Best Actress 2002: Salma Hayek in "Frida"

Is it possible to watch a performance with no expectations at all? Surely a lot of people will say yes and they are surely right but I know that I have never been able to do that. For me, expectations come naturally. There are so many forums, websites or blogs with reviews about Best Actress nominees that by now I have basically heard or read about everyone of them and before I watch a certain performance, I already know about the reputation it has today and how it was reviewed when it was first released. I also have my own ideas about the kind of movie the nominee stars in and if it’s a movie that allows an impressive performance and so on. Because of all this, it’s impossible for me to watch a performance without already thinking before the movie even started about how much I am probably going to like it. And strangely enough, most of the time I am right. By now, I just know what to expect of certain actors, of certain roles and of certain movies and it hardly happens anymore that I am completely surprised. Does this mean that I judge all these performances based on my expectations? Or that my expectations cloud my judgment and therefore all performances end up receiving just the grade that I expected? Certainly not – this would make this whole trip and ranking useless. Because I may have a certain expectation about every performance but not about where exactly it will end up in my ranking. I also think of myself as somebody who is not influenced by a love, respect or dislike for a certain performer. Katharine Hepburn is my favorite actress but her performances are not above criticism. I don’t care very much for Norma Shearer but her work in Marie Antoinette blew me away nonetheless. And in the end, surprises do happen – sometimes I expect to be blown away only to end up disappointed. Of course, being disappointed can still mean that it is actually a great performance – but when you expect an easy 5, a grade of 4,5 can still be disappointing. And of course, there are the other, much more pleasant surprises – when a performance that I expect to dislike completely ends up ranging from good (happens rather often) to very good (not quite so often) or even great (almost never happens). So why am I telling you all this? Well, it was very hard to watch Frida without thinking of the huge amount of dislike that has been thrown at Salma Hayek’s Oscar nominated performance during the last years – she may have been nominated for every major award for her work as the famous Mexican painter Frida Kahlo but the reputation of her work has gone downhill rather fast. Nick Davis, dinasztie, Sage and Joe are all almost unanimous in their critical position to this performance and also other critics, bloggers and writers tend to share this point of view. So, my mind was pretty made up and I was prepared for the worst. So – were my expectations fulfilled? Or did this performance turn out to be one of those seldom surprises?

Frida is the kind of movie that is often described as a ‘passion project’ because Salma Hayek had been involved with it for a long time and over the years convinced producers and famous co-stars to share her vision. And Frida is certainly a curious creation – on the one hand it’s impossible to overlook the passion, the dedication and the admiration for its central character that went into the whole production. But on the other hand, the whole movie never truly seems to grasp the character of Frida Kahlo – it’s a conventional biopic that tries to tell a whole, complicated lifetime in just 2 hours and, in this way, follows the tradition of countless biopics before. But even though it still never feels like a movie about a specific artist but rather seems to tell the story of any artist whom it follows along and in this way resembles the kind of movie that makes one say during the end credits ‘Oh look, this was actually based on a true story’. Maybe the reason for this is that Frida Kahlo is more known for what she did instead of who she was but obviously it’s the task of a biopic to present the woman behind the paintings. In this aspect, Frida failed – but in its own structure it still comes out as a strangely fascinating and gripping story. Maybe it doesn’t fulfill its own goal to give insight into the life of Frida Kahlo but it still works as a general story of art, passion, politics and life, using a specific character for a general idea. And within this context, Salma Hayek’s performance works surprisingly well, even if involuntarily. Because she, too, seems not to portrays a certain character but her own idea of strength and art. Like Nicole Kidman in The Hours, Salma Hayek played a woman who is mostly known for her artistry instead of her personality. And because of this, both women did not need to either copy any well-known mannerism or create a public figures from the inside because neither the exterior nor any characteristics, moods or behaviors of Virginia Woolf or Frida Kahlo are truly known. Maybe a fake nose and a unibrow were added to add to the effect but essentially, Salma Hayek and Nicole Kidman could create their characters with a lot of artistic freedom and independence. Just like the movie Frida itself, Salma Hayek crafted a woman that never uncovers the layers of this real-life personality but rather one that seems to be a product of acting, writing and directing instead of reality. In this way, Salma Hayek may not give a truly deep or challenging characterization of Frida Kahlo but she does give a deep and satisfying characterization of the woman presented on the screen. It’s hard to say if this all makes sense and in some ways her performance is not different from that of countless other performances of real-life persons – as mentioned just now, Nicole Kidman’s work is less notable for bringing Virginia Woolf to life than for displaying a woman suffering from deep depression. Or is Faye Dunaway’s performance in Bonnie and Clyde ever measured by how well she captured the character of the real Bonnie Parker? So, Salma Hayek’s work is not unique in this aspect but it is worth noting since Frida is a straight-forward biopic while movies like The Hours or Bonnie and Clyde aim to achieve different goals. So, in a certain way, both Frida and Salma Hayek’s performance are failures because they are not able to evoke any feeling for the real-life character they present. But at the same time, they are able to succeed in a different way – crafting a strong and intriguing woman who, as written, seems only to exist in the world that Frida creates but, thanks to Salma Hayek’s charisma and dedication, is still fascinating enough to overcome all the flaws surrounding it.

The character of Frida demands an actress to find the right tone for her work from the first moment on she is on-screen – because Frida Kahlo is presented as a fully-developed person right away and a false step at these early moments could easily ruin the whole performance that follows. Thankfully, Salma Hayek disappearance into the 18-year old Frida Kahlo is a completely spellbinding introduction, mainly because she was able to display her youthful spirit without any exaggerated mannerism or make-up. Salma Hayek still looks like Salma Hayek but somehow her smile, her way of talking and behaving turns her into a believable young woman who meets her boyfriend for a quick sexual encounter in a closet and then needs the help of her bigger sister to get him out of the house unnoticed. In these first scenes, she successfully unfolds the character in small and big steps and finds a constant stream in which she develops her further – she already shows her as a passionate, unconventional, intelligent woman who possesses the kind of ‘free spirit’ that a character like this in a movie like this always displays. But fortunately, she handled the clichés of her character with visible ease. She can sneak into an auditorium to watch Diego Rivera paint a nude woman or talk about politics with her boyfriend and suddenly admire some gold that another man is carrying without turning into the kind of ‘free spirit’ that can be found in so many other movies – an unconventional woman who uses every second of her life to be different, to exaggerate her emotions and while talking jump from one topic to the other, constantly trying to surprise everyone around her, often to cover the obligatory sadness inside her with a joyful appearance. Instead, Salma Hayek’s Frida appears like a truly honest creation, a woman who always means what she says and says what she thinks, a real multitasker who is always handling various different topics in her mind without losing the connection to one them and who can be an object of affection, of lust, a comrade, an artist and a political figure all at once. In the bus scene, Salma Hayek effectively showed that Frida may be shifting her focus to another topic for a short moment but this does not mean that her mind is not still fully focused on the political conversation she is having at the same time. Also later in the movie, Salma Hayek often believable demonstrated that Frida is always aware and always reflecting, combining this thoughtful spirit effectively with her emotional side. And also for this emotional side, Salma Hayek avoided the usual clichés and mannerisms that accompany such a part – Frida is an artist! She is Mexican! She has affairs! She talks about politics! She has a wild marriage! This alone would usually generate the most exotic, wild and unpredictable acting choices. But apparently Salma Hayek understood her character better than that and played her with a combination of pig-headedness, sensitivity, emotiveness and clear focus on both her own acting choices and Frida’s intentions. And this clear focus on her own work while portraying a sort of rebellious woman made her performance much richer and more satisfying than first expected. Maybe Frida does not allow Salma Hayek to go really deep into the mind and soul of this woman since it tells a very straightforward story that mostly stays on the surface as it presents the various events that happened to her instead of showing who she was but somehow Salma Hayek was able to find her own depth and her own core by never dropping any of Frida’s characteristics and constantly showing her emotional and intellectual growth despite the fact that she actually never changed during her lifetime.

