Best Actress Ranking...Update!

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

1. Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939)
2. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950)
3. Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress (1949)
4. Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (1967)
5. Janet Gaynor in Seventh Heaven (1927-1928)   
6. Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
7. Edith Evans in The Whisperers (1967)
8. Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939)
9. Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
10. Bette Davis in The Little Foxes (1941)

11. Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965)
12. Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire (1941)
13. Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun (1951)
14. Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
15. Meryl Streep in One True Thing (1998)
16. Katharine Hepburn in Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967)
17. Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) 
18. Jennifer Jones in Love Letters (1945)
19. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year (1978)
20. Loretta Young in Come to the Stable (1949)  

21. Irene Dunne in Cimarron (1930-1931)
22. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1932-1933)

YOUR Best Actress of 1965!

Here are the poll results:

1. Julie Christie - Darling (20 votes)

2. Julia Andrews - The Sound of Music (9 votes)

3. Simone Signoret - Ship of Fools (3 votes)

4. Elizabeth Hartman - A Patch of Blue (2 votes)

5. Samantha  Eggar - The Collector (0 votes)


Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1965 - The resolution!

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

5. Simone Signoret in Ship of Fools

Simone adds a lot of dignity to her part but apart from suffering for 20 minutes, she barely gets anything to do. She is the female part of a very romantic, hopeless and tragic storyline but her presence is too limited and her character too underdeveloped to really shine.

4. Samantha Eggar in The Collector

                     

Samantha Eggar’s character never really lets her go beyond the tasks of the script but it is nevertheless a very effective and absorbing portrayal of a frightened woman. She shows Miranda's struggle and hope to escape and how she goes through various psychological states of minds from refusal to acceptance to sympathy for her kidnapper and pure fear of death. Besides that, she is also able to prevent her character from stepping too much into the background next to the diabolical work from Terrence Stamp.

 3. Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music

Everything in this movie is too sugarcoated and sweetish but Julie is magically able to be believable in an unbelievable part. She took cheesy, underdeveloped material and turned it into something much deeper and more mature than expected and that way gives a warm, humorous and touching performance that helps to keep the movie going.

2. Julie Christie in Darling

Julie Christie totally inhabits the character of Diana to the point that she doesn’t seem to be acting anymore. She is completely natural at everything she is doing in this performance is able to deliver a firework of emotions without ever making it seem unreal or overdone. She finds exactly the right tone for her character to fit her performance to the style of the movie.      

1. Elizabeth Hartman in A Patch of Blue

Elizabeth Hartman gives a wonderfully simple performance that illuminates the simple character she is playing at every second. She avoids any grand gestures and emotions and instead gives an honest and emotionally captivating performance that turns Selina into one of the most tragic and at the same time uplifting characters of all time which is a remarkable feat.

Best Actress 1965: Samantha Eggar in "The Collector"

After having won Best Actress in Cannes, Samantha Eggar received the only Oscar nomination of her career for her role in The Collector in which she played Miranda, a young woman who is kidnapped by an obsessed stalker.

The Collector is a two-character-piece (except some scenes when a neighbor appears) with an almost claustrophobic feeling because everything happens in the cellar room where Miranda is held or in the house where Freddie, her kidnapper, lives. So, it’s up to Samantha Eggar and Terence Stamp to carry this movie and grab the viewer’s attention for two hours. And both actors remarkably succeed in this.

The first time we see Miranda is through the eyes of her kidnapper. He follows her in his car and in these early scenes, Samantha Eggar shows Miranda as an apparently carefree and joyful young woman who studies art and whose pretty face seems to be a sure sign that she is also a very popular girl. At some moments, Miss Eggar seems to try to show something going on behind that cheerful face when she suddenly looks worried but this is never developed and everything about Miranda’s day-to-day life soon becomes unimportant when Freddie kidnaps her in his van and takes her to his lonely house in the English countryside. From now on, Samantha Eggar’s role demands from her to be the viewer’s eye and object of attention at the same time. The viewer is always on her side and experiences everything with her while at the same time wants to know what will happen to her.

