Best Actress 1945: Ingrid Bergman in "The Bells of St. Mary's"

Ingrid Bergman was on a roll. Casablanca, For Whom the Bell tolls, Gaslight, The Bells of St. Mary’s, Spellbound – everything she touched turned into gold and everything she did could not be praised high enough. But she not only had the talent to amaze the critics – instead, she also possessed a warm, kind and glowing personality that never made her farouche but turned her into the kind of star who was not only respected but also genuinely liked and admired (which is probably the reason why the reactions to her affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini provoked such intense reactions). During her three consecutive Best Actress nominations she was always an important factor in the race – 1943 saw her as the rape victim in the prestigious literary adaptation For Whom the Bell tolls and as Ilsa Lund in Casablanca and if Jennifer Jones had not suddenly come out of nowhere with her work in The Song of Bernadette, Ingrid Bergman would have been an easy winner. The next year she took home the gold for her performance as the tortured wife in Gaslight – a win that combined the respect for her work and the admiration for her personality and Jennifer Jones was certainly right when she told Ingrid Bergman that ‘your artistry has won our vote and your graciousness has won our hearts’. But Ingrid Bergman did not stop after her win – she had reached the top and was destined to stay there. 1945 saw her in Hitchcock’s Spellbound and the popular Saratoga Trunk – but it was the sequel to 1944’s Best Picture Winner Going my Way which made her a serious threat to become the third winner of consecutive Oscars after Luise Rainer and Spencer Tracy. Her work as a Mother Superior in The Bells of St. Mary’s not only won her awards from the Hollywood Foreign Press and the New York Film Critics but also the kind of reviews an actress might get only once in her lifetime. According to Inside Oscar, one critic even described her work as the single greatest performance ever given by an actress in motion picture history. Such praise certainly evokes the highest expectations – by 1945, viewers had already seen Maria Falconetti in La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc or the work of Lilian Gish, Vivien Leigh had appeared in Gone with the Wind and Luise Rainer in The Good Earth and even Ingrid Bergman herself had already achieved an artistic peak with her work in Gaslight the year before. So – was the high praise for her performance justified or was it rather influenced by Ingrid Bergman’s strong dominance and the uncompromising veneration of the critics and the public at the time? Well, let’s see…

As mentioned before, The Bells of St. Mary’s is the sequel to 1944’s Going my Way which told the story of a charming young priest who brought music and new life to St. Dominic’s church in New York City. At the end of World War II, this heartwarming and simple tale was exactly what audiences wanted and Going my Way not only became a huge hit but also took home seven Oscars, including acting awards for Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald as the old, stubborn and more conventional priest. Only Bing Crosby reprised his part in The Bells of St. Mary’s which features a rather similar plot and theme like Going my Way. The absence of Barry Fitzgerald already indicates that another character was needed to contradict Father O’Malley and ultimately benefit from his innocent and positive look at life. Enter Ingrid Bergman as Sister Mary Benedict, a young Mother Superior who dreams of convincing a business man to donate his new office building to her school and also has to deal with the personal problems of her pupils and occasionally clashes with Father O’Malley over the right ways to teach and grade the children.

The part of Sister Mary Benedict seems destined from the start to follow the expected formula – a Mother Superior in a motion picture almost by definition has to be stern, strict, humorless, cold and decisive. Add the fact that Bing Crosby is the happy-go-lucky priest who serves as the audience’s guide through the movie and it must be even more expected that Ingrid Bergman has to play the domineering and rigid woman whose views on life are changed for the better thanks to Father O’Malley. Well – sometimes movies still can surprise us. Because Ingrid Bergman’s Sister Mary Benedict is the complete opposite of all this and much closer to Bing Crosby’s Father O’Malley than originally expected – she is warm, loving, kind, full or humor and good spirit. Ingrid Bergman’s face is allowed to beam brighter than ever and her rich, gentle voice only adds to the immediate likability of her character. And under the nun’s habit, Ingrid Bergman only has her face, her eyes and her voice to rely on – and she uses all the advantages that her features offer her to fulfill the tasks of the screenplay and create a loveable and sensitive woman who adds to the sentimental tone and feel-good-atmosphere of The Bells of St. Mary’s.