Strangely enough, despite all the admiration for Frida Kahlo that went into Frida, everything and everyone in it still keeps a visible distance from her – an involuntarily distance created by the screenplay but this distance also helped Salma Hayek to treat this character without any worship or exaggerated admiration. Instead, she always feels honest and down-to-earth in her interpretation and carried the movie this way with charisma and intriguing realism, from her moments of joy to her outbursts or grief and her relationship with Diego. This relationship is another important part of the movie – Frida may be about Frida Kahlo but most of all it puts the relationship between two headstrong and unique characters in its centre. And both Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina are able to keep the tension and electricity between their two characters for the whole movie, from this first meeting right up to the scene in which he proposes to her again. In this first meeting, Salma Hayek defined their relationship right away when Frida refuses to go up to him to show him her pictures and instead insists that he comes down to her – it may be out of necessity because her legs still suffer from her accident but Salma Hayek also combined this moment with Frida’s typical insistence and headstrong personality while also finding moments of nervousness and uncertainty over her art. The romance and marriage that follows this moment is never perfect but somehow feels right, thanks to Salma Hayek who is able to be the driving force of this relationship and always gives it reason. Even when the movie begins to shift at some parts and focuses more on the character of Diego, Salma Hayek still keeps control over all proceedings and dominates the story without feeling officious in any way. When Selma Hayek displays happiness, she also gives a positive light to this relationship and when she tells her husband in the night how much he hurt her or on the street that he was never a husband to her, she finds some truly wonderful moments that highlight and define her whole performance and the complicated love between Frida and Diego.

Of course, there are moments when the flat structure of the screenplay and the movie also brings Salma Hayek down – but she also adds some misfires herself, too. Sometimes she feels too much like an actress going through the emotions that she is asked to go through instead of truly turning her character into an honest creation. But even if she doesn’t handle some of these moments with more than the competence of a dedicated performer – this competence is still more than enough to both carry the movie and help Salma Hayek to go through the various emotions and living situations of her character. And with this, she serves both this character and the movie and single-handedly defines the tone and feeling of every scene. She can be truly heartbreaking when her boyfriend breaks up with her after her accident, exciting when she is dancing at a party, believably angry and disappointed when she smells the perfume of another woman on her husband and compelling when she talks about her political views. Maybe it is easy to accuse Salma Hayek of not going very deep – mainly because these accusations are correct. Her whole performance feels more like a presentation than a characterization but it’s still a gripping one and needed a lot of confidence and charisma to make it work. And even if her performance exists mostly on the surface, she still makes it feel that Frida is a much deeper character than the movie allows – it’s maybe not a deep characterization of Frida Kahlo but it feels like a deep characterization of the woman that is presented on the screen. Maybe this review sounds a little bit too enthusiastic – as I mentioned, Salma Hayek does not always overcome the limitations of the movie or her own talent and despite the wide range of emotions and events her character goes through, the role often feels too one-dimensional in many aspects. But still, Salma Hayek was a surprise – a more than pleasant surprise. Maybe I am alone with this opinion but to expect the worst and discover something truly engaging and worthwhile does not happen very often during the journey through all Best Actress nominees – I hope to be surprised more often like this in the future. But for now, Salma Hayek’s performance in which dedication, passion and focus triumph over one-dimensionality and thin writing receives

YOUR Best Actress of 1963

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Patricia Neal - Hud (40 votes)

2. Leslie Caron - The L-Shaped Room (14 votes)

3. Natalie Wood - Love with the Proper Stranger (11 votes)

4. Rachel Roberts - This Sporting Life (6 vote)

5. Shirley MacLaine - Irma La Douce (4 votes)

Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 2002: Diane Lane in "Unfaithful"

If Laurence Olivier calls an actress ‚The next Grace Kelly‘, then the actress in question must truly be a unique combination of charm, grace (no pun intended) and talent. And if that actress in question is only 13 years old, then it’s clear that she must possess a very special aura and appeal to let one of the greatest and most respected actors of the 20th century become such an instant admirer. Yes, Diane Lane was surely off to a great start. After her film debut opposite Olivier in A Little Romance, she was one of the main young stars destined to become an instant hit with critics and audiences alike. But careers very seldom go as planned and while Diane Lane did create a sensation very early in her life, she gradually began to disappear and basically became ‘another actress’, doing steady work, sometimes a success, sometimes a failure, but never truly putting her back in the spotlight. And so it’s both surprising and wonderful that of all possible movie roles, it was the one of a cheating housewife in a standard erotic thriller that brought her the long-awaited critical attention and resulted in her first Oscar nomination. After all, nominations for those kinds of roles aren’t the easiest to get, especially if the movie itself is met with mostly mixed or even negative reviews. Of course, being the standout in a rather weak movie can also help a performer to gain attention – Meryl Streep has been receiving Oscar nominations this way more than once by now. But Meryl Streep is…well, Meryl Streep – awards attention for her almost always begins even before the movie is finished. For other actresses, Oscar nominations don’t come so easy. So, Diane Lane had the advantage of being the most praised aspect of a panned erotic thriller which was also her biggest disadvantage since Academy members are not truly known for awarding actresses for these kinds of roles in these kinds of movies. So, it would not help Diane Lane to just be the best thing in an average movie – instead, she had to carry herself to a higher level of excellence, not only standing out but becoming the main reason why Unfaithful succeeded despites its weaknesses and providing it with more than just a standard repertoire of lust, guilt and tears but a believable and authentic presentation of a woman torn apart by her own actions, desires, wishes and regrets. Did she succeed? Well, the critics certainly thought so. When the New York Film Critics gave 5 accolades to Todd Haynes’s Far from Heaven but then ignored the most praised aspect of this film – Julianne Moore’s central performance as a woman dealing with the dissolution of her perfect life – in favor of Diane Lane, it became clear that her work hit a nerve. In the end, she was not able to overcome Nicole Kidman’s even bigger success story the same year and, looking back on it, was not truly able to turn her Oscar nomination into a career revival but Unfaithful did, 31 years after the begin of her acting career on a small stage in New York, turn her into an Academy Award nominated actress and finally created a full circle to the upcoming and exciting young actress of the early 80s.

As mentioned a couple of time by now, Unfaithful is neither a great movie nor a good movie. It strings together various clichés that this genre has seen countless times before it suddenly drops the eroticism and exchanges it with crime – but its biggest problem is the simple fact that, for a movie with such problems around almost every corner, it takes itself far too seriously. There are many moments in Unfaithful that make me roll my eyes – basically every time Oliver Martinez or Richard Gere appear on the screen – and while all these flaws prevent Unfaithful from becoming a great film it still remains strangely watchable – thanks to Diane Lane who truly sank her teeth into a role that could have easily come across as a thin stereotype but turned into a strangely fascinating character study thanks to her earthy and honest portrayal. But even though, Unfaithful never truly feels like a ‘one woman show’ despite the fact that it clearly is. This is thanks to Diane Lane’s haunting restraint in a role that usually would have invited a lot of actresses to a collection of scene-stealing and scenery-chewing tricks – something that might have seemed like the most logical and maybe even only solution since the part of Connie is not necessarily better written than anything else in Unfaithful – but Diane Lane somehow discovered potential in a role that lacks it on paper and took the opportunity to carry the story and give reason to a character that was written without any.

But even with all this early praise, it has to be stated that Diane Lane only succeeds in parts – because she cannot always overcome the limitations that are put upon her by her own movie. Connie Sumner may be the central character of Unfaithful but she never truly develops her own point of view or seems responsible for her own actions. She is a movie character that makes the structure of the screenplay palpable at every moment and she always seems to act in a certain way because the screenplay asks her to – nothing she does appears at it if came by her own decision. Of course, every movie character develops and acts in a way the screenplay wants him or her to but Unfaithful never feels like a genuine story but always poorly constructed and obviously designed to move the plot in a certain direction. Diane Lane was not fully able to overcome these obstacles and fails to craft Connie as an independent creation who is driven by her own instincts and wishes. But where she does succeed is by giving Connie an inner life nonetheless – an inner life that is not only dominated by her lust for Paul but also by her own intelligence. It’s probably the biggest accomplishment by Diane Lane that she was able to show that Connie is not controlled by her desires but always knows what she is doing and why, no matter how much she wants to resist herself. Connie Sumner could easily have been portrayed as a purely emotional woman who is never her own master, especially considering the aforementioned structure of Unfaithful which always pushes her in any way the screenplay needs, but Diane Lane somehow managed to let Connie appear ‘smarter than she really is’ nonetheless.