Sometimes, Samantha Eggar suffers from the screenplay. In some ways, The Collector reminds one of those horror movies from the 90s where the viewer more than once wants to scream at the screen why the victim is behaving so stupidly. Of course, this is not the fault of the actress but Samantha Eggar is not always able to rise above the material.

But even though, there is no denying that Miss Eggar is incredibly effective in her part. She convincingly shows all the fear and terror on her face as she slowly starts to realize her own situation. At the beginning, Miranda realizes that she is kidnapped but it seems that she doesn’t really understand the seriousness of the situation yet which is only natural – the shock and the surprise of what has happened to her has paralyzed her. Only slowly, she begins to see that Freddie will probably not hold to his promise to let her go again. Samantha Eggar’s performance effectively shows how Miranda slowly changes in her prison cellar and how she starts to become a panicked and frightened soul.

So, while her performance begins rather average, it later helps to develop an always growing tension between her and Terence Stamp. Just like the viewer, Miranda slowly starts to learn more and more about her kidnapper – about his collection of butterflies, about his obsessions and she begins to realize that he will want to keep her, just like these dead butterflies. She sees that she is more like a trophy that he wants to own. When she says, more to herself than to him, that she won’t get out of this alive, it’s a shocking moment and Samantha Eggar’s surprised and at the same time hopeless line delivery is amazing.

But while Samantha Eggar portrays all the states of fear and desperation very convincingly, her character unfortunately never gets a chance to develop and for almost the entire running time, she has to step back and let Terence Stamp steal the show with his effortless and captivating performance of an evil, but enchanting man. I read that about one half of the book was cut for the movie version – the half that explored Miranda’s character and her back story. I haven’t read the book so I don’t know if it’s true but it is obvious that, in the movie, Miranda clearly misses a back story or something to deepen her character more. Unfortunately, she is mostly reduced to fear and desperation. As I said, Samantha Eggar plays this very well but it doesn’t allow her to ever widen the character. The Collector is a clear story with two opposite characters and it’s the task of the actors to show these differences and struggles of the characters. This roll allocation doesn’t allow any real development.

So, Samantha Eggar’s character never really lets her go beyond the tasks of the script but it is nevertheless a very effective and absorbing portrayal of a frightened woman. Like an animal in a cage, we watch how she tries to escape, we see how she goes through various psychological states of minds from refusal to acceptance to sympathy for her kidnapper and pure fear of death and she is also able to prevent her character from stepping too much into the background next to the diabolical work from Terrence Stamp.

For this, she gets

Best Actress 1965: Elizabeth Hartman in "A Patch of Blue"

Elizabeth Hartman received her only Oscar nomination for her film debut in A Patch of Blue. In this modern fairly tale, she plays a young, innocent and uneducated blind girl who is tortured by her abusive mother but finds love and happiness with a man she meets in the park – not knowing that he is black.

As I said, this movie is like a fairy tale with Shelley Winters as the evil mother, Sidney Poitier as the knight in shining armor and Elizabeth Hartman as the innocent princess who must be rescued.

A Patch of Blue is a very moving and unforgettable story which couldn’t succeed without the central performance from Elizabeth Hartman. In the role of Selina, her biggest challenge is to actually make the audience believe that a character like her could really exist. Selina is a girl who was never taught much, who has to live with an abusive mother who beats her every day but at the same time there is something optimistic and joyful about her. She doesn’t know any other world than her own – she has no idea what life outside of the little apartment she lives in has to offer and so he has adjusted herself to her life.

Elizabeth Hartman gives a wonderfully simple performance that illuminates the simple character she is playing at every second. She avoids any grand gestures and emotions and instead gives an honest and emotionally captivating performance that turns Selina into one of the most tragic and at the same time uplifting characters of all time which is a remarkable feat.

The core of the movie is the relationship between Sidney Poitier and Elizabeth Hartman. Both actors share a wonderful chemistry that is an innocent love and deep understanding. Selina doesn’t know that Gordon is black, she only knows that he is a good man and that she can trust him. She is such a childlike character that she simply needs someone to guide her, to show her the way since her own family will never do that. The way Elizabeth Hartman instinctively touches her hair when she thinks that Gordon is coming is a wonderfully honest moment that is impossible to forget.