And yet…the single greatest female performance in motion picture history? Of course, the opinion on a performance should not be influenced by what a critic wrote almost 70 years ago but even if expectations are not very high before watching Ingrid Bergman’s performance, there must be a certain sense of disappointment. Because during the first 80 percent of her performance there is hardly anything about the character of Sister Mary Benedict that presents any kind of challenge or opportunity for Ingrid Bergman. Like Bing Crosby, she rests on her charm to give a performance that, as mentioned before, perfectly suits the film and creates a very heartwarming atmosphere but there is nowhere for her to go beyond that. By focusing on the loving and kind side of Sister Mary Benedict, Ingrid Bergman avoided any complexity or depth this woman might have possessed but, of course, the screenplay does not truly offer her any chance to do anything else. Ingrid Bergman’s cheerful smile lightens up the screen every time but it is never fully satisfying to watch her create a maybe delightful but still too thin and undemanding character. But even though, she still does the most she can with what she is given – the scene in which she teaches a boy how to box so that he can defend himself against the bullies on the school yard is an absolute joy to watch and it would be a complete lie to say that Ingrid Bergman does not reach a level of charm and glee in her performance that can easily compete with that of Audrey Hepburn a couple of years later. And even better, Ingrid Bergman does not forget to create a woman behind this cheerful personality – her Mother Superior is obviously very concerned for her school and her pupils, she radiates authority and love and she is also a woman who is used to fighting for her cause, never giving up hope that God will be on her side when she needs him most. And Ingrid Bergman also works extremely well opposite Bing Crosby. Even though both actors add to the sentimental tone of the story, they still do it differently – Sister Mary Benedict does not always share Father O’Malley’s views but she shows understanding and contradicts him always with respect and admiration. A scene in which they discuss a young girl who failed her test shows this best – while Father O’Malley wants to let her pass to the next grade anyway, Sister Mary Benedict wants to keep up the purpose of the grades. In this scene, it’s very easy to side with Sister Mary Benedict – Father O’Malley might be the beatific saint but Sister Mary Benedict’s views still make much more sense, especially because Ingrid Bergman always shows how much she would like to be able to let the girl pass but still has to follow the rules of the school. But even beyond that, the chemistry between both actors just works completely right – there is no love between them (obviously) but the friendship and respect is always apparent. When Ingrid Bergman sings a song in front of the other nuns and suddenly notices that Father O’Malley is watching her, too, her transition from singing to laughter is too enchanting to ever forget it.

Yes, Ingrid Bergman is a pure delight in her role, emphasizing the loving side of Sister Mary Benedict to create the mood of The Bells of St. Mary’s and fulfilling her role opposite Bing Crosby’s Father O’Malley. But still…her charm and grace lighten up the whole movie but they never result in a truly outstanding performance. Sister Mary Benedict is too limited, too one-dimensional and too reduced to a couple of little scenes without any character development to let Ingrid Bergman reach any true level of artistic excellence. Her performance, as charming as it may be, always stays on the surface of the story and this way perfectly resembles that of Bing Crosby as Father O’Malley – he, too, is charming and delightful but never challenges himself in any way and therefore remains a rather perplexing Oscar winner and nominee for his two turns as the buoyant priest. So – what was it about Ingrid Bergman’s performance that turned her into such a heavy favorite for a second Oscar in 1945? Well, the answer for this question can be found easily – in the remaining 20 percent of her performance. Suddenly, when all hope seems gone for Ingrid Bergman to not only shine personally but also artistically, the script begins to take Sister Mary Benedict through her own quiet and small tour-de-force and Ingrid Bergman takes her performance to a completely satisfying and unforgettable level. After Sister Mary Benedict has been diagnosed with tuberculosis, Father O’Malley arranges her transfer to another position without telling her the true reasons. Sister Mary Benedict assumes that she is punished for her disagreements with Father O’Malley over the grades of the little girl – she immediately accepts the decisions of her superiors but is obviously heartbroken to be forced to leave her children and her whole life behind. In the scenes that follow Ingrid Bergman becomes both completely heartbreaking and heartwarming, showing disappointment and acceptance, sorrow and joy in only a few couple of scenes and creates some of the most moving images of her career. When she receives the news about her transfer, she is able to show how Sister Mary Benedict’s heart breaks in only a few seconds and in this moment it also becomes clear how important the groundwork was that Ingrid Bergman had done in all her scenes before – Sister Mary Benedict has become such a close and familiar presence during the run of the movie that her fate touches the viewers’ hearts much stronger than it might have done otherwise. This wonderful display of subtle emotions is later topped by Ingrid Bergman when she comforts one of her pupils who decided to become a nun to run away from her all her problems. With a caring voice, Ingrid Bergman tells her that one cannot become a nun to avoid life – instead, one has to experience everything and lived a full life before such a decision can be made. It’s a beautiful and touching moment that Ingrid Bergman immediately tops again afterwards with another heartbreaking scene in which Sister Mary Benedict asks God to remove all bitterness from her heart and accept the decision of her superiors to leave the school that is so dear to her. It’s a scene that so many actresses could have used to manipulate the audience but Ingrid Bergman remains simple, straight and honest in these moments and so plays the scene as something much more fulfilling than pure sentiment. And when Father O’Malley finally decides that it would be better for Sister Mary Benedict to know the truth instead of living in constant regret, it suddenly seems to make sense that critics raved about her work so much – the bright, teary-eyed smile when Sister Mary Benedict learns that she is not transferred for any professional reasons but because of her illness is one of the highlights of Ingrid Bergman’s outstanding career and it’s not hard to believe Father O’Malley when he describes Sister Mary Benedict as perfect.