Besides this, Diane Lane found an extremely appealing way to bring this largely unappealing woman to live because even if the screenplay constantly holds its tight arms around Connie without letting her feel like a natural creation, Diane Lane still appears as spontaneous, natural and real as possible. Unfaithful and Connie Sumner are not well written and Diane Lane gets various standards moments that include the hidden attraction, the fiery passion and the unavoidable guilt but she presents all these moments with a believable, natural, fresh and genuine acting style. Because when all the obstacles are mentioned and overcome, Diane Lane comes out at the top of Unfaithful with a mature and intriguing performance that is intelligent, erotic, quiet, wild and a wonderful display of an actress not only overcoming countless difficulties that are thrown in her way but also doing it without ever appearing to be trying at all – instead, she feels very ‘in the moment’ and if Unfaithful never lets Connie Sumner feel like an authentic woman, then Diane Lane’s performance surely does. It’s a constant fight of a dedicated performer against a movie that does its best to hold her back and Diane Lane may not always win her battles with a perfect score – but the final balance is certainly in her favor.

What is probably the most interesting aspect of Unfaithful is the complete randomness of the affair between Connie and Paul. It’s easy to dismiss this aspect since there are no apparent reasons for Connie’s actions and also because even her first encounter with Paul is completely by accident. Nothing in the life of Connie Sumner suggested this passionate affair with a young man and so Diane Lane had to work hard to make all of Connie’s doings believable – which she does. From her first enchantment by this man’s charm to her self-doubt while visiting him again, her hesitation when she picks up the phone and finally to her self-realization that she is willing to start an affair with him. Diane Lane impresses with a portrayal that never loses its plausibility even when the screenplay does. Unfaithful does not only often hold Diane Lane back but also delivers the message that Connie’s affair is somehow more deserving of punishment than the crime of her husband. Diane Lane does her best to show how Connie is torn apart between her loyalty to her husband and her fear of this unknown, dark side in him but her confrontation scene in which her husband is apparently seen as the more justified side is too misjudged for her to find any credibility. Still, Diane Lane constantly guides Unfaithful as its emotional and intellectual anchor – she creates the tension in Unfaithful when she finds out how much her husband actually knew about her affair, she adds an unexpected amount of sorrow and pain as she realizes that she cannot go on like this anymore and she even feels honest and touching after she learns about Paul’s fate. Diane Lane may express mostly standard emotions for a movie like this but she does so with a gripping intensity that never comes from any over-expressing but rather from a strong, internal display which allows her to not only carry Unfaithful but give it a moral dimension beneath the high-polished sex scenes. Especially her scene on the train after her first sexual encounter with Paul is often mentioned as her brightest moment as she is allowed to display a wide variety of emotions from guilt and enjoyment to self-mockery, desperation and pleasure in just a few moments but the editing is working against her as the almost never-ending display of different emotions is, even though gripping from a technical point of view, too much too sudden. Much more interesting are the intervened scenes of her first sex with Paul as she beautifully demonstrates Connie’s fear, anxiety and anger at herself and Paul for crossing this line while also showing how much Connie is enjoying this moment and lets Connie’s body shiver with a combination of lust and fear. And when she later cries in her kitchen, she does never appear like a woman training to gain any sympathy but instead like a real woman finding herself in a hopeless situation – hopeless because she lacks the power to change it.

With her performance, Diane Lane manages to draw the viewer very close to Connie’s personal experiences. She displays both a wild lust and a sense of self-doubt in all her sexual encounters with Paul and it’s almost shocking how she manages to believably portray her desire for Paul while hating herself more and more during their scene in the hallway. Despite Diane Lane’s earthiness and strong screen presence her Connie often seems almost fragile, collapsing inside from the pressure she has put upon herself. It’s a performance in which Diane Lane is allowed to run the gamut of emotions from A to Z and she does it as impressively as anybody could under the circumstances. She is hold back by her movie very often and cannot fight against being ungratefully pushed aside in the final third of the movie but she still leaves a lasting impression with a passionate, willing and uncompromising performance that receives

Best Actress 2002: Renée Zellweger in "Chicago"

Chicago is soften hailed as the comeback of the movie musical even though Moulin Rouge, starring Renée Zellweger’s Oscar rival Nicole Kidman, happened one year before and was probably largely responsible for Chicago even being made. But Moulin Rouge was over-the-top, maybe a little strange, featured extremely fast editing and camera movements and the soundtrack was a combination of mostly well-known pop or rock songs. Academy members admired it enough to nominate it for Best Picture but played it safe when they gave the award in the end to the rather standard ‘feel-good-as-you-watch-a-man-overcome-personal-obstacles-and-be-amazed-because-it-is-based-on-a-true-story’ A Beautiful Mind. But even though – musicals were back. But they still needed to be different from the movie musicals of the 50s or 60s – people bursting into a song in the middle of the scene would not be taken seriously by modern movie audiences any more. Moulin Rouge was crazy, new and over-the-top enough to make those musical numbers work, especially because they fitted so perfectly into these stylized surroundings. And so it was not surprising that Chicago, too, tried to find a new way to include its musical numbers – on the stage, actresses can start to sing and dance the ‘Cell Block Tango’ much more easily because the stage always allows much more unconventional actions and scenes while movies do not forgive any variance from reality so easily. The movie version of Chicago found a way to solve this problem that not only allowed to include the musical numbers smoothly but also play with the clichés of musicals and the constant clash of reality and make-believe while also staying close to the tradition of other musical that made it to the big screen – most notably Cabaret since Chicago also presents its musical numbers in the form of stage performances. But in Chicago, these musical numbers are only a part of Roxie Hart’s fantasy, combining the reality of the situation she finds herself in with her own imagination – this concept allowed Chicago to be both a full-fledged traditional musical with big dance and song numbers but also to appeal to a more modern audience since it always admits that these musical numbers are nothing else but fantasy. But also important is the fact that Chicago always uses these musical numbers in reference to the plot – which is an intriguing, provoking, and almost alarming story of hunger for fame, guilt and innocence and most of all, the manipulation of the media and the public opinion. The wrap-up of this dark message into a colorful, glittery and, most of all, incredibly entertaining package is probably the biggest reason for Chicago’s success on Oscar night – and the success of its leading lady.

