonda in "Klute"

After having lost the Best Actress Award two years earlier to surprise winner Maggie Smith, Jane Fonda finally won her first Oscar (among a good deal of other awards) for her role as a tough but also very insecure call-girl whose life is threatened by a stalker in the thriller/character study Klute.

The reason why Klute isn’t really working is that mix of thriller and character study – it’s a movie that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be and the compound of styles and genres, of action driven by characters and characters defined by the need for suspense makes it hard for the actors to rise above the weak script. Especially Jane Fonda suffers from the fact that she so obviously tries to give a multidimensional and deeply layered performance in a movie that doesn’t know how to handle it. Bree Daniels, the character that Jane Fonda is playing, never feels complete because everything that she performs or expresses feels like a last-minute attempt by Jane Fonda to widen her impact on the story and show the insecurity behind the tough façade. While this is all still very admirable and done with the usual competence by Jane Fonda, it feels like a failed attempt to reach true greatness. So, what remains is a performance that is still much more complex and multifarious than expected but the feeling of self-importance that Jane Fonda exudes at every moment of Klute prevents her from achieving the level of excellence she so exhaustingly tries to conquer.

Jane Fonda is an actress who possesses great instincts for what she wants her characters to be and how to express this. Unfortunately, she belongs to the category of actresses who aren’t able to bring these instincts across completely successfully. In her worst performances, Jane Fonda seems like a bad drama student who missed too many lessons; in her best performances, she seems like a very talented drama student who has mastered all the techniques and methods of acting but to whom one always wants to say ‘Okay, Jane, please do it again. And this time mean it.’ There is always a certain shallowness in her work, a feeling that she never gets as deep into her characters as would be possible and she herself would like to. Instead, she projects a constant awareness and reflection about her acting styles and choices. Maybe Jane Fonda suffers from the fact that she is too intelligent to completely let go and trust these great instincts inside her. Her famous and praised scenes with her psychiatrist, scenes in which Bree opens herself up and step by step reveals her inner fears and the demons that keep her from changing her life and allow herself to be happy, are generally considered to be a wonderful proof of her spontaneity and ability to slip into her characters, but to me, every movement of her arms, every expression on her face, seem to be a result of careful consideration. While she doesn’t feel as controlled in her performances as other actresses, it still seems that inside Jane Fonda’s head there is a constant reflection about what to do next and how to move now while saying the lines. This way, her best performances have a certain fascination from a technical point of view and, as mentioned before, are obviously a display of a great deal of talent, but they always stop one step before reaching a full embodiment of her characters. The praised scene when Bree, alone and feeling unwatched, licks a spoon with cat food, as if out of habit, is certainly an interesting acting choice that shows that Jane Fonda understands her character, but it never feels like a spontaneous gesture that came from being ‘in character’.

Jane Fonda mostly suffers from a rather fake voice that prevents her from delivering any lines naturally or being fully convincing in her parts. When Klute, a detective looking for a disappeared man who used to be one of Bree’s customers, tells her that he watched her with an older man in his office, she angrily shouts at him ‘Goddamn you!’ – this scene so wonderfully displays the problems in Jane Fonda’s voice as she so obviously tries to say these lines with the right amount of anger and frustration but the result feels rather bored and forced and most of all…acted. Because of the problems with her voice, Jane Fonda can never prevent me from being aware that she is constantly acting and constantly searching for the next gesture.

Overall, it’s the combination of Jane Fonda’s intelligence, her constant awareness while acting and her shortcomings as an actress that prevent her from giving fully realized performances and characterizations. But this doesn’t mean that there isn’t still a lot to enjoy about most of her work, especially in Klute.

Her ability to fully understand her characters is certainly her strongest asset. Jane Fonda clearly knows Bree and what she feels and thinks. While a lot of scenes with Bree feel forced into the movie and don’t really connect with the rest, Jane Fonda has the ability to turn Bree into one logic creation. It’s only her performance that holds everything together and shows the fear and terror of Bree just as effectively as her insecurity and worries. In some ways, Bree is a woman who is fearing for her life twice – on the one hand, there is a deadly stalker following her but there is even more that troubles her. Her own inability to let herself enjoy life, her constant need to punish herself. There is something inside her that prevents her from taking a step in the direction she really wants to go and makes her always chose the other way, an unknown force that makes her destroy all the good things in her life. She may be trying to get out of her profession and start acting or modeling but something always pulls her back. It’s a childlike fear of happiness, a troubled soul that Jane Fonda displays with an intelligent and detailed performance. Her scenes with her psychiatrist may not appear as improvised and real as they would like to be but there is still a lot to admire about Jane Fonda’s work here. In these scenes, she is able to create a certain fascination about Bree. The sudden honesty, her self reflections that show that Bree knows more about herself and her own feelings than apparent at first sight, create a wonderful contrast to her earlier scenes and it’s in these moments that Bree suddenly becomes much more complex and captivating than before or after. Her surprise about being loved for who she is and not for what she represents or pretends to be is a wonderful human moment.

Still, for all the lines of self-awareness that Jane Fonda gets to deliver in these scenes, her greatest moments are wordless ones: when she is walking with Donald Sutherland along a little market and she tenderly hugs him from behind with a relaxed smile that has never been seen before. It’s in this moment that Bree allows herself to be happy, that she suddenly realizes how happiness can feel. But Jane also displays a certain sense of feeling secure and protected. In this one moment, Bree, who always likes to be so tough and strong, shows that she has everything she needs – but it’s also a smile that shows that Bree is aware that this happiness won’t last forever but just this one time, she is willing to let herself feel good. And then there is Jane Fonda’s final scene in which she, in a never-ending close-up, shows an unforgettable display of fear and grief.

Bree is a kind of messed-up character, a woman who is scared about being happy and rejects happiness when she finds it. She is unwilling to get too close, she prefers the distance and being alone despite the terror that has entered her life. These characteristics create a remarkable chemistry with Donald Sutherland as Jane Fonda can slowly show the change in Bree, how she plays with Klute but seems to hate herself for it, how she becomes closer to him even though she doesn’t want to. Bree is a realist, a woman who would like to dream but prevents herself from it. Jane Fonda expresses all this with while also handling the various themes and styles of Klute.

Even though she shouldn’t be, Bree Daniels is a fascinating character. And in some ways, Jane Fonda does give a fascinating performance that is a wonderful display of technical ability. Unfortunately, she misses an emotional and honest core in her interpretation and because of this, she gets

Best Actress 1971

 

The next year will be 1971 and the nominees were

Julie Christie in McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Jane Fonda in Klute

Glenda Jackson in Sunday Bloody Sunday

Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots

Janet Suzman in Nicholas and Alexandra