So…is is the single greatest female performance in motion picture history? Certainly not. For this title, there are too many moments that never reach above average and even with Ingrid Bergman’s charming personality never fully satisfy. But there is no denying that she created something otherworldly during those final scenes and if she had been allowed to be on this high level all the time, then her performance would definitely have been much stronger and memorable. As it is, the strength of the final scenes does not help her to overcome the limitations of the rest of her performance but it is enough to go receive 

YOUR Best Actress of 2002

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Julianne Moore - Far fram Heaven (34 votes)

2. Nicole Kidman - The Hours(18 votes)

3. Diane Lane- Unfaithful (12 votes)

4. Renée Zellweger- Chicago (7 vote)

5. Salma Hayek- Frida (3 votes)

Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1945: Joan Crawford in "Mildred Pierce"

Somehow Joan Crawford was always there. She was already doing movies when the Oscar was invented. She watched the reigns of Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo, she worked her way to the top and could have won an Oscar for Grand Hotel if the supporting category had already existed back then. She saw the rise of Bette Davis, the arrival of Katharine Hepburn and the sudden road to stardom of actresses like Jennifer Jones, Joan Fontaine or Greer Garson. And yet, by Oscar standards, her success came very late. Sure, she often blamed the fact that Norma Shearer was given the best material since ‘she sleeps with the boss’ as one of the reasons why she did not truly establish herself in the first row of acclaimed actresses but she still had the amount of success, popularity and critical praise over the years that would usually only make it a matter of time before the Academy notices. After all, other actresses reached the top right away – Katharine Hepburn won her first Best Actress award for one of her first movies, Luise Rainer had just come to Hollywood before the golden guy was in her hands, Vivien Leigh had never acted in an American production before Gone with the Wind and Greer Garson was the Academy’s darling right from the start. But despite all this, Oscar took his time with Joan Crawford. Best Actress nominations have more than once been given as a filler but she never benefited from this. And when she suddenly found herself considered ‘box office poison’, things surely did not look much brighter. Katharine Hepburn was able to overcome this label quickly with her comeback in The Philadelphia Story – but where was Joan’s comeback? She had The Women and won strong reviews for A Woman’s Face but after 1943, she stopped making movies – and waited. Considering the well-known feud between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, it’s one of the biggest laughs in showbiz history that Joan only got her Oscar-winning part after it was turned down by Bette Davis, the studio’s first choice. The fact that director Michael Curtiz famously denied Joan’s request for the part and later insisted on a screen test was another proof that the royal treatment was over – but Joan Crawford would not be Joan Crawford if her comeback would not have been executed and conducted with the utmost precision and attention. A well thought-out combination of anticipation, critical praise, rightly timed word-of-mouth and campaigning finally resulted in one of the most famous comebacks in movie history. And Joan Crawford’s idea to…sorry, her illness which caused her to stay at home and then receive the Oscar in bed guaranteed her an extra amount of publicity no money can buy and helped her to reach the artistic peak of her career – ironically at the same time Bette Davis’s reputation was slowly decreasing.

So, why did Oscar finally pay attention? What surely must have helped was the simple fact that Mildred Pierce was not just another Joan-Crawford-picture but a praised film noir, coming right after the success of Double Indemnity, offering the kind of juicy part that the Academy often loves to honor – a self-scarifying and suffering mother who not only does everything she does for the benefit of her daughter(s) but later has to face the fact that all her hard work and efforts have been wasted since her oldest daughter Veda is not only her biggest treasure but in some ways also her biggest enemy. So, in some ways, Mildred Pierce actually is a Joan-Crawford-vehicle as it is completely focused on its central character and driven by everything she does. Therefore, it is not truly surprising that Mildred Pierce finally earned Joan Crawford her first Oscar nomination and her only win – it was a promise that was finally fulfilled and, like many other actresses before and after, she benefited from the fact that 1945 was her year, when everything was working in her favor and when a win for her just seemed like the most logical decision, even if she was up against a strong field of popular and praised competitors.