Renée Zellweger may seem like an unlikely choice for the leading role in a movie musical – not only because of her karaoke scene in Bridget Jones’s Diary the year before but also because she seems to lack the big presence, the full-fledged movie-star personality or the passion and fire to give a musical number such a high level of energy that it turns into a natural part of the story instead of an interruption. And all this is true – but thankfully this made her a perfect choice for the character of Roxie, a woman with big ambition and little talent and who could only achieve fame by becoming a murderess in Chicago during the 1920s and constantly puts on a fake personality for the sake of either being popular or being free. Since Chicago is a movie that uses its musical numbers as a part of Roxie’s fantasy, they also don’t have to be a true part of it – yes, they fit into the story smoothly but they actually do so by standing out, not only because of the way the story is written but also because of the way the numbers are presented and executed. It’s always obvious that Renée Zellweger is neither a great singer nor a truly great dancer – but this is also not what Chicago wants her to be. It’s very interesting how quietly Renée Zellweger enters Chicago – both as an actress and as a singer. As if by accident, the camera finds her in a crowded night club as she watches her idol Velma Kelly singing ‘All that Jazz’ on the stage. At first, this may seem like a strange way to treat the central character of a musical – especially since Renée Zellweger’s costar, Catharine Zeta-Jones, is allowed to demonstrate how much energy and power can be displayed by singing and dancing right away. She clearly wins the contest in this aspect – her ‘All that Jazz’ is the kind of powerful opening number that turns a performance into a show-stopper right away and also helps her to establish Velma Kelly immediately as a woman who is a diva both onstage and offstage – but her talent is worth it. And because of this, Renée Zellweger is so perfectly cast in Chicago since her Roxie is, in many ways, her complete opposite. Yes, she, too, is a manipulative gold-digger without a single thought in her head that isn’t about herself but she isn’t the grand dame of the stage but rather the born chorus-girl who stands behind and dreams of becoming the star one day. Neither her singing voice nor her looks nor her overall talent would really help her to thrill the audience. This, of course, does not mean that Renée Zellweger is bad in her musical numbers – on the contrary, she handles them very well, mostly because she did not try to appear grander than she really is but instead found a perfect voice and attitude for the character of Roxie that always mixes her singing scenes with a great deal of charismatic comedy acting. And so, to come back to the previous point, Renée Zellweger did not need to be the same kind of diva as Catherine Zeta-Jones – her Velma Kelly is the ‘typical’ musical star who gets a number like ‘All that Jazz’ in the beginning while Renée Zellweger’s first musical scene is the much more quiet ‘Funny Honey’ which is also less noteworthy for her singing than for the fact that this number presents the first time that Chicago mixes her fantasy with reality. And also during the rest of Chicago, Catharine Zeta-Jones’s musical numbers are the true show-stoppers which seem mostly to exist to show off Velma Kelly’s singing and dancing abilities. In this way, Catharine Zeta-Jones brings an iron professionalism to her part which shows that she is, by far, the most skilled musical performer in the cast – which also made her just as perfectly cast in the part of Velma Kelly as Renée Zellweger was as Roxie Hart.

Chicago may be a musical – but Renée Zellweger’s success in this role has surprising little to do with singing or dancing. Because her musical scenes are not intended to be true showcases – even ‘Roxie’, with all its mirrors and male admirers, is less noteworthy for Renée Zellweger’s singing and dancing but mostly for her sassy and captivating way of telling about Roxie’s dreams, plans, desires and hopes, no matter how contemptible they may seem. In this way, the musical numbers of Renée Zellweger exist differently than those of Catharine Zeta-Jones – hers tell the story of her character, they are a much more concrete answer to a specific situation and therefore do not demand the same kind of professionalism because a) Roxie Hart is not a professional on the stage and b) because to make these scenes work it needed an actress who could focus on the acting in those moments, who had the needed comedic spark to make scenes like Roxie sitting on a piano and singing a song of first loving and then condemning her husband or telling the monologue before the ‘Roxie’ number work. And Renée Zellweger has this needed spark and her ability to mix comedy with drama, find humor in completely unlikely situations and provide Roxie with a singing voice and dancing talent that is completely right for the character all resulted in a performance that fits perfectly to the tone and message of Chicago. In this way, her musical numbers actually are show-stoppers – but not in the traditional sense since they are almost always foremost a humorous presentation of the truth and just as important for their content as their execution.

But let’s not forget that Roxie Hart is not only a singing creation – most of all, Renée Zellweger brings her to life with her acting. Her performance as Roxie Hart is probably one of the most entertaining ones that this category has ever seen – alongside the one she has given one year before in Bridget Jones’s Diary. Interestingly, both characters do not offer any depth or combine their entertainment value with deeper questions – instead, both women manage to dominate the screen through Renée Zellweger’s unique screen presence and her aforementioned ability to combine comedy with drama and to find humor in the most awkward moments and use it as a way to make her character easily accessible for the audience. But even though these characters may not appear to be truly challenging, they are still much trickier than first expected. In the case of Bridget Jones, the old saying ‘Dying is easy, comedy is hard’ was more than true as Renée Zellweger managed to make it look incredibly easy. Her work in Chicago is different as Roxie Hart is certainly not as easy to love as Bridget Jones – at least not on paper. But what is truly remarkable about Renée Zellweger’s work in Chicago is the fact that she managed to make Roxie a heroine to root for – despite the fact that she is a murderess, lazy and spoiled and never thinks of anything but herself and her publicity. Her best argument against her husband? `He couldn’t buy my liquor’ – a remark that tells more about Roxie than she probably realizes and that also comes across as completely believable in the hands of Renée Zellweger who does her best to show what kind of woman Roxie truly is: ‘a dumb, common criminal’, as Billy Flynn puts it so perfectly. Roxie Harts killed a man – and becomes a star because of it, exploiting her crime for the sake of fame and manipulating the public opinion for the sake of her freedom. Looking at the character of Roxie Hart, she does not possess a single redeeming feature – especially since the movie audience knows so much more about Roxie than her fans in the movie: the viewers know her true character and her true actions and intentions. But for some strange reason she still becomes the one to cheer for – Chicago manages to manipulate the viewer just as easily as Roxie Hart and Billy Flynn the jury and the public. And even though we know that we still let it happen, not only because Chicago is structured and written in a way that makes it almost impossible not to but also because Renée Zellweger is a wonderful vessel for this role, being able to spit in the face of everybody around her while still doing it with a quirky sense of humor and goofiness that easily turns Roxie into the one who has the audience on her side. With her performance, she always walked closely between a realistic portrayal of an ambitious airhead and the slightly over-the-top nature of Chicago – even in its ‘reality-scenes’, Chicago is still a bitter satire and demands the characters to fit their appearance to this. Renée Zellweger thankfully does not overdo her comedy moments for the sake of the movie audience but instead always keeps her character’s actions believable in the context of the film while also constantly suggesting her true nature underneath (her scene in the witness stand is comedic gold in which she constantly puts on two different shows for the movie audience and the audience in the movie, excuse me, I mean the jury). Like Chicago itself, Renée Zellweger maintains a superficiality in her work only to find more layers underneath.

All in all, Roxie Hart is not truly the most challenging role or the most developed character and does not need a lot of interpretation – but she does need careful consideration to balance the task of making her likeable despite her unlikable nature. Without Renée Zellweger’s presence, Chicago would be much less successful because her dumb blond is always entertaining and always believable. Her short, quiet moment of desperation during her first night in prison is surprisingly touching while her delivery of the line ‘Don’t you wanna take my picture?’ is basically a summary of Roxie Hart in two seconds. Renée Zellweger does not try to deepen Roxie in any way and always shows that her emotions and feelings only happen in relation to her ambitious goals – when she is angry or desperate, it is only because her plans don’t go well, when she is happy it is because she could achieve a personal goal. And even most importantly, Renée Zellweger also makes it believable that Roxie Hart would become such a sensation in the first place and actually be a serious threat for Velma – Renée Zellweger shows that Roxie has everything it needs to manipulate the media even though she could not do it alone and finds out that, in the end, she was used and manipulated just as much herself. When Roxie hugs her husband only to turn around to enable the photographers to get a better view on her, Renée Zellweger is deliciously honest in showing the complete emptiness of Roxie and also incredibly entertaining by showing how much she enjoys her moment in the sun.