Elizabeth Hartman has so much to do in this movie and she does it without ever overdoing it. It’s an incredibly subtle performance and the biggest miracle is how believable she is in this almost unbelievable part. In the hands of a lesser actress, a lot of moments could have made the viewer roll their eyes because Selina is so impossible naïve sometimes but Elizabeth Hartman is so honest and real in her interpretation that Selina becomes incredibly captivating.

The scene when she is telling Gordon that she was raped by a friend of a mother in a total matter-of-fact way and later her regret that she can’t be a virgin for Gordon is another moment that is incredibly shocking but not only because of the situation itself but also because Selina doesn’t even seem to understand what she is saying. Elizabeth Hartman is heartbreaking in these moments without ever emphasizing the situation.

Besides giving a wonderful performance of a difficult character, Elizabeth Hartman also plays various difficult and also hard to pull off-scenes amazingly. Her fear when she is alone in the park and a thunderstorm comes, her breakdown in the apartment when all her anger and frustration are let out or the first time when she dares to speak against her mother – this is all done wonderfully and Elizabeth Hartman turns Selina into a character that’s impossible not to root for.

Also the technical aspects of the performance are done very convincingly and naturally. At every moment of the movie, Elizabeth Hartman is convincing as a blind girl. But she never draws any attention to Selina’s blindness – instead, she shows that this is a simple part of her character that Selina has gotten used to a long time ago. She has arranged herself with the situation and accepts it.

It’s a performance that takes the viewer on an emotional roller coaster ride – Elizabeth Hartman is able to break and warm your heart almost at the same time and she gives an incredibly effective and realistic performance in this modern fairy tale. For this, she gets

Best Actress 1965: Julie Christie in "Darling"

1965 was the year of Julie Christie. She starred in the successful epic Doctor Zhivago and in the stylish satire Darling for which she took home the Best Actress Oscar.

In Darling, Julie played Diana Scott, an immoral model who sleeps her way to the top.

What is simple astonishing about this performance is how perfect Julie Christie is – she totally inhabits the character of Diana to the point that she doesn’t seem to be acting anymore. She is completely natural at everything she is doing in this performance and that is a lot. Basically, the role of Diana is one big Oscar clip – she cries, she laughs, she screams, she loves, she hates, she is subtle, she is over-the-top. And Julie Christie is able to deliver this firework of emotions without ever making it seem unreal or overdone. She finds exactly the right tone for her character to fit her performance to the style of the movie.

Essentially, Diana is an awful human being – she may be charming and captivating in a way that it’s impossible to hold any grudge against her, but at the same time it’s apparent that she has no morals and doesn’t care the slightest bit about other people. She always starts something new until she gets bored with it, leaves everyone and everything behind and starts something new again until she gets bored with that, too. But finally she does something new that she can’t get out again – she marries an Italian prince. And when she gets bored again, there is no way out for her anymore.

Julie Christie flawlessly shows that Diana is not evil. She never hurts anyone on purpose – she just doesn’t know any better. In her world, only her interests count. She is rather childlike in this perspective – when she wants something, then she won’t rest until she has it. But suddenly she finds something or someone else and from now on, this is the most important thing for her. And in her views, she never really hurts anyone because what’s best for her must also be best for everyone else. Because Diana is such a fascinating, exotic and stunningly beautiful woman, she tends to get away with everything which only encourages her in her behavior. She simply never wastes a thought about other people, she is simple the kind of person who is only looking after her own interests.

When something doesn’t go the way she planned it, then Diana seems to become confused, surprised and takes the way that most children would take – she cries. These tears are wonderfully fake and real at the same time. Real because Diana is crying but also fake because she is only doing it to get what she wants. Julie Christie balances this wonderfully.

She also handles all the more dramatic and exhausting scenes perfectly. Her long walk of desperation through her empty castle is a very impressive moment, just as her big fight scenes with Dirk Bogarde which are just as convincing as her more joyful moments.

Julie Christie certainly inhabits the character of Diana like nobody else could have.

