Best Actress Ranking - Update

 

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

Winning performances are higlighted in red.

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

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

21. Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun (1951)
22. Audrey Hepburn in Wait until Dark (1967)
23. Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
24. Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1978)
25. Greer Garson in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
26. Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959)
27. Meryl Streep in One True Thing (1998)
28. Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (1953)
29. Katharine Hepburn in Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967)
30. Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) 

31. Jennifer Jones in Love Letters (1945)
32. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year (1978)
33. Susan Hayward in My Foolish Heart (1949)
34. Diane Keaton in Marvin's Room (1996)
35. Loretta Young in Come to the Stable (1949)  
36. Mary Pickford in Coquette (1928-29)
37. Sissy Spacek in The River (1984)
38. Shirley MacLaine in The Turning Point (1977)
39. Irene Dunne in Cimarron (1930-1931)
40. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1932-1933)

Jane Fonda as Sally Hyde in Coming Home

What the heck just happened? Did I really just upgrade a performance by Jane Fonda? After spending so many years on this blog criticizing her performances and declaring her win for Coming Home one of the worst Oscar decision ever (when I did this ranking the first time, she was among the Bottom 10 of about 350 performances). Yes, times have certainly changed. Who knows what happened? Maybe the fact that I have now seen all nominees in this category (except one…where are you, Betty Compson???) helps me to judge performances better in comparison to all the others. Maybe it’s the fact that I have now spent quite a good deal of time with Jane (I probably started ranking Oscar winners more than 10 years ago). Maybe my taste has just shifted…who knows…

Of course, it’s not like I now suddenly consider her performance my favorite of all time but her position has definitely improved as my appreciation of her work has grown over time. In the end it probably comes down to the fact that I am trying to be more objective than I have been in the past when it comes to judging these performances, helping me to have a more unbiased look. I was also actually expecting to upgrade Jane Fonda in my ranking when I started to re-watch Coming Home as I began to see a more relaxed and spontaneous screen presence than I did in the past and also still think very highly of Coming Home as a movie (despite some flaws that I will talk about soon) – in the past, I mainly credited the cast around Jane Fonda for the film’s success but I now admit that she is an important ingredient, too.

But why live in the past? Let’s just look at the performance from today’s point of view. Obviously, as you can see from the position in the ranking, I still have some problems with the performance but there are other aspects that I began to appreciate. I suggest we start with the parts that I don’t like so much here. First of all, I think I have to begin by saying that, in my humble opinion, Jane Fonda is actually miscast in this role. She is such a strong screen presence that I have a hard time believing her to be a shy and devoted housewife and I also think that she appears too old for this role. Apparently, after having worked with her on Julia the year before and sensing that she was going to be a very big deal, Jane Fonda wanted Meryl Streep in the part of Vi which would eventually be played by Penelope Milford. But I actually have a much easier time imaging the young Meryl Streep of 1978 in the part of Sally. There is something both plain and unique about Meryl Streep and I can easily see her going through Sally’s transformation process in a more believable manner.

The other major problem I have with Jane Fonda’s work is how she reacts to the cast around her. First, there is her friendship with Vi. Again, the casting of a dominant actress like Jane Fonda makes their friendship appear rather unbalanced. It’s just hard for me to believe that 40 year old Jane Fonda would accept 30 year old Penelope Milford as her guidance and kind of role model and if the friendship works, I mostly applaud Penelope Milford for it. She is maybe not truly outstanding in her role but her ‘who gives a s**t attitude’ on the screen makes the whole thing work.