So, Renée Zellweger clearly did everything right in a role that maybe did not demand a truly complex characterization but sometimes the sheer task of bringing such a large spectacle like Chicago to live and providing the most entertaining and poignant moments of the story while also keeping both feet on the ground for the sake of bringing a deeper message across can be just as demanding and difficult. In the end, the combination of a role that is both rather empty but also tricky at the same time with Renée Zellweger’s unique energy and dedication receives

Best Actress 2002: Nicole Kidman in "The Hours"

There are always some years when an Oscar win is not only the result of a strong, critically acclaimed performance but also the outcome of what is considered ‘the year of an actor’ or ‘the right time’. 1944 was Ingrid Bergman’s year, not only because of her performance in Gaslight but also because of her work in the previous years which did not make her truly due but, combined with her overall reputation as one of Hollywood’s brightest and likeable stars, simply added up to a powerful momentum that made hers a win that was not only appreciated but also ‘popular’. 1945 was the year of Joan Crawford because her comeback in Mildred Pierce was as celebrated as it was unexpected. 1946 was the year of Olivia de Havilland who not only had been working very hard in Hollywood for a lot of years but also because of her history-making court fight against the studio system. 1954 was the year of Grace Kelly, 1956 again the year of Ingrid Bergman, 1960 was the year of Elizabeth Taylor, 1961 the year of Sophia Loren, 1964 of Julie Andrews – and so on and so on. All the acting categories offer enough examples of actors and actresses who won at exactly the right time in their career because it was their moment, their peak and their year. And 2002 was the year of Nicole Kidman. She peaked at just the right moment with just the right kind of performance. She had proven her versatility before but after her divorce from Tom Cruise most people probably expected her to disappear slowly but steadily from the public again – but instead she suddenly turned herself into one of Hollywood’s most respect actresses who constantly surprised audiences and critics with the choices she made. In 2001, she made an impressive two-punch with her part as a dying courtesan in the extravagant musical Moulin Rouge and as a strict but also terrified mother in the gothic thriller The Others. Combined with her personal backstory, an Oscar win that year would have been almost logical but Halle Berry’s turn as a grieving widow and mother turned out to be a stronger attraction for the Academy. So, this chance had passed for Nicole Kidman – but instead of losing any momentum she only enhanced it by again doing something completely different and unexpected when she played the depressive and suicidal author Virginia Woolf in Stephen Daldry’s The Hours. Even though the role lacked important screen time and was considerably shorter than most other winners in this category, her dramatic and dominant storyline, the downplay of her own looks and her obvious willingness to constantly improve and stretch herself as an actress helped her to become an almost unstoppable force on Oscar night – okay, let’s not forget that this was actually a very competitive year with Julianne Moore and Diane Lane winning important critics awards while Renée Zellweger emerged as a late frontrunner thanks to her industry support but in the end, Nicole Kidman must have taken it with a rather comfortable lead because awarding her just felt too ‘right’ in this moment – it was her year. Of course, it’s all speculation anyway…

The fact that Nicole Kidman remained so willing during her career to always try something new and different certainly makes her an actress that is very easy to respect and admire. Personally, I would not call myself a fan in any way but there is no denying that few other actresses made such strong attempts to prevent themselves from being typecast in any kind of role or resting too cozily in their own comfort zone. During her career, she switched from musicals like Moulin Rouge to thrillers like The Peacemaker or The Invasion and then to dramas by Lars von Trier or Anthony Minghella and then to comedies with Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler. After her Oscar win, Nicole Kidman’s peak may have been gone almost as quickly as it had come and it would take quite some time for her to get back to the Academy Awards as a nominee but her work during this period was just as exciting as it had been before and she undoubtedly acquired one of the most varied and diversified resumes in Hollywood. And what’s even more remarkable is the sheer fact that Nicole Kidman was not only willing to constantly push her boundaries and risk something new with these different collaborations but also that she was able to almost always completely fit into the different styles of these movie and roles. She fit as smoothly into the over-the-top surroundings of Moulin Rouge as she did into the dark atmosphere of The Others or into Stephen Daldry’s The Hours, the tale of three women who suffer from their lack of dreams, from their dissatisfaction with their lives as they are and their inability to break free without hurting the ones they love and who are connected by their characters, by their actions or even just by their words. There has been a lot of talk about the category placement of Nicole Kidman but personally I cannot find any reason to consider hers anything else than a leading performance. The Hours presents three equal storylines among which Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman present the clear central characters. While Meryl Streep’s storyline consisted of present-day scenes, Julianne Moore again proved that she seems to belong into the 50s more than any other actress of her generation. And Nicole Kidman accepted the challenge to bring the character of Virginia Woolf to life, a woman who more than anything seems to want to be free of life completely. The equality of the three different storylines could easily have put Nicole Kidman in the danger of either being overshadowed by the work of Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore or appearing not unique enough to be singled out among the cast-members. And it’s true that all three actresses deliver powerful performances but Nicole Kidman was helped by the fact that her storyline is a combination of its own ideas and thoughts but also exists as a reference point for the actions of all other characters – Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep don’t exist in the world of Virginia Woolf but Nicole Kidman is constantly floating above Laura Brown and Clarissa Vaughan, almost as if she is influencing and guiding their doings. Her presence can not only be felt at almost every moment of The Hours but whenever the story cuts back to her storyline, the movie suddenly feels different and almost disrupted – but never interrupted. The nature of Nicole Kidman’s storyline as the basis for the stories of Laura Brown and Clarissa Vaughan gives her a dominant position in The Hours but this position constantly seems to connect her to the overall plot just as much as it brings her apart from it – the story of Virginia Woolf stands in close connection to the other storylines but more than them it also exists completely independent from the movie itself. And even though it is rather the structure of The Hours which made this possible, Nicole Kidman’s characterization not only creates and influences the tone and atmosphere of her storyline but rather is this tone and atmosphere.

In her role as Virginia Woolf, Nicole Kidman is an impressive example of an actress using her usually very distinctive and strong charisma to play a character that is almost only a shadow of a human being and still emerge as a domineering, haunting and powerful presence. Her Virginia Woolf exists as a woman who seems to need all strength she can muster only to get out of bed in the morning – not because of a physical weakness but because her depressions, her unhappiness and her fear of her own existence are using up all her energy and all her abilities to find quietness for herself. Because of this, Nicole Kidman’s powerful screen presence works beautifully to create a wonderful contrast in this performance – she is strong and dominant while playing a weak and almost invisible woman. In The Hours, Virginia Woolf is almost a ghostly presence, a woman so rid of every lively feature that she constantly appears like a haunting dream, disrupting the flow but still logical on its own. And even in her own storyline, her character always seems to be more of a psychological than a physical presence but just like Nicole Kidman’s performance is extremely strong in showing the character’s weaknesses, Virginia Woolf is also written and presented as a dominant presence, despite her apparent frailty and it is this contradiction from which this performance gains the most power: Virginia Woolf may almost be a ghost but she is also a domineering force and Nicole Kidman may reduce her acting to a sheer emotional display of internal grief but her screen presence constantly put her in the foreground.

To be clear, this is not a flawless performance – there are moments when the character seems to disappear and the actress becomes more obvious. Especially whenever a scene requires a louder intensity, Nicole Kidman feels rather forced in her acting – her angry discussion with her husband at the train station about the doctors who want to control her life is such a moment but actually there are also other scenes that feel flawed – these can be very simple instants like Virginia telling her husband that no dreams or headaches were troubling her in the night or asking him if it is alright for her to take a short walk outside. Granted, these are only small moments but this is a performance that basically consists of nothing but small moments so every scene that does not feature the same dark fascination that Nicole Kidman creates in so many other moments stands out disappointingly. The truth is that Nicole Kidman is always most effective in those moments in which she plays a quiet, internal desperation, moments at which Virginia Woolf makes her inability to cope with her life truly tangible. The sight of Virginia Woolf walking around outside, hiding her face under her head and talking to herself about the plot of her next book is incredibly effective because Nicole Kidman truly excels to reach an almost overwhelming level of intensity in quiet moments like this. And thankfully Nicole Kidman also did not forget that Virginia Woolf is not only a woman suffering from depression but also a writer experiencing the thrill of starting a new book, even if it seems to absorb her too much for her own good, only fastening her desire for self-destruction – when she sits in her chair and speaks the first line of her new book, slowly and with an overwhelming exhaustion in her voice, Nicole Kidman again crafts one of those calm moments that is much more memorable than any emotional outburst, in this case mostly because she is able to speak those lines with a hidden sense of self-realization, underlining how Virginia Woolf is slowly discovering this sentence and with it the whole concept of her new book herself in these few seconds.