But even though the role of Diana is a real showcase on any level, it never really goes beyond the big emotions and grand gestures. Julie Christie perfectly understands who Diana is and is so able to fill her with much more depth and complexity than the screenplay demands but at the same time this works against her because the screenplay never allows her character to grow. Instead it is the world around her that is changing. Because of that, Julie’s performance tends to repeat itself - she is charming and lovely, then gets bored, then angry, she starts to scream and to cry, then she is charming and lovely again, then she gets bored, then she acts angry and then starts to scream and to cry. It’s all done very impressively but the viewer has basically seen everything after 30 minutes while the movie keeps going for another 2 hours.

Still, Julie Christie wonderfully carries this story and brings a very memorable character to life. For this, she gets

Best Actress 1965: Julie Andrews in "The Sound of Music"

I have to admit that I don’t really care for The Sound of Music which is surprising since I usually love every musical. But something about this movie simply puts me off and so I want to apologize to all its fans right now for my view on the movie.

Right now I can say that, whatever problems I may have with the movie itself, Julie Andrews is not to blame. While the role of Maria is certainly not written by Shakespeare, Julie lifts the material and gives a warm, humorous and touching performance that helps to keep the movie going.

While I think that her role in Mary Poppins was more interesting from an observing point of view, the role of Maria gives Julie Andrews much more to do. For some reason, I also prefer her vocal work in The Sound of Music even though I prefer the songs from Mary Poppins. Julie’s voice fits perfectly to all the tunes and she is able to make them memorable and catchy. Her pure, angel-like voice also helps to distract from the horrible execution of the musical sequences itself: “Do-Re-Mi” is a nice song but one always has to be scared of hurting ones eyes from looking at the children’s cloths; “Something Good” is incredibly boring and “My Favorite Things” is a woman jumping around in her bed with 7 annoying children and even gives us lyrics like “Schnitzel with noodles” which, I can assure you, is a combination that nobody eats. But still, Julie Andrews is always able to make all this bearable and even entertaining.

The smartest decision of Julie Andrews was to play her part as straight forward as possible. The Sound of Music is a movie musical without any hint of irony but instead plays it all as serious as possible and by that seems too self-important. It is thanks to Julie Andrews (and Christopher Plummer, to some extent) that the whole thing still works because she plays even the most silly scenes, like when Maria is going to the van Trapps and clumsily waves her hands or falls over her baggage, as serious as possible, as if it is the most natural thing in the world. While I think that Maria is a rather annoying character in the beginning, Julie Andrews certainly does the most with it. She handles the mix of comedy and drama quite well and like she brings new life into the van Trapp household, she also keeps the whole movie alive. The whole storyline is so sugarcoated and sweetish that it’s hard to stop my eyes from constantly rolling but Julie is magically able to be believable in an unbelievable part.

Even though she doesn’t give the best performance of the movie (that honor goes to Eleanor Parker who also gets a bonus for wanting to send the children to a boarding school), she still gives the most important one and carries the production on her shoulders.

Because she takes the character of Maria so seriously, she also succeeds in the later, more dramatic parts of the movie. When she realizes that she is in love with the Captain and listens to her Mother Superior, Julie shows all the confusion wonderfully on her face. Even though Maria is a rather clumsy woman at the beginning who talks too much and too openly, Julie also shows that she is neither stupid nor naïve. Wanting to be a nun and so being able to spend a lot of time thinking, Maria is very well aware of her own faults and mistakes but she doesn’t seem to be able to stop them. She knows that she shouldn’t talk to the Captain so openly and fresh, but she keeps doing it because she believes, she knows that she is right. But she never appears rude or unpleasant, instead Julie Andrews’s natural charm and charisma make Maria a very loveable woman and it’s not hard to believe that the Captain would fall in love with her.

Julie Andrews’s Maria is a nanny, a love interest and a new mother to the children. And Julie shows all these aspects without ever losing the core of Maria which is hope, optimism and encouragement.

Julie Andrews is able to make even the most cringe-worthy moments of the movie believable and she wonderfully balances the cheesiness of the script and the character with a more serious approach to the material. Whenever Christopher Plummer opens his mouth and starts to sing, I can’t help but laughing, especially because “Edelweiss” is such a dreadful song and even the serious moment when he is singing the song on stage and has to stop because he is so moved is not very effective for me. But the way Julie Andrews looks at him, with so much concern, understanding and love and the way she gracefully moves to his side to support him, is a really great moment.