Joan Crawford’s work in Mildred Pierce is the essential ‘star performance’ of her career. She was never a character actress or an artistic chameleon but she was often able to use her talents with great effect and mostly excelled when she was playing women who were either terrified or strong, dominant and unforgiving. Her Mildred Pierce somehow falls in the middle of all this, being less strong and terrified than most of her other creations. And so, her Mildred is not necessarily the performance that displays her talents as an actress the most but it is undoubtedly the performance that displays all her talents as a star the most, showing how she could use her personality and charisma to give a performance that is not flawless but still captivating and entertaining from start to finish. Like few other actresses from her era she combined star power with a certain talent for perfecting her own style and presence, a triumph of style over substance. Joan Crawford knew what she could do and what would work – seldom has an actress ever displayed so much confidence in front of the camera and so much ability to dominate everything around her without suffocating her supporting cast or the movie itself. The dominance of Joan Crawford is something that came to her completely naturally as a result of her own style and character. Not even her nemesis Bette Davis possessed such a strong, almost threatening screen presence that dared anyone who would not give 100 percent of his or her attention to her work. Such a presence is obviously a grand help when it comes to playing a role that is the whole center of a movie, carries it and shapes almost every single moment and scene. But the part of Mildred Pierce only benefited from Joan Crawford’s natural advantages – because outside her strengths, her acting could often feel disappointingly empty and melodramatic and since Mildred Pierce is a character that not only needed style but also substance, Joan Crawford’s acting choices often missed important aspects and understanding. On a scale of excellence, she always moved on a certain level, never falling very low but also seldom reaching any heights – there was a consistency in her work that made her performances always strangely satisfying, entertaining and almost always helped her to fulfill all the tasks she was given by the screenplay and the character. She always seemed to realize her scenes with the precision of a robot but expressed them both emotionally and intellectually. Her ability to stay on a certain level without hardly ever leaving it made her work much less distracting than that of other actresses from her era who often combined moments of brilliance with dated over-acting. But – sorry Joan, there has to be a but – the fact that Mildred Pierce is not a character that truly falls into her own comfort zone made it, as mentioned before, often hard for Joan Crawford to truly grasp the motives behind her. She crafted her performance with clear dedication and craftsmanship but there are moments in Mildred Pierce that make Joan Crawford’s limitations as an actress too visible. But strangely enough, these flaws, even though clearly harming her work in many aspects, never truly spoil the effect of her overall performance. Joan Crawford often doesn’t know how handle more emotional scenes and whenever she has to enter this territory outside her comfort zone, she tends to get rather monotonous and repetitious – but thanks to Joan Crawford’s natural screen presence and ability to glide through her movies with that undeniable competence of a gifted performer, her Mildred Pierce is still a captivating and memorable pierce of work. She did not only overcome her own limitations and flaws but made them seem strangely unimportant, too.

Right at the beginning, Joan Crawford is off to a rather rocky start – when she argues with her husband in the kitchen and tells him that her children always come first and also has to handle the emotions of a woman who is very well aware that her husband is cheating on her (even having to listen to him talking to his lover on the phone), Joan Crawford feels rather lost, going through the expected emotions but never letting them become part of her character. Joan Crawford often did not truly develop full characters but rather went from scene to scene, doing what she was supposed to do without having a grip on the bigger truth – this is most visible in these early scenes but actually in an even earlier one, too. The misplaced and miscalculated opening scene of Mildred Pierce might be more the fault of the screenplay than anyone else but Joan Crawford also added this misfire. Right at the start of the movie, Mildred is apparently contemplating suicide, going so far as evidently making up her mind and wanting to jump into the ocean before a police officer stops her. Okay, suicide has always been treated as completely ordinary in many movies, as something that one wants to do in the spur of the moment before everything goes back to normal again. Seen by itself, this might be an exciting introduction to both the movie and the character but taken in the context of the whole story and Joan Crawford’s following characterization, this moment is too out-of-place and too far away from everything else that is going on to be believable in any way. A later scene that has Mildred taking a gun with her just because the screenplay needs it later demonstrates that Mildred Pierce and Joan Crawford are actually doing the same thing – scarifying greater truth and logic for the sake of single moments. In this way, the marriage of Joan Crawford and Mildred Pierce seems like a perfect match and it actually is to a certain extent but it is one with many problems – caused by both sides.

This is also true for the biggest flaw in Joan Crawford’s work – her relationship to her daughters. Considering that Mildred’s whole life is circling around the two little girls in her life, it’s frustrating to see Joan Crawford give barely any explanations for the constant actions of her character. More than anything, Joan Crawford and Ann Blyth unfortunately constantly seem to act past each other. Ann Blyth shows the spoiled, mean, arrogant and hateful side of Veda very well but never once gives any reason why her mother should love her so much. Because of that, Joan Crawford’s own work often suffers since she fails to explain why Mildred either loves her daughter so much that she cannot see all the things that everyone else sees in her or why she is willing to constantly ignore them. Joan Crawford is such a strong force on the screen that any scenes of her appearing either weak or helpless often feels too much like an actress attempting a certain emotion on the outside but failing to be completely convincing. The melodrama in Joan Crawford’s acting style tends to bring her down in those moments even if her ability to stay on her own level on that scale of excellence helps her to prevent her performance suffering from it. So, on the outside, Joan Crawford’s work almost always remains strong and completely watchable – but what are the motives of Mildred Pierce? Why is she so unable to distance herself from her daughter? Joan Crawford never answers them since the screenplay does not help her in those moments. Too often, the script jumps around, taking Mildred from one situation to the other without connecting them in any way. Why did the screenplay treat the fate of Mildred’s younger daughter so nonchalant when Mildred so often stated that her daughters were the most important aspect of her life? It’s refreshing that Joan Crawford refused any overacting in this moment but she basically exaggerated her underacting as a result. And why did Joan Crawford think that a vague ‘Oh…no’ when she hears the news of her daughter’s illness was all that such a dedicated mother would do at this moment? There are endless and exciting possibilities to explore the character of Mildred Pierce, give reason to actions that seem to lack them – but Joan Crawford unfortunately surrendered to the script in these moments, following it too tightly and never trying to go beyond the written word. Her chemistry with Ann Blyth may be excellent and on the short run both women always satisfy the viewer whenever they share the screen – but in the long run, the superficiality of what could have been a deep and complex human relationship becomes too apparent.