The most fascinating aspect of Nicole Kidman’s performance is that she was able to find such a non-emotional way for portraying this character – Virginia Woolf is a woman suffering from depressions, she is suicidal, caught in her own desperation and unable to escape and yet the word ‘heartbreaking’ is probably the last one that would describe her performance. Her approach to her material is much more intellectual than emotional and therefore she challenges the viewer instead of trying to win any sympathy. Basically, Nicole Kidman managed to create a invariable forlornness by constantly ‘acting alone’ – even when she shares the screen, her Virginia constantly seems out-of-focus, alone in her thoughts, talking to the persons besides her but somehow not really noticing them. Especially in her scenes with Virginia’s sister, Nicole Kidman masters the combination of Virginia’s loneliness and her hope to connect to other people. And her following goodbye scene is maybe the only moment in her performance that can be called truly touching on an emotional level – her quiet ‘Nessa’ as her sister leaves the room, her hopeless goodbye to her niece and her forlornness as she realizes that she will probably never be able to escape turn this into one of those single moments that can define a whole performance and that leaves a lasting impression because of its haunting, implacable, intransigent and dark presentation and the overwhelming amount of sadness put into a few words.

Nicole Kidman also succeeded in avoiding making her character too obvious – lines like ‘the female ones are larger. And less colorful’ basically hit the viewer over the head but Nicole Kidman manages not only to make this dialogue work but expresses it in a way that neglects every bit of symbolism – instead of emphasizing her sharp figure, her constant depressions and desperations, she turns them into a normal part of her character, presenting it without overstating it. But not only her lines about female birds, but so many of them actually feel too contrived, calculated and exaggerated for their own good but Nicole Kidman managed to handle them with surprising ease. Her quiet monologue at the train station during which she tells her husband that she wants to decide her own life herself is such a moment. Surprisingly, the character of Virginia Woolf actually offers little to Nicole Kidman in the context of The Hours since the character appears severely underwritten many times, despite so many overstated lines – but Nicole Kidman was able to put Virginia Woolf’s personal problems, her obsession with her work and her desire to return to London in a greater context in which she was able to tell almost the whole character of this woman without needing the words to highlighten it. The scene with the dead bird, already mentioned for the heavy-handed dialogue, is more than anything noteworthy for Nicole Kidman’s ability to portray honest desire, fear, desperation, grief and even curiosity at the same time. By displaying such images of inner pain convincingly, Nicole Kidman most of all managed to make her Virginia Woolf understandable – she enters the movie already completely developed by the script and the direction and there will also be no true development but she managed to give a face to the depression that is haunting her, making her troubles, sorrows and bitterness visible without overdoing it. Because of this, no explanations for her behaviors ever feels necessary.

Overall, Nicole Kidman gave a performance that makes both the physical and mental exhaustion of the character completely perceptible at every moment of the movie. Looking back at this review, I may have sounded a bit more enthusiastic than I actually am – the great moments of Nicole Kidman’s performance all feel rather singular, meaning that they are all easy to admire but it’s somehow hard to construct a complete whole out of the single pieces, mainly because this performance, as mentioned before, it not without its flaws. More than anything, Nicole Kidman creates images with this performance – images of Virginia Woolf lying next to a dead bird, slowly disappearing into a river, hesitating before she talks to her servants or sitting alone on a bench at an empty train station. And for her ability to create these intriguing images while also filling her parts of The Hours with a captivating, dark and quiet desperation, she receives

Best Actress 2002

The next year will be 2002 and the nominees were

Salma Hayek in Frida

Nicole Kidman in The Hours

Diane Lane in Unfaithful

Julianne Moore in Far from Heaven

Renée Zellweger in Chicago

Best Actress 1963 - The resolution

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

5. Shirley MacLaine in Irma La Douce

Shirley MacLaine both saves and harms her movie as she often feels out of place but her no-nonsense approach to this part is also a welcome change of pace and helped to craft an entertaining, sometimes touching, sometimes amusing but never stupid character.

4. Natalie Wood in Love with the Proper Stranger

                     

Natalie Wood gives a performance that never goes beyond the surface but still works surprisingly well because her charm, her ability to handle comedy and drama and her clear display of Angie’s journey are still so intriguing, entertaining, poignant, funny and provoking.

3. Leslie Caron in The L-Shaped Room

In this very emotional performance, Leslie Caron gives a quiet and subtle piece of work that may be limited by the way her character was written but is also much more memorable than any exaggerated overacting would have been.

2. Patricia Neal in Hud

Patricia Neal’s performance is a beautiful example of a dedicated realism on the screen but also of an actress taking an underwritten and thin part and filling it with life thanks to her own acting, her own personality and her ability to use her material to craft the idea of a whole world beyond the written word.

1. Rachel Roberts in This Sporting Life

Rachel Roberts lingers like a ghost over every moment of her movie and she mixed moments of pure intensity with shocking and heartbreaking images and that way gave an incredibly effective turn that leaves a lasting and hunting impression.

 

Best Actress 1963: Natalie Wood in "Love with the Proper Stranger"

Considering that Natalie Wood was only 25 years old when she received her nomination for the romantic comedy/drama Love with the Proper Stranger, many Academy voters probably thought that she would have enough time in the future to finally take the gold home. After all, this was not only her first but already her third nomination. At the age of 17, she was nodded as Best Supporting Actress for her performance opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and then in 1961 for her devastating role as a young women suffering a nervous breakdown from sexual confusion in Splendor in the Grass. So, her nomination in 1963 was surely not seen as a situation of ‘now or never’ nor was her loss to Patricia Neal regarded as an oversight in any way. After all, who would have thought that, at the age of 25, Natalie Wood was already past her prime and would never be nominated again? Of course, she continued to be one Hollywood’s most popular actresses and starred in various more hits – but the time of true critical acclaim was over. Well, this can be seen in two ways – as the typical under-appreciation of a young and popular actresses who was never fully able to be taken seriously or as a much more than fair share of recognition for an actress whose talent very often rather divided the critics than united it. Well, the truth can probably be found somewhere in the middle. Sure, Natalie Wood was not the greatest actress that ever graced the screen – she often struggled to find true credibility in her roles, failed to leave a certain awkwardness in her line delivery behind or simply suffered from being put into roles that neither fit her talent or personality nor made it able for her to stretch herself as an actress. But on the other hand, one cannot help but admire the fact that she was one of the few child stars who made the transition to adult parts, that she could captivate the audience for so long – and that she sometimes was willing and determined to either take a risk that paid off, overcame the obstacles that laid in her way or simply had the right instincts and charm for a role that made it very enjoyable despite not being truly outstanding. Her work in Splendor in the Grass was the risk that paid off – a difficult and challenging part that Natalie Wood brought to life with shocking and exhausting realism and surely stands as the highpoint of her career. Her Maria in West Side Story was her overcoming of large obstacles – probably not everybody agrees here but I see her performance in this as truly heartbreaking and unforgettable. She may be straightened by her accent and her wooden screen partner but she still fills West Side Story with her own kind of energy and life that may not come from any dancing or singing but the liveliness of a young, emotional woman caught between feelings and responsibility and overwhelmed by her own passion – and her final on-screen moments are simply devastating and considering that this performance came in the same year as her other career-best performance in Splendor in the Grass, it's rather surprising that she failed to take home the Oscar that year. And Love with the Proper Stranger? This is the last case – a performance that was maybe not on the same level of her previous excellence nor a true powerhouse in itself and the writing also did not do her any favors by constantly dropping every bit of dramatic possibility for the sake of some quick laughs but Natalie Wood’s charm, personality and way of filling her part with a style that is light enough for the style of her movie while also catching some more serious undertones occasionally nevertheless were able to captivate the viewer and, even though not in a completely satisfying manner, made her work both entertaining and provoking.