The bigger problem is the fact that Jane Fonda has absolutely no chemistry with Bruce Dern and this is also the most harming aspect of the whole movie. I don’t put all the blame for this on Jane Fonda. I think the casting of Bruce Dern, who is just too unconventional a screen presence to be the kind of ‘normal, American soldier’ he is supposed to play, does not work at all and he and Jane Fonda appear to be uncomfortable together right from the start. This also makes the whole story that follows often extremely unsatisfying. When it comes to Sally’s affair with Luke, Coming Home makes it just too easy to sympathize with Sally – after all, even a crippled Luke can bring more sexual pleasure to Sally than her husband and it’s also not very difficult to find more sex-appeal in Join Voight than in Bruce Dern. I wish the script and the casting of Bob had made this love triangle more balanced and even. But I also wish that Jane Fonda had invested more doubt and guilt in Sally. I don’t think that she misses her husband for his sake but rather for what he represents – security and comfort. Maybe this is even true but it’s nowhere to be found in Jane Fonda’s performance. I also don’t see any true guilt about her affair – she openly interacts with Luke, sitting on his lap on the beach, bringing him to her house, letting him pick her up at the hospital. Even their affair only begins after she actively suggests it to Luke – but this also just poses new questions as she did not even plan to meet Luke that night. Furthermore, her later arguments that she was ‘lonely’ are also not convincing as she begins the affair on the first night after her return from meeting her husband in Hong Kong and experiencing his pain first-hand. All of this also makes her final scenes feel too untrue – I just don’t believe Jane Fonda when she tells Bruce Dern “I love you” and the script again is working against her, letting Sally say “I’m not gonna make excuses for what happened BUUUUUUT…” (okay, not precisely with those words but still…).

So, the character of Sally Hyde certainly poses various problems that Jane Fonda is also not fighting, apparently hoping the audience of 1978 will sympathize with a woman who experiences her sexual liberation and who chooses the man who opposes the war instead of the one who fights it. But even beyond that, the character of Sally is not perfect. My major problem with this role in the past used to be that she feels so secondary even in her own story, watching how the men around her choose between different ideals and ideas while she only chooses between these men. And I still stand by this opinion. Sally is a very passive character, only acquiring ideas or ambitions when others show her the way and often remaining very pale.

But – now we come to what I began to appreciate by now. Despite the fact that Sally is such an uninteresting part, there is something fascinating about seeing a strong personality such as Jane Fonda attack this role and give it her own spin. She clearly tried to inject her own acting style that is so often praised for its spontaneity into Sally and so creates something that somehow now feels very satisfying in specific moments. Mostly, I enjoy her ‘small’ moments on the screen because that is when she truly feels to live her character and where I get the feeling that I am watching a real person saying things that are coming into her head just now. Scenes like the one at night in the hospital, when she sits on Jon Voight’s lap, feels a bit lost about the tension between them, laughs nervously and wants to leave. Or later again sitting on Jon Voight’s lap at the beach, unsure about the future and how they can go on with their affair or her shocked ‘Oh my God’ when Luke’s urine bag leaks on her dress. These are moments that get all their special appeal from Jane Fonda because she tries to add an unconventional acting style to a conventional part. Often, these moments are unfortunately connected to other scenes that don’t work as well. I truly dislike the way she reacts to the telegram that might or might not bring the news that her husband died as she seems to be only half-interested in its content, somehow forcing a concerned emotion that never rings true. As mentioned earlier, I also don’t care for her big scene at the end opposite her angry husband as her tears just don’t feel true but I absolutely love the way she reacts to Luke’s knocking at the door, showing confusion and honesty in a small, throw-away moment. And so my favorite moment of her performance is also one of these scenes – the way she talks to the soldiers on a bus about the women at the Officer’s Club and that they would not want to do an article about the situation at the hospital. She feels completely authentic at this moment and it also perfectly underlines how she has changed by now compared to her first day at the hospital when she could only react with a shamed silence to the ways the men talked (but I again do not care so much for the scene that showed the confrontation between Sally and the women at the club – Jane Fonda’s anger actually works well but I have a hard time to believe that Sally would ever have been friends with these women in the first place because Jane Fonda is just too different from all the other actresses around her).

So, there is “good” and “bad” in this performance but more “good” than I had been willing to admit in the past. Again, it is mostly Jane Fonda’s often very modern approach to a rather old-fashioned role that creates some thrilling and unforgettable moments. And most of all I appreciate that Jane Fonda never tried to bring more to the part than necessary – her outburst opposite Luke when she asks him why he has to be such a bastard could have done with much more fireworks but it makes sense that a shy woman such as Sally would stay rather calm and quiet, even in a moment like this. And while I also used to complain that the change in Sally was non-existent in Jane Fonda’s acting, I now appreciate the subtle approach to this change. Her Sally never becomes a new person, she still stays true to her core identity but there is still something new about her. The woman who awkwardly met Luke at the hospital for the first time, who had drinks at the Officer’s Club is not the same woman who lives at the beach or visits her husband in Hong King – the changes are small and affected her character without changing her personality but they are there and achieve an overall satisfying character journey.