So, when all is said and done, it seems that there are hardly any positive aspects in Joan Crawford’s work, doesn’t it? And yes, there are flaws – a lot of them, actually. But it’s still impossible to overlook that Joan Crawford still managed to succeed in this role, as strange as it may seem. An actress can make her flaws extremely obvious or she can somehow manage to overshadow them. Joan Crawford did neither of these two things but instead managed to fit her flaws into her performance in a way that never made them truly disappear but somehow they also never seem to matter. Joan Crawford’s inability to move outside her own comfort zone might prevent her from realizing all the possibilities of Mildred Pierce and yet at the same time, the part seems to fit her like a glove. She clearly benefitted from the structure of the movie that made her character the central aspect but never actually a very complicated one. Actually, Mildred Pierce is a rather limited character which often appears grander and more demanding than it really is. And so, Mildred Pierce and Joan Crawford were an almost perfect match – the part is flashy without being too demanding, dominant without any true challenges. It’s the kind of part that almost automatically makes the actress look good even if both the writing and the acting are flawed. Joan Crawford always keeps the movie going, goes from worried mother to tough business woman, from scorned wife to love interest, from strong and knowing to helpless and unaware. In doing this, Joan Crawford might not connect a whole but she knows how to craft the parts. Her instincts don’t lead her to a deep performance but still to one that seems logical and strong even when it isn’t. She makes her worries for her daughter whom she sees singing in a cheap bar just as moving as she believably shows her inner exhaustion and disappointment when she finds two people in the little house on the beach. Joan Crawford’s own strong screen presence also never makes it doubtful that Mildred would pursue any path she decided to follow with the same determination – may it be being a housewife, a waitress or a successful business woman. And when she finally throws her daughter out of the house, Joan Crawford displays all the anger but also sadness that is troubling Mildred at this moment with a beautiful clarity. Most of all, Joan Crawford wisely made the decision to play Mildred as straight-forward as possible – there are no hidden agendas, no secret desires or dark feelings inside of her. Instead, Mildred is a very direct, even simple woman with a single determination – this was another factor that worked in Joan Crawford’s favor since her own direct acting style fits perfectly to a direct character like this. Overall, few actresses have been able to make the flaws in their own performances appear so unimportant and neglectable. The relationship between Mildred and Veda might not be truly explained but Joan Crawford makes the viewer forget all this when she gets to deliver one of her perfect close-ups. These silent moments, demanding her to express her character’s inner feelings without uttering a word, are always golden and never fail to impress.

Because of all this, Joan Crawford’s work in Mildred Pierce is one of the strangest ones in this category – she so obviously lacks many important qualities that the part needed but she also feels so right in the part, so irreplaceable and so satisfying that it’s hard to deny her the respect she obviously demands. And she clearly fulfills the task of carrying the picture and turning it into a captivating and intense experience, making not only the flaws of her own work but even those of the script seem forgettable. Maybe that’s why Mildred Pierce displays the star Joan Crawford better than almost any other of her performances – the role was not an easy one for her and she never actively tried to go the easy way even if she did her best to adjust the part of Mildred to her own acting style instead of the other way around but in the end, it all comes down to the essential Joan Crawford who both saves and harms the movie but always does it with style, elegance and an undeniable force. Joan Crawford is simply on fire, even if it turns into a misfire sometimes. Of course, her flaws and missteps prevent her from receiving a truly strong grade but her sheer ability to move through Mildred Pierce without ever stumbling over her own shortcomings or the ones of the script helps her to receive  

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Best Actress 1945

The next year will be 1945 and the nominees were

Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's

Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce

Greer Garson in Valley of Decision

Jennifer Jones in Love Letters

Gene Tierney in Leave her to Heaven

Best Actress 2002 - The resolution

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

5. Salma Hayek in Frida

Sometimes Salma Hayek 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 impressively.