It’s famously noted that 1963 saw not only one but two actresses nominated for performances in which they played unmarried women who had to deal with sudden pregnancy (‘Girls with technical difficulties’, as Gregory Peck put it at the awards show). But Leslie Caron and The L-Shaped Room took a much different approach to this subject than Natalie Wood and Love with the Proper Stranger. The L-Shaped Room is not a dark movie in any way but still presents a more realistic picture of a young woman caught in an unknown situation, dealing with its consequences and trying to find a new way of life for herself. The L-Shaped Room is not overly dramatic but it also does not take it matter or its leading lady too lightly. And Leslie Caron also focused more strongly on the inner struggle of the character she played. Natalie Wood was in a different situation that mostly demanded of her to play Angie Rossini from the outside since it was never truly interested in her personal fight but in the question ‘How do we get these two together in the end?’ Of course, there are moments when Natalie Wood found a deeper layer in this woman and showed that she did not play her with the demanded combination of smiles and tears but also with a true understanding of her personal situation – of only Love with the Proper Stranger had been more interested in those moments, then Natalie Wood could certainly have risen to a higher level in her part. But considering that her movie never saw the need to give the controversial topic of abortion and Angie’s own inner struggles any true focus and instead always put every plotline in the overall context of a wanna-be romance, she still got a lot (maybe even the most) out of it.

The beginning of Natalie Wood’s performance is not only a very intriguing entrance but maybe even her best scene of the entire picture. When she wants to tell Rocky (played with goofy charm by Steve McQueen) that she is pregnant and then suddenly realizes that he does not even remember her, Natalie Wood avoided to fill this moment with early pathos and instead let Angie react with a combination of slight amusement and anger at herself for having expected his reaction and yet having hoped for something else. And she quickly lets this realization turn into anger when she tells him that she only came to him for the address of a doctor who will help her with her ‘problem’. It’s commendable that Natalie Wood refused to win any sympathy at this moment and showed that Angie is not in the process of making up her mind but actually made it up already – or at least, that’s what she thinks. As mentioned before, Love with the Proper Stranger never gives Natalie Wood the chance to display her character’s thoughts about the child growing inside of her but only wants her to reflect about her emotional feelings towards Rocky. In some ways, it’s a typical romance between two different characters who everyone knows will end up together at the end any way – the pregnancy is apparently only thrown in to spice things up a bit. But this shift of focus both harms the movie and Natalie Wood as Angie very often comes across as so…thoughtless and one-dimensional and even though this is not Natalie Wood’s fault, it still does prevent her from digging further in the part than she might have had otherwise. And even the changes and the growth of Angie are mostly done from an outside points-of-view – whenever Angie stands up for herself, realizes some unexpected truth about herself or simply comes to an important conclusion, it is mostly done with a big speech, a dramatic monologue and some wordy action that lacks too much subtlety and shows that Natalie Wood is mostly following the screenplay from A to B to C to D without trying to find her own tempo, her own pattern and her own ideas.

So, there seem to be a lot of obstacles in this role which would make it seem that this performance may actually rather fall into the ‘West-Side-Story-category’ – but unlike her Maria, Natalie Wood’s Angie is not a creation that overcame all these obstacles. Her very often temperamental and fiery interpretation sometimes don’t connect with her more quiet moments because they don’t come across as another side of the same character but rather as another side of Natalie Wood’s acting. Her attempts to appear clumsy and a little confused when she it having dinner at the house of her suitor feels a bit too forced and uninspired. And most of all, her chemistry with Steve McQueen, which is the major foundation of Love with the Proper Stranger, often feels strangely unsatisfying because neither actor seems to be quite sure of what to do with his and her character and where to take them. Their relationship feels too forced into the movie despite actually being its major part and Natalie Wood often seems to be acting more ‘independently’ from Steve McQueen instead of trying to build a union between them. And unlike Leslie Caron, Natalie Wood also does not make it completely believable that this young woman would actually get into the kind of trouble she finds herself in – Leslie Caron played Jane with a certain melancholy and acceptance that made it plausible that she would just go to bed with a man because they both wanted to do it. Natalie Wood makes Angie often too resentful and distant to make this aspect truly acceptable. So, all this shows that neither the movie nor Natalie Wood’s performance are flawless – but, as stated before, her performance is still able to fall into the third category of her work as it that shows that her instincts are often right and her charm mostly helpful enough for the occasion.

Her first on-screen moments, as just mentioned, are maybe the highlight of her performance but there is still much to enjoy. Most of all, Natalie Wood knows how to handle the comedy in her performance without overdoing it. When she is arguing with her stereotypical Italian family, slamming doors, shouting through the apartment, packing her bags to leave forever only to come back a few moments later, she does it in a way that is somehow completely unexpected in a movie likes this simply because she does not try to go for any dramatic intensity but mostly emphasizes all these scenes with a slightly exaggerated acting style that is genuinely…funny. Yes, she may miss to craft the character of Angie in these moments and, just like the movie itself, drops dramatic depth and development for the sake of short-term entertainment but within these limitations, it’s still a refreshing and sometimes actually touching approach because it works as a nice contrast to later, more dramatic scenes. Natalie Wood also may not truly work well together with Steve McQueen but what she does achieve is the captivating portrayal of a woman who is looking for help only to realize that the man who is supposed to help her actually needs her much more – not in any romantic way but only regarding the pregnancy, a topic that Angie handles with much more maturity and practicality than him. Of course, Angie’s determination to have an abortion does not last long and soon changes when she is faced with the dark reality of an empty, hidden room and a woman who is willing to risk the life of young girls for the sake of some money. Natalie Wood’s silent horror as she slowly undresses and later her breakdown are again moments that may seem slightly over-the-top but still work very well and leave a haunting impression. Unfortunately, Natalie Wood again forgot to go for a deeper approach here for the sake of the obvious drama – would Angie also have rejected the abortion in the end if she could have gone to a normal hospital? What does she truly feel about the baby? How does she see her life in the future? While Leslie Caron showed a woman who was constantly dealing with these thoughts and questions, Natalie Wood underestimated their impact and overestimated the possibilities of superficial drama. But despite all this, her characterization does feel strangely complete – the relation with Rocky, with her family, with herself, it all somehow comes together in the end and while she did not really tell the audience much about Angie than apart from what the screenplay told us anyway, she still gives the illusion of having done much more.

So, Natalie Wood gives a performance that never goes beyond the surface but still works surprisingly well because her charm, her ability to handle comedy and drama, and her clear display of Angie’s journey are still so intriguing, entertaining, poignant, funny and provoking. Neither Natalie Wood nor Love with the Proper Stranger aimed for grand drama but settled for a lower level on which Natalie Wood was able to impress nonetheless. Like Shirley MacLaine in Irma La Douce, she could have done more if a) the screenplay had allowed her to and b) she had actually been willing to do it, but her quiet moments of self-realization during a moment alone with Rocky, her desperate attempts to find her own life while being aware that she is falling in love with Rocky after all or simply her strong screen presence are enough to applaud her even so. In the end, for all her efforts she receives




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Best Actress 1963: Shirley MacLaine in "Irma La Douce"

I doubt that Shirley MacLaine expected her Oscar journey to take such a long time. Her nomination for Billy Wilder’s Irma La Douce was her third nod in 6 years – and after her loss to Patricia Neal she probably thought ‘Well, there will be a next time soon’. But then she had to wait until 1977 for nomination number four and then another 6 years until she would finally win her first and only Oscar for her turn in Terms of Endearment. Of course, it’s hard to imagine that she had ever had a legitimate shot at the Oscar (obviously apart from 1983 when she was one of the surest winners ever in Oscar history, considering all the critical praise that helped her to sweep all the pre-Oscar awards and an overdue status that was equal to a woman being in the 20th month of her pregnancy). In 1958, she was a newcomer to the awards game and in a race that included contenders like Oscar-less Deborah Kerr (with her 5th nomination), Oscar-less Rosalind Russell (with her 4th nod), Oscar-less superstar Elizabeth Taylor (with nomination number 2) and the eventual winner, so-far Oscar-less and Oscar-hungry Susan Hayward (finally lucky with her 5th bid), it’s unlikely that she was ever a serious contender. Two years later, she starred in the Best-Picture winner The Apartment and the popularity of her movie would, under normal circumstances, surely have helped her gain a lot of votes but, of course, Elizabeth Taylor threatened to die that year and Oscar-voters couldn’t throw the Best Actress award in her direction fast enough (but even without the sentiment for Miss Taylor, there was also Deborah Kerr in the race and, let’s face it, surely would have gotten more votes than Shirley MacLaine since she was competing for the sixth time by now). In 1963, there was surely little enthusiasm for her performance that never turned her into a serious threat for the win, especially since Patricia Neal had critical acclaim and sentiment on her side. And in 1977, it’s highly doubtful that her performance in the ballet soap opera The Turning Point had any chance for the gold against Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Marsha Mason and Anne Bancroft, even if by this point Shirley MacLaine had acquired her own overdue-status. So, when all is said and done, it’s not very surprising that it took Shirley MacLaine so long to win the coveted award since there were always much more reasons to vote for another actress than for her, may it be the performance itself or strong sentimental motives. So, her loss in 1963 was certainly not a surprise – but was it also deserved?