The real talent of Julie Andrews, which she also showed in Mary Poppins even though the role was less challenging, is to take cheesy, underdeveloped material and turn it into something much deeper and more mature than expected.

But even though I don’t want to overrate her performance. Julie Andrews gives a performance that is better than her movie but at the same time she is not able to lift her movie to a higher level. Despite her lovely presence and thought-out performance, The Sound of Music remains a thin, artificial and shallow experience. Not even Julie Andrews can change that. And I also don’t want to overrate her because the character of Maria is certainly not the deepest or richest or most interesting part ever written.

Still, Julie Andrews succeeds in her own way and for this, she gets

Best Actress 1965: Simone Signoret in "Ship of Fools"

After having won an Oscar for suffering subtly, Simone Signoret received her second nomination for a role in which she showed again that no great overacting is needed to create a memorable character.

Ship of Fools is an ensemble piece that tells the story of various characters who are on a passenger ship on their way to Germany shortly before Hitler’s raise to power.

Almost all of the characters are introduced in a rather simple way. While they are eating in the dining room, the scenes cuts from table to table and show the various passengers and introduce the viewer to their storyline. There is a Nazi sympathizer, a friendly Jew, a woman hunter and others.

Only one character enters the movie in a rather spectacular way and that is the La Condesa, played by Simone Signoret. When the ship makes a stop in Cuba to take hundreds of Spanish peasants back to Spain, there is suddenly a cheer in the crowd and all the people start to joyfully shout and wave and call “Condesa!” And then the Condesa enters, accompanied by two prison guards. This almost royal entrance already sets her character apart from all the others on the ship.
Simone right from the beginning shows her talent for quiet suffering: we see no joy in the Condesa, she rather appears sad and defeated and not once does she look at the joyful crowd that is cheering to her.

Soon we are told the reason for her unhappiness: her house was burned down, all her things were taken away from her and she is being transferred to a prison in Europe.

Like in Room at the Top, Simone again plays a mature, adult woman who is dealing with a rather stern and humorless man. To make her Condesa an effective counterpart to Oskar Werner’s Dr. Schumann, she mixes her character’s sadness with a hint of humor and relaxed openness. She seems to take an interest in him, she is amused by him. This results in a wonderful, interesting and captivating chemistry with Oskar Werner and the two of them easily turn their storyline into the most interesting one of the movie (but to be honest, that’s not that difficult since almost all the other storylines tend to be underwhelming or downright horrible; especially José Ferrer is too awful to describe).

Simone and Oskar are very charming in their relationship. There is something about their acting that makes it seem like they are two curious teenagers but at the same time the burden and problems of their lives and their experience are obvious in every frame.

There is also the question if she really loves him or is trying to get his sympathy to receive drugs from him. Unfortunately, this aspect of the story is rather undeveloped and Simone seems to try to make her characher more likeable by focusing on the romantic aspect of the story.

La Condesa is a women who openly talks about personal things without holding anything back. She is a very honest person and Simone is, as usually, able to show tragedy and sorrow on her expressive face in a very remarkable way.

And also like in Room at the Top, Simone Signoret lacks screen time compared to other leading ladies but the big difference is that she was still a central character and dominated the story. In Ship of Fools, Simone only exists in her own storyline and even though it is clearly the best of the movie, she is quickly forgotten whenever she leaves the screen. It’s a clear ensemble piece and it’s hard to point out Simone as a leading character and she is not able to lift the whole movie to a greater level. She also suffers from the fact that Oskar Werner overshadows her.

Simone adds a lot of dignity to her part but apart from suffering for 20 minutes, she barely gets anything to do. She is the female part of a very romantic, hopeless and tragic storyline but her presence is too limited and her character too underdeveloped to really shine.

Overall, it’s an effective performance that getes

Best Actress 1965

The next year will be 1965 and the nominees were

Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music

Julie Christie in Darling

Samantha Eggar in The Collector

Elizabeth Hartman in A Patch of Blue

Simone Signoret in Ship of Fools