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!
Showing posts with label Best Actress 1975. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Best Actress 1975. Show all posts
10/18/2011
10/01/2011
Best Actress 1975 - The resolution
After having watched and reviewed all five nominated performances, it's time to pick the winner!
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.
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.
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.
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"
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
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.
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
9/28/2011
Best Actress 1975: Glenda Jackson in "Hedda"
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
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.
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
9/20/2011
Best Actress 1975: Ann-Margret in "Tommy"
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
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.
‘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
9/18/2011
Best Actress 1975: Isabelle Adjani in "L'Histoire d'Adèle H."
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
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.
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
8/26/2011
Best Actress 1975: Louise Fletcher in "One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest"
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
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.
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
8/24/2011
Best Actress 1975
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
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