So, I now conclude that Jane Fonda gives a sometimes thrilling but also often disappointing performance that lives from her personality but could have used more depth and consideration to be truly outstanding. Still, there is more to enjoy here than I used to see in the past and it makes me look forward to re-rank her other performances in the future.

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

YOUR Best Actress of 1969

Here are the results of the poll:

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1969 - The resolution

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

5. Liza Minnelli in The Sterile Cuckoo

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

4. Geneviève Bujold in Anne of the Thousand Days

                     

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

3. Jean Simmons in The Happy Ending

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

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

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

1. Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

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

Best Actress 1969: Jane Fonda in "They shoot Horses, don't they?"

Jane Fonda is certainly one of the most interesting women in the entertainment world – not only because of her acclaimed performances but also because of her social interests and her political activism, especially her involvement in the anti-war movement, no matter how one looks at it and which side one is willing to believe. Especially all the controversy that surrounded her right from the start makes her success in Hollywood even more interesting – it seems that her talent as an actress was always to obvious to ignore, even if Jane Fonda repelled as many people as she fascinated. The foundation for her critical acclaim was laid in the year 1969 when Jane Fonda suddenly stopped being ‘Henry Fonda’s daughter’ and turned herself into one of the most respected and praised dramatic actresses of her generation. While she had already received respect for various on-screen performances, ranging from the comedy Cat Ballou to Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park with Robert Redford, nothing seemed to have prepared critics for her turn as a desperate contestant in a brutal dance marathon in Sidney Pollack’s They shoot Horses, don’t they?, especially since this performance came right after her turn as Barbarella, the eye-candy in the science-fiction movie of the same name. But with this performance, Jane Fonda started her dominance over the next decade, winning two Oscars and various other awards during the following 10 years.

I have never made it a secret that I am one of the few people who isn’t blown away by Jane Fonda – there is always something too ‘knowing’ in her work, she never truly seems to inhabit her characters but instead always makes it obvious how very hard she is trying to appear to be not trying at all. A lot of fans and critics see her acting as a wonderful example of an actress being driven by her instincts but I can always see the wheels moving in her head, an actress who works with a very obvious preparation – most people see her ‘in character’, letting the character take over herself and that way inspire all her gestures and movement but I see an actress delivering all those gestures and that way hoping to get ‘in character’. Jane Fonda clearly has a wide talent for playing various kind of characters and I admire her very much for never creating her own comfort zone in which she preferred to play and interpret her characters but instead always played different and unique women without finding a typical ‘Jane-Fonda-character’ – but she always appears a little too…unpolished. A strange word but it means that she always seems to be one step short of truly becoming a master of her art – she has mastered all the gestures, she knows how to cry, she understands her characters, she lets her own intelligence help her find the emotional and intellectual core of the women she plays, but she is not fully able to bring these women to a complete life because her work as an actress is always visible, always lingering above her characters and that way prevents her from truly becoming the person she plays. Well, it all comes down to personal opinion and nothing is as subjective as ‘art’, may it be a painting, a song or a performance.