4. Nicole Kidman in The Hours

                     

Nicole Kidman's Virginia Woolf enters The Hours already completely developed by the script and the direction and there will also be no true character 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.

3. Diane Lane in Unfaithful

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. 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.

2. Renée Zellweger in Chicago

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, she successfully combined the emptiness of a tricky role with her unique energy and dedication.

1. Julianne Moore in Far from Heaven

With her performance, Julianne Moore not only became a perfect vessel for the style and theme of Far from Heaven but also defined this style and theme herself. Her acting style combined the artificiality of a world that never seemed to face reality with a modern honesty that is heartbreaking in its forlornness.

Best Actress 2002: Julianne Moore in "Far from Heaven"

Being an early Oscar-frontrunner can be a blessing and a curse. There are those actors and actresses who took over the leading position right from the start and are able to maintain their momentum right until Academy Awards night. In 2006, Helen Mirren, Forrest Whittaker and Jennifer Hudson became three unstoppable forces during awards season and first scored with the critics, later with the industry awards and finally the Oscars. One year before, Reese Witherspoon and Philip Seymour Hoffman basically never had to remain seated during an awards ceremony and also collected a more than impressive share of critic awards. And during the 90s, Holly Hunter and Emma Thompson turned themselves into Oscar favorites from the moment the first awards were given out and expectedly held an Oscar in their hands various weeks later. Of course, there are also frontrunners that don’t emerge until the industry awards are handed out – the Best Actress race in 2010 was always considered to be between Annette Bening and Natalie Portman but when Natalie Portman swept the Golden Globes, the BAFTA, the SAG Award and the Critics Choice Award, the race was basically over. And a couple of years before, Annette Bening also was an early favorite for her work in Being Julia – only to watch Hilary Swank join the competition at the last minute and win the important industry awards and ultimately the Oscar. Everybody knew that Charlize Theron would easily win the Oscar for her work in Monster, but her status was never truly confirmed until she won at the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild. Halle Berry was always an also-run for the Best Actress Oscar but a last-minute win at the SAG Awards suddenly turned her into the frontrunner and ultimately the winner. And, of course, the Best Actress winner of 2002, Nicole Kidman, also did not play any part in the race for the critic awards that year and also had to face serious category confusion – her decision to compete in the leading category was seen by many as a death sentence for her Oscar hopes. But then, the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs bestowed their accolades to her work as depressed and suicidal author Virginia Woolf and suddenly her win became inevitable. So, to come back to the first phrase – being an early Oscar-frontrunner can be a blessing and a curse. If everything fits together perfectly, this early frontrunner status can make an actor or actress unstoppable – but often enough, things don’t necessarily come together perfectly and for every Oscar winner that gained momentum during the industry awards, there has to be one (or more, depending on the diversity of the field) performer(s) who somehow lost their own momentum along the way. Sally Hawkins was the darling of the critics for her work in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky but while the Golden Globes also awarded her, the BAFTAs and the SAG Awards ignored her and the Oscars followed suit. Sissy Spacek seemed destined to win a second Oscar for her work as a grieving mother in In the Bedroom – apart from important critic awards, she also won the Golden Globe despite the fact that she was neither new nor young. Everything seemed to run smoothly for her but after Halle Berry won the SAG Award, her frontrunner status crumbled from one day to the other. Virginia Madsen and Thomas Hayden Church elegantly dominated the awards season for their work in Sideways but when it was time for the industry awards, new performers took home the trophies. It’s impossible to say when an early frontrunner will fall and how it happened – maybe expectations were too high, maybe memories of the voters are too short, maybe somebody else simply peaked at the right moment while somebody else peaked too early. Such a case surely happened in 2002. As just mentioned, Nicole Kidman did not attract too much attention at the beginning of the awards season but she picked up steam just at the right moment and peaked exactly when it was time for Academy members to fill out their ballots. And the one who peaked too early was Julianne Moore. After her stellar reviews for her work in Far from Heaven and first important wins in Los Angeles and at the National Board of Review, she seemed destined to sweep her way to the Oscar stage, especially since she also got extra attention for her work as a depressed housewife in The Hours in the same year. But it seems that her momentum never really took off – she kept winning a good deal of smaller awards but Diane Lane took some of her thunder when she won the other prestigious awards from New York and the National Society of Film Critics for her passionate and powerful work as a housewife caught between two men in the erotic thriller Unfaithful. And when the industry awards were coming up, Julianne Moore had basically turned into an ‘also-run’ as the race now focused on the eventual winner Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger as the singing murderess in the Best Picture winner Chicago. And on top of that, Julianne Moore had to face another blow as she became the third performer to lose two acting awards in one night when her performance in The Hours lost the Supporting Actress Oscar to Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago. And so, what had seemed like Julianne Moore’s year a few months earlier, had become both a victim of bad timing as Academy members had directed their attention somewhere else by voting time and another example that very often quiet and subtle performances often have a disadvantage compared to more showy or transformative roles. In the end, it’s all over and done but it’s always interesting to see how frontrunners suddenly fall and also-runs suddenly become the favorites…