Irma La Douce is mostly noteworthy for two facts: one that is the strange fact that is was based on a musical but turned into a non-musical movie – how many times did something like this happen? Second, it also re-united the team that had made The Apartment such a hit with audiences, critics and the Oscars three years earlier: Billy Wilder, Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine who apparently signed on for the role without having read the script since her work with Wilder and Lemmon had, after all, led to an Oscar nomination before. And with Irma La Douce, it was actually only Shirley MacLaine who received an Oscar nomination – both Jack Lemmon and Billy Wilder had to sit this one out. All this might easily lead to the impression that Shirley MacLaine was some sort of inspiring muse for her director and co-star who was allowed to steal the show and turned into the shining spotlight of their collaborations. Interestingly enough, the exact opposite is true – Wilder and Lemmon, who had already worked together without MacLaine in Some like it Hot (this time with Marilyn Monroe who was also one of the first choices for Irma La Douce before her sudden death), show such a close connection in their movies, a mutual admiration-society in which Wilder constantly lets Lemmon ‘do his thing’, impress the audience with comedy and drama and basically turns the whole movie into a love declaration. In The Apartment, Jack Lemmon was the clear center of attention, both by the decision of the screenplay and Wilder’s direction – Shirley MacLaine had to fight hard to gain any chance at all to compete with her co-star but her also well-written character and the fact that her charm and screen presence during this period of her career was so unique and so irresistible in a completely off-beat manner helped her a lot and turned her performance into one of the highlights of her career. Her Fran Kubelik was able to breathe wisdom and naivety at the same time, she was an understandable object of affection without wanting to be one and she could evoke sadness and humor just as easily as Lemmon could in his role. This was also due to the nature of the movie – the bitter comedy, the almost depressing nature of this love story worked in great harmony with her own acting style that was so often dominated by her ability to appear so completely non-caring, as if her character was above all the plot-lines, allowing herself to be completely involved against her own will but not able to change it because of her own weaknesses. In Irma La Douce, her approach to her role was similar – she neither tried to emphasize the comedy in her role nor did she overplay any dramatic moments. Instead, her Irma seems to have seen it all, not trying to win her ‘customers’ with any sweet tricks but simply letting everything happen, following her profession with basically the same attitude most people seem to do – seeing it as a way to earn a living, not complaining about it but not being too enthusiastic either. With this take on her character, she was able to succeed in setting her apart from the Wilder-Lemmon-love-affair that seems almost to forget Irma but she also suffered from the fact that Irma La Douce is not The Apartment – the humor comes more obvious, the drama is shallow and the farce often too cheap. Because of this, her acting style did not completely fit her role and her movie this time – she is charming but not charming enough to explain Irma’s popularity with Nestor or her customers, she is funny but not funny enough to fit to the style of the movie and her dramatic moments do not evoke enough pity to get the audience completely on her side. Basically, everything and everyone in Irma La Douce is working against her – Billy Wilder so obviously wants to let Jack Lemmon steal the show, giving him the opportunity to be ‘funny-pathetic’, ‘funny-exaggerating’ and ‘funny-with-mustache’ that Shirley MacLaine’s Irma, despite being the person who initiates all plot-lines, seems almost redundant. And since Billy Wilder also fits the style and tone of Irma La Douce totally to Jack Lemmon’s acting style, Shirley MacLaine often risks seeming miscast, simply because her acting appears too misplayed among all the craziness around her. So, a lot could have gone wrong in this role and, truth to told, some things did go wrong – but somehow, Shirley MacLaine was also able to rise to the occasion and make her acting not appear misplaced but rather a welcome change of pace, a pleasing occasion of human honesty that overall helps Irma La Douce to become much more emotionally involving than it would have been with an actress who had gone the same comedy route as Jack Lemmon did.

Irma is certainly not a character that allows a very deep characterization – she exists to allow Nestor to try to ‘save her’ and could easily have appeared as either incredibly stupid or incredibly shallow but it’s mostly Shirley MacLaine’s no-nonsense approach to the part that prevented her from doing so. So overall, Shirley MacLaine’s performance both harms and benefits Irma – on the one hand, she seems too out-of-place, on the other hand this ‘out-of-placeness’ also helped her to become the best aspect of the movie, just because she never exaggerated her work but almost stayed calmly on the ground. The aforementioned characterization of Irma as a woman who has seen it all helps her to build a nice contrast to Jack Lemmon’s Nestor who has seen nothing yet and it also makes her display of a woman who feels protective of a man both lovely and seriously – but it sometimes also works against her, especially during her first scenes in which she tells various sad stories to her customers to make them give her a little more money than they usually would have. But Shirley MacLaine tells these stories with so little emotional involvement that the punch lines never work as well as they could have. It seems, that MacLaine’s acting style mostly works opposite Jack Lemmon when he plays the naïve and helpless Nestor because her own kind of wisdom and strength builds the foundation of their relationship – on her own or opposite Jack Lemmon’s Lord X, she comes off rather lacking. It would have been more fulfilling to see Shirley MacLaine handling the work of Irma with a little more variation – instead, she is just an extension of the normal Irma. Shirley MacLaine obviously wanted to show Irma as a simple woman who only knows her own world but she could certainly have gotten more out her material, as thin as it may be. She did not need to overdo her comedy but it sometimes seems that her flat line deliveries are less subtle and actually more lazy. Opposite Lord X, Shirley MacLaine did avoid to let Irma appear as either dumb or completely naïve and she makes the interactions between these two characters completely believable – a task that was completely put upon her shoulders since Jack Lemmon is only there for the laughs instead of any credibility, so she deserves a huge amount of applause just for that. But she again could have used a little more irony in her acting, a little more spark that could have turned these scenes into much more satisfying moments.

It’s certainly a strange case of a performance saving a movie in a lot of moments but also letting it down in various others. Shirley MacLaine is certainly very entertaining and often goes through her scenes with just the right tempo, never trying to highlight any of her moments – but these scenes are always opposite Jack Lemmon as Nestor. Unfortunately, she could not transfer her on-screen chemistry to her work opposite Jack Lemmon as Lord X. Still, it is surely nice to see how she avoided sweetening Irma up in any way or letting her appear wiser than she truly is – instead, Shirley MacLaine found most of her most noteworthy contributions to this role in its commonness. And while she does not manage to sell the dramatic moment when she breaks up with Nestor (her delivery is much too forced and attention-seeking), she still is able to find some quiet moments in which she shows that, underneath it all, Irma is a woman who, a little bit like Fran Kubelik, has to learn that a man can truly love her and just her, without any conditions or compromises. Maybe Shirley MacLaine should have read the script before accepting the part to find out if this was really the kind of role that fit her but even despite some flaws that can be found in this performance, Shirley MacLaine still crafted an entertaining, sometimes touching, sometimes amusing but never stupid character. It could have been more but there is no reason to dislike it for what it is. For all of this, she receives




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