Because of all this, Jane Fonda’s work is always never as exciting or interesting to me as to most others. But – yes, Jane, there is a ‘but’ in this case – there is also a loophole: because Jane Fonda is also an actress whose success depends on the success around her. She needs to have a strong character in a strong movie or otherwise her shortcomings become too obvious and distracting. In Klute, she played a fairly interesting character in a rather uninteresting movie which resulted in a very good but also lacking performance. In Coming Home, she was surrounded by a rather good movie but was stuck with a too simple, uninteresting and underdeveloped character. But – we’re getting closer – in They shoot Horses, don’t they? everything was working in her favor. It’s is one of the most powerful presentations of de-humanization, humiliation and degradation ever presented on the screen. Sidney Pollack shows an absolutely merciless environment which forces the main characters to endure physical and emotional exhaustion as they try to win the prize money in a dance marathon – under the eyes of the cheering spectators. For a woman like Jane Fonda the role of Gloria must have been a gift since it helped her to express her own political and social views through her work as an actress. But this alone is not the reason why this role is Jane Fonda’s biggest success – the character of Gloria also fit her especially well because these kind of bitter, sarcastic, lonely and hardened women come very easily to her. Gloria, like Bree Daniels, is a woman who was hardened by the life she experienced and who, like Greta Garbo, wants to be alone but unlike Garbo not out of unhappiness but rather out of anger, anger at the world and at society that has forced her to become the woman she is today. So, if Gloria and Bree Daniels are so alike, why did Jane Fonda not impress me as much in Klute as she did in They shoot Horses, don’t they? – well, as mentioned earlier, Jane Fonda is too underdeveloped as an actress to shine in a movie that suffers from a bad screenplay or from an undecided execution like Klute which couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a suspenseful thriller or a character study (of course, it could have been both but was to weak overall to lift this heavy task). Also, Jane Fonda’s shortcomings also become too obvious whenever a movie focuses too much on her and her character – and that’s why They shot Horses, don’t they? was the perfect vehicle for her. It’s a powerful and unforgettable display of human misery and it is also, by and large, an ensemble movie in which Gloria may be a more prominent character than others but is still part of a whole group of interesting and captivating characters. Because of this, Jane Fonda was able to use her usual screen presence and acting style and create a character without falling into the traps of her own deficiencies as an actress because Gloria is a character that benefits from the strength of the movie and the strength of the remaining players and also does not overexpose Jane Fonda and that way gave her just the right amount of both support and screen time to use her own talents with great effect. There is much less pressure on Jane Fonda which resulted in a natural and haunting performance that may still not be as great as other actresses could have been, but, given my usual dislike for Jane Fonda, still offers very high quality.

With her interpretation, Jane Fonda constantly shows that Gloria was turned into the kind of woman she is today – the bitterness does not seem to be a natural part of her but rather something she acquired as the years went on, as her life was slowly destroyed by the economical crisis around her. In this way, Gloria is a character that benefits from Jane Fonda’s acting and personality but Jane Fonda also benefits from Gloria and They shoot Horses, don’t they? – because Sidney Pollack constantly takes the desperation and de-humanization of the main characters further and further and this way all these character receive the audience’s sympathy and interest. Gloria is not an unlikable character even when she vocally attacks a pregnant woman or constantly pushes every kind of human closeness away from her – because the movie presents her and the other characters in a way that makes it clear how much they have suffered, how much they endured and how they now have to leave their last bit of pride behind them to take part in a show that basically treats them like animals for the purpose of entertainment. Every character in They shoot Horses, don’t they? has his or her own problems and back-story and they all help to turn these characters into complex and realistic human beings – Bruce Dern and Bonnie Bedelia portray a couple which doesn’t know how to take care of their child when its born even though they won’t admit it and in this way even Bruce Dern’s loud and aggressive character does not evoke any dislike because he is too understandable. Susannah York and Robert Fields play another kind of desperateness and Michael Sarrazin is the sensitive, soft-spoken and sad-eyed harbor which provides some quietness among the spectacle. Even Gig Young as Rocky, the man who directs the marathon, seems only to be a product of circumstances and just as unwilling to participate in the whole affair as everyone else – but, also just like everyone else, he seems to have no other choice.
They shoot Horses, don’t they? gives all these characters their own kind of personality and back-story – some are dreamers, some still have hopes in a world that refuses to give them any reason to have it. Gloria Beatty is different – she has given up hope a long time ago. She is not a helpless woman who feels sorry for herself, instead, she refuses any sympathy and has retreated deep inside herself and build a shell of bitterness and anger that keeps all human contact away from her. In this aspect, Jane Fonda’s Gloria symbolizes a more bitter, angry and pitiless look at society – she presents a woman without any illusions, who still has the strength to keep on going but who would prefer to go alone and for whom living has turned into a constant struggle to survive. In this aspect, Jane Fonda’s Gloria also seems to stand as stronger character compared to the others – during the footraces that the totally exhausted contestants are forced to do from time to time, Gloria is absolutely unwilling to give up, getting strength from somewhere inside herself to keep going, even carrying her partner on her back only to avoid being thrown out of the contest after having endured it for such a long time. Because Gloria seems to inhabit so much strength in her, her ultimate downfall at the end is the final chapter in this presentation of decline and defeat, a capitulation which leaves the whole atmosphere of the story without any hope and shows that this process of de-humanization finally even brings the last one to fall. During this whole process, Jane Fonda manages to turn Gloria into a symbol for lost hope while keeping the integrity of her character intact.