So, what about Julianne Moore’s performance as Cathy Whittaker, a happy and fulfilled housewife during the 50s whose life suddenly falls apart when she finds out that her husband is gay and she begins to develop romantic feelings for her African-American gardener? As mentioned just now, this is a very quiet and restrained performance, mirroring a woman who lives a quiet and almost obedient life and who has not only accepted the role that society has given to her but cherishes it with the utmost contentment. Therefore the character of Cathy Whittaker is one that already presents an actress with various challenges – the style of Far from Heaven demands a performance that is modern and old-fashioned, subtle and submissive, passive but not inconsiderable. And after seeing Far from Heaven, it seems impossible to imagine another actress in this part. Julianne Moore always seems to be most comfortable in her roles if she is playing a woman who is haunted by various ideas, wanting something she isn’t sure of herself yet and who is caught in a conventional environment. But she also needs to find the unconventional in her role – if her character is as unimaginative as its surroundings, she can easily get lost and her strange charisma be reduced to a pale imitation of itself. On the other hand, Julianne Moore is also able to go very far overboard with her emotions and her acting style often becomes uncomfortable in situations that demand that she turns her exterior into a vessel for the volcano that is hiding inside her characters. In those moments, she can be strangely over-the-top, using the full volume of her voice without finding an appropriate counterpart in her acting. But there is also the other Julianne Moore – the one that can express a lifetime of pain in her eyes, who can use her face and her voice to tell more about lost hopes, shattered dreams, illusions destroyed by reality and the longing for a life that that is as far away from her as heaven itself than pages of dialogue ever could. Barely any other actress can speak so much without saying anything at all or communicate her character’s most honest and felt emotions with only the slightest change of mood. And Cathy Whittaker is a woman who lives a life of quietness and happiness which will always cover any sort of discomfort or problems because the image of a perfect home, a perfect marriage and a perfect family shall not be destroyed. And so, Julianne Moore was able to turn her performance as Cathy Whittaker into the signature role of her career in which not only the acting style of the player and the character fitted together with perfect accordance but also allowed the player to add even more beyond this obvious match – Julianne Moore filled Cathy Whittaker with a spirit and intelligence that is complete and intertwines with each other without becoming a sum of parts. From her first moments on the screen, she knows how to display Cathy’s apparent simple-mindedness that slowly uncovers a woman who is slowly experiencing the world around her with more awareness – only to be crushed by the realities behind the facades that she, too, had helped to establish.

Far from Heaven is an overall concept – unlike Julianne Moore’s Cathy Whittaker, it actually is a sum of its parts. The movie is a stylized combination of exteriors like costumes, art direction, score and cinematography and of interiors like style, ideas and themes. It can easily be seen as a parody of the work by Douglas Sirk which, like no other, has created the tone of the melodrama of the 50s, filled with over-the-top colors, styles and performances. But if Far from Heaven shows the rifts in the perfect facades of those perfect little families in their perfect little houses with their perfect little gardens, the work of Douglas Sirk not necessarily showed anything else – alcoholism, sexual intrigues, lies, couples shunned by society all shape his work. More than anything, Far from Heaven seems rather like a general comment on a society bygone to ask how much has actually changed since then and uses its stylized approach and surface as a contrast to the reality and existence behind it. This combination of old-fashioned melodrama with a modern execution can be a disaster at worst, a masterpiece at best. Thankfully, Far from Heaven falls into the latter category. It’s a timeless story set in a very recognizable era, provoking, thoughtful, reflecting and ultimately heartbreaking – all of this in the single character of Cathy Whittaker and the single performance of Julianne Moore. The acting in Far from Heaven is, in some ways, just another part that creates the overall sum – but Julianne Moore’s central performance is the one single element that carries everything else, she as much reflects her stylized surroundings as she dominates it. And most of all, her performance combines the style of Far from Heaven perfectly – her performance finds the style of old-fashioned melodrama to the point that she seems to come out of a 50s soap commercial with a completely modern and natural acting style which allows her to find emotional and intellectual depth in a part that usually would only exist on the surface. In this way, her performance works in perfect harmony with Far from Heaven – her acting style shapes the style of the movie while the style of the movie shapes her acting style. So it is no surprise that Julianne Moore’s work in Far from Heaven is not only the signature role of her career but also a career-hight and, like the movie itself, a masterpiece in portraying a quiet and slowly developing desperation, caused by a society that neither could nor would understand.