No actor in the cast actively suggests a life outside the circus, all the characters seem to exist in a little micro cosmos that forgot about their old lives. In this way, Gloria Beatty is almost a mystery – who is she? What are her reasons? In the whole presentation of They shoot Horses, don’t they? Jane Fonda thankfully constantly stayed true to the core of her character and the theme of the movie. The screenplay, as mentioned before, is very strong and gives each actor and actress the chance to shine by presenting them with carefully constructed characters but all these characters often are more impressive for what they represent than for what they truly are. In this case, Jane Fonda is never given a true opportunity to expand the character beyond this bitterness and anger – but she takes a lot of opportunities to hint at an untold story, to suggest what else there may be inside of her and how her life might have turned out if circumstances had been different. In that way, Jane Fonda leaves a lot of Gloria open for interpretation but she also fills her with her own and the script’s ideas and intentions. In the hands of Jane Fonda, Gloria becomes a lost fighter, a woman who refuses any help or pity but who also knows how miserable her life has become and how little hope she has left. In her determination during the race sequences, she almost becomes like a wild animal, willing to push herself to the limit and not caring about whom gets left behind. Just like in a lot of other performances, Jane Fonda is not out to win the audience’s sympathy but to give an honest portrayal of a woman who doesn’t care about how she appears to others – Gloria does not care for social conventions and when she sees a poor, pregnant woman she tells her quite openly that in her opinion, there is no use in getting a baby when you don’t have the money to feed it. By doing so, Gloria constantly underlines that she is her own master and rejects any kind of kindness – after all, why should she be kind when nobody else is?

Jane Fonda also works very well with Michael Sarrazin as her co-star. Both actors almost seem to interchange the clichés that would be expected from their roles – in They shoot Horses, don’t they? it’s the female lead that is hard and bitter while the male lead is sensitive, soft-spoken and caring. Both are bound together by tragedy and necessity and he seems to be the only one who can break through her shell – Gloria has no problems to cope with all kind of characters around her, may they be powerful or weak, but when Robert suddenly protects her from the anger of another contestant, Gloria suddenly appears speechless. There is no love between them but a feeling of closeness and friendship in a world that seems to have forgotten about it even though Gloria does her best to again reject these feelings and Robert as a person. The fear of being betrayed is too deep inside her and so she keeps most of her personality to herself – she does not lie to Robert but she doesn’t want to share the truth either.

They shoot Horses, don’t they? tells the story of all the contestants beyond what the audience in the movie sees – they have to stay outside while the camera brings us backstage and gives us more intimate portrayals of the characters. Right with her first appearance, Jane Fonda shows the toughness and anger in Gloria and in some way, she never changes these aspects of herself – but Gloria also seems to learn and to develop during the marathon, the broken woman at the end is different from the broken woman at the beginning. Jane Fonda succeeds in showing the constant decline that the main characters suffers – and in doing so she does not only focus on the emotional decline which slowly takes Gloria’s will to go on but also her complete physical exhaustion. Jane Fonda believable makes the pain of the contest noticeable in her whole body and shows how Gloria becomes less and less aware, how the ongoing tiredness and exhaustion is not only affecting her body but also her mind. Gloria is a woman who is a thinker but also a woman who listens to her instincts – and as the movie goes on, her instincts become more and more dominant. At the beginning, the toughness is more apparent but slowly changes into hopelessness and it becomes obvious that the aura of the contest brings Gloria to her limits, not only because of what she has to endure herself but also because of what she witnesses. And so, when her stockings tear, it makes the whole marathon even more useless.

By displaying this whole process, Jane Fonda made the ending of the movie very believable – Gloria’s decision does not seem out-of-character or too sudden but instead as the ultimate display of sorrow and helplessness for which Fonda had laid the foundation during her entire previous performance. They shoot Horses, don’t they? kept pushing its characters further and further on the edge and Gloria’s choice now seems to be the climax upon which everything was going for. It makes sense that Jane Fonda’s Gloria does not want to let her fate be decided by somebody else – after the marathon has taken away almost all her pride and own power over herself and forced her to become a product, a puppet, she now wants to decide her ultimate fate for herself. Only the fact that actually needs somebody to help her in this moment makes it clear how much the contest has influenced her. It’s a powerful scene but again probably more powerful because of what it represents instead of Jane Fonda’s acting. Especially in her delivery of the lines ‘Help me’ and ‘Please’ Jane Fonda again retreated to her ‘obvious voice’ which is rather distracting in a moment like this.

Everything that was said in this review about Jane Fonda’s work, from her way of developing her character and her ability to show the heartbreaking reality behind a contest like this is also true for all the other actors – in this way, Jane Fonda never stands out among the ensemble but she fitted perfectly into it. Still, all this does not mean that her work is flawless – more than once, Jane Fonda suffers from the limitations of the character which does provide her a lot of good moments but ultimately does not truly allow her to go beyond the obvious bitterness and whenever it eventually does, Jane Fonda is not fully up to it. As mentioned before, Jane Fonda also simply benefited from the fact that she got so much with Gloria – she has shown later in her career that she is not able to make a character interesting if the writing does not help her. In They shoot Horses, don’t they? she was given a character that basically had everything an actress could ask for – and she took those great ingredient and gave consequently a great performance, even if this performance is more the product of everything around Jane Fonda than Jane Fonda herself. She also is never the best thing about her movie – almost all other actors and the story constantly overshadow her and in various occasions, she again turns into that ‘obvious actress’ who walks through her performance with too much preparation and calculation. And ultimately it's the kind of role a lot of actresses could have impressed with simply because it fits so well into the enviornment of the movie and provides many opportunities to reach high levels within a limited frame. So, if she succeeded so highly than mostly because she received so much help which made it so easy for her to succeed. All this means that her Gloria does not necessarily become fascinating by herself but she is part of the overall mood that the movie presents and all characters become interesting because of their own will to degrade themselves – They shoot Horses, don’t they? shows how far people are willing to go for money and the time and place of the movie also shows that this is not done out of free will but because they have to. Because of that it was a wise decision by Jane Fonda not to try to dominate the movie but become a part of its overall flow.

Considering the final grade for this performance, the length of this review may be surprising but if Jane Fonda finally manages to convince me, she does deserve to get some more attention and detail. Overall, Jane Fonda is very powerful in her role but she also received a lot of help from the script and the overall tone of the story. In Gloria, she found a character who is interesting enough to overcome her general problems as an actress in a movie that thankfully does not put too much pressure on her by putting her in its center and that way allowed her to truly shine. It’s a very dark and haunting performance that fits to the dark atmosphere of the movie and for this, she receives

Best Actress 1969

The next year will be 1969 and the nominees were

Geneviève Bujold in Anne of the Thousand Days

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

Liza Minnelli in The Sterile Cuckoo

Jean Simmons in The Happy Ending

Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

YOUR Best Actress of 1971

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Jane Fonda - Klute (42 votes)

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

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

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

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

Thanks to everybody for voting!

Best Actress 1971 - The resolution

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

5. Janet Suzman in Nicholas and Alexandra

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

4. Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots

                     

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

3. Jane Fonda in Klute

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

2. Glenda Jackson in Sunday Bloody Sunday

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

1. Julie Christie in McCabe & Mrs. Miller

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

Best Actress 1971: Jane Fonda in "Klute"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best Actress 1971

 

The next year will be 1971 and the nominees were

Julie Christie in McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Jane Fonda in Klute

Glenda Jackson in Sunday Bloody Sunday

Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots

Janet Suzman in Nicholas and Alexandra

YOUR Best Actress of 1978

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Ingrid Bergman - Höstsonaten (23 votes)

2. Jill Clayburgh - An Unmarried Woman (10 votes)

3. Geraldine Page - Interiors (4 votes)

4. Jane Fonda - Coming Home (3 votes)

5. Ellen Burstyn - Same Time, Next Year (1 vote)


Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1978 - the resolution!

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

5. Jane Fonda in Coming Home

Jane’s performance never fights against the weakness of the script that reduces Sally to a boring love interest but rather even emphasizes it by also investing Sally with nothing else but a simple-mindedness that does nothing to make her the least bit interesting.

4. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year

                     

Ellen Burstyn’s performance is charming and lovely, sometimes amusing, sometimes touching, but her acting stays mostly on the surface and she is never able to create a full-flesh human being out of her paper-thin character.