In crafting Cathy Whittaker, Julianne Moore realized various levels of a woman who is finding her life turned upside down but also has certain ideas about herself and the people around her. Most importantly, she did not start her performance by portraying a woman who is hiding the usual hidden feelings and emotions inside – because these feelings and emotions don’t exist inside of her. Instead, Julianne Moore displays how much Cathy Whittaker has become a part of her surroundings – living in a world dominated by men and gossip, trying to be as perfect as humanly possible while making it all as normal as humanly possible, too. Cathy Whittaker never appears like an extraordinary or remarkable woman – instead, Julianne Moore portrays this perfection with a surprising amount of every-day commonness. In the hands of Julianne Moore, everything in Far from Heaven seems strangely normal – from the dialogue about perfect little children to the strange artificiality of the other characters to the overall tone and atmosphere of a world that seems too outlandish to be real. And so, Julianne Moore began her performance with the perfect combination of substance and emptiness: her Cathy never appears stupid, naïve or dumb – instead, she has simply fitted her personality and behavior to a role that she feels she has to fulfill. And Cathy Whittaker is also not an angel in this world – her behavior opposite her black maid is friendly but still shows a certain feeling of superiority in Cathy. She would never consider herself anything else than completely tolerant and open-minded but she would also never stop a racist conversation during one of her parties. She eagerly tells Raymond that she supports equal rights for Negroes without realizing how awkward she appears. She may fall in love with a black man but Julianne Moore clearly demonstrates that this is a single incident in the life of Cathy – as she says herself, she has no one left in the world she can talk to and Raymond’s kindness, warmth and gentle manner came to her in a time when she needed it most. When her husband accuses her of her relationship with Raymond, Julianne Moore lets Cathy raise her voice for the only time in Far from Heaven, a loud and almost misplaced refusal of his accusations which still works so perfectly because it shows how much Cathy still needs to deny any of those thoughts, to herself just as much as to anyone else.

But beyond the first impressions of Cathy, Julianne Moore also slowly developed the character of Cathy as she constantly begins to see beyond those peaceful surfaces as her life slowly falls apart. Apparently for the first time, she notices the gossip of the people around her, the problems of the people that live on the other side of the town and the superficiality of friendships that seemed to have been strong and true. And in this process, Julianne Moore becomes, no other words can describe it, absolutely heartbreaking. Barely any other performance is able to evoke such a sense of personal tragedy, of a life that is not harmed but almost seems wasted as opportunities and possibilities go by and only despair remains. When she drives around with Raymond, Julianne Moore clearly lets Cathy find the implications of this situation but she does not seem to be aware of what it truly means for her. She shows her constantly caught between the life she knows and the life she slowly discovers without ever making it appear grander than it really is – there is never a single doubt that Cathy would always chose her husband above everything else. When she goes with him to a doctor’s office to ‘cure him’, she shows that Cathy is doing the only thing she knows and the best she can think of – for him and for her. She always appears almost helpless in her character, displaying how much these changes in her life challenge her inner believes. And in her scenes opposite Dennis Haysbert, Julianne Moore delivers various scenes that are a constant display of quiet and private devastation that leave an almost harrowing impression. Her delivery of the line ‘You’re so beautiful’ contains an overwhelming amount of hope, desperation, regret and loneliness and lets Julianne Moore use her talents for subtle communication to the greatest results, just like a later scene when she quietly reacts to the news that her husband wants to leave her for a man. Far from Heaven is not kind to its three central characters – they all have to hide, disappear in unknown locations, fear the reactions of society. But Cathy’s fate leads to her to much more misery. Frank leaves her in the hope of finding personal happiness, even if it means to keep a life in secrecy. Raymond has to leave her because society cannot accept any relation between him and Cathy. But they can leave. Cathy is the one who stands behind, alone, deprived of her last companion. It’s the final message of Far from Heaven – men can choose, women have to accept. Twice, Cathy dares to go to Raymond, only to realize that her dreams will remain illusions. Julianne Moore’s wordless final scene at the train station is not only the highlight of the movie or her career but also one of the highlights of the Best Actress category. For a last time, Cathy wants to challenge her fate and the reality of her life – she can only hope that something will happen in this moment, unable to go beyond the steps she has taken. But reality triumphs again in this moment and Cathy can only watch as her hopes for happiness are leaving her life in this moment. In these scenes, Julianne Moore manages to become almost transparent, turning her inner grief into one of the most devastating moments this category has ever seen, draining all emotions and feelings from Cathy and the viewers.

With her performance, Julianne Moore not only became a perfect vessel for the style and theme of Far from Heaven but also defined this style and theme herself. Her acting style combined the artificiality of a world that never seemed to face reality with a modern honesty that is heartbreaking in its forlornness. Most impressively, Julianne Moore never felt affected by her stylized surroundings – her performance may be a part of this artificiality, but her work always feels real and grounded, carrying Far from Heaven and giving it true depth and substance beyond the style. Very few other performances could display such a world of hope and regret and for this, Julianne Moore gets

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