 3. Geraldine Page in Interiors

Even though her screen time is limited, Geraldine Page still dominates the whole movie with a convincing, shocking, frightening and sad portrayal of a woman who loses control and is not able to deal with the failure of her own marriage.

2. Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman

Jill Clayburgh is smart, funny, sexy, strong, weak and, most of all, very natural and always confident while she creates a very relaxed and self-assured character with a wonderful mix of strength and humor.

                

1. Ingrid Bergman in Höstsonaten

Ingrid Bergman gives a devastating performance as a woman who lives a live of pretending, who can associate with everyone but her own daughters and who finally has to look into her own past and her own soul to see who she really is.

Best Actress 1978: Jane Fonda in "Coming Home"

Jane Fonda received her second Oscar for her performance as Sally Hyde, an army-wife who starts an affair with a paraplegic soldier and begins to doubt the American war in Vietnam.

This performance is very frustrating because it is hard to ignore that the character of Sally had a lot of potential but both the script and Jane Fonda’s performance reduced her to a thin, underwritten woman that is invincible for most of the time. Sally is never allowed to become a real, three-dimensional person. Everything she does is because of suggestions by others. She only works in the hospital because a friend does it, too. She only starts to see things differently because Luke inspires her to do so. And even when her character goes through a change, it is done in such a rushed, uninteresting way that in the end, Sally hasn’t changed one bit except the fact that she has began an affair. This way, the character of Sally is reduced to nothing else but a boring love interest and Jane’s performance never fights against the weakness of the script but rather even emphasizes it by also investing Sally with nothing else but a seemingly simple-mindedness that does nothing to make her the least bit interesting.

The viewer is supposed to follow Sally’s journey from a loyal housewife to a free-spirited woman but Jane Fonda’s acting always remains the same and she never shows any development in her character. The only thing that changes is her hair. One the one hand, Jane Fonda does a smart choice by staying true to the character and not turning her a 180 degree around the first moment she met Luke which would probably have resulted in an unconvincing characterization. Instead, she always keeps the core of the character but on the other hand, Jane Fonda never allows Sally to develop herself and it seems that everything that could be said and shown about Sally was done in the first 5 minutes and after that, Jane shows us nothing new anymore.

This is also visible in the fact that Jane Fonda keeps the same face and the same line-reading for almost the entire time. When Luke tells her that her husband will probably not come back alive and she follows him to confront him, she plays her anger and her fear in such a sleepy way that you are wondering if she is angry of bored. Again, it actually makes sense because Sally is a very introverted character who wouldn't make a big scene in front of other people but if this is a moving moment, then only because of the situation and not of Jane's acting. It seems that the hollowness of the character prevents Jane Fonda from doing even just one interesting acting choice. Instead, her performance never leaves the unchallenging comfort zone of the script.

Jane Fonda is also completely overshadowed by the two male actors in the movie, Bruce Dern and especially Jon Voight. The main reason is simple: these two actors have interesting, three-dimensional characters. They both have to face their inner demons, they have to make important choices in their own life while Jane Fonda’s only choice is between these two men. Oh, and a different hair cut.

What works about this performance is Jane’s chemistry with Jon Voight. Her shy behavior when she meets him in the hospital, her nervousness when she invites him home for dinner, her passion for him, these parts are all demonstrated well.

The most exciting scene involving Jane Fonda comes almost at the end when her husband threatens her and Luke with a gun. The way she freezes opposite him with her arms hold out to him is the only interesting thing Jane Fonda does in the entire movie. Her complete inability to move or say something underlines the tension of the situation and shows how she is torn between her loyalty to her husband (something that wasn’t shown so far in the movie and again seems like a wasted opportunity to make Sally more interesting) and the fear she is feeling at the same time. Most people would hold up their arms and don’t move when they are threatened like this, but she holds her arms and hands in his direction, to reach him, to comfort him and then she freezes. For one moment, Jane Fonda steps into the foreground and holds her own against Bruce Dern and Jon Voight but only because the script finally offers her something more to do than play Luke’s object of affection.

So, Jane Fonda suffers from the same problem like Dorothy McGuire in Gentleman’s Agreement: she gives an uninteresting performance of an uninteresting character but in Jane Fonda’s case it seems like she didn’t even try to do anything to illuminate Sally at least a little bit. It’s a serviceable performance that serves the scrip well but that could have been much better. For this, Jane Fonda gets