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




-

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




-

Best Actress 1963: Rachel Roberts in "This Sporting Life"

Interestingly, three of the nominated actresses in 1963 had also taken home BAFTA awards for their performances. Leslie Caron won the prize for Best British Actress in 1963 and the next year, Rachel Roberts received the same award for her work in This Sporting Life while Patricia Neal took home the gold as Best Foreign Actress in Hud. For Rachel Roberts, it would be one of overall three BAFTAs she received during her career and her performance in This Sporting Life would also result in her first and final Oscar nomination. Her work as a young, repressed and bitter widow opposite Richard Harris was definitely a critically highlight in a career that would that would end tragically when Rachel Roberts killed herself in 1980, apparently out of misery and regret over her divorce from Rex Harrison. Harrison himself had also been nominated for an Oscar in 1964, making him and Rachel Roberts one of the few husband-and-wife-teams that scored nods in the same year. Rex Harrison would win an Oscar one year later for his signature role as Professor Henry Higgins in the musical My Fair Lady. And what about his wife? Does she have any signature part? The biggest problem with this question is certainly the fact that Rachel Roberts is not truly the kind of actress that is still largely remembered or praised. When it comes to high-profile British actresses from this time, there are many names that are mentioned much more easily and quickly and even among those actresses mostly referred to as ‘character actress’, others like Wendy Hiller enjoy a much higher reputation. Personally, I am also not too familiar with Rachel Roberts’s body of work – like most followers of the Academy Awards, I have seen her work in Murder on the Orient-Express even though I never watch it for this purpose. But even in the small part of Hildegard Schmidt, Rachel Roberts’s hard face, her cold and suspicious glances and her tight body movement left a lasting impression even if the role itself is a little bit of nothing. So, on paper, the combination of Rachel Robert’s cold screen presence and the part of Margaret Hammond, a cold, almost merciless, judgmental and depreciating young widow who still lives in the memories of the past while trying to handle her strange relationship to Frank Machin, an upcoming rugby player who rents one of her rooms, appears like a perfect match. But the right personality is certainly not the only important factor for a great performance. Nearly every character that Audrey Hepburn played was elevated by her radiant charm, poise and personality – but this does not mean that all of these performances were masterpieces. Margaret Hammond suits Rachel Roberts and vice versa – but what about the actual performance that results from this match?

In This Sporting Life, Rachel Robert faced some of the same obstacles Patricia Neal did in Hud – mostly the fact that her role often feels rather secondary compared to that of her male co-star. And if this wasn’t enough, both Paul Newman and Richard Harris dominated their movies with uncompromising, challenging, riveting and stark performances that haven’t lost a bit of their energetic and realistic appeal. Both actors crafted characters that defied conventions, that pushed the opinion of others aside and that spread an aura of pure sex, no matter how unappealing or off-putting they may appear. In This Sporting Life, Richard Harris may easily be confused with a young Marlon Brando, as not only his acting style but even his looks remind the viewer of Brando’s personality and electric screen presence. But Richard Harris never felt like a copy of Brando and instead found his own voice in his role and therefore gives a raw and powerful piece of work that matches the celebrated, brutal but also sensual and sensitive work of those new and realistic actors like Brando, Paul Newman, Montgomery Clift or James Dean at every step. Okay, but enough of Richard Harris for now. Because does this have any significance for Rachel Roberts’s work? Having a powerful co-star does not mean that the other actor cannot be equally impressive. Well, but a lot here simply depends on the writing – Patricia Neal faced a severely underwritten character in Alma Brown and even though she improved her material vastly by adding wisdom and experience to her role which made her performance a very satisfying experience, she was still constantly overshadowed by the work of those around her, mainly that of Paul Newman. Rachel Roberts also has the problem that This Sporting Life focuses most of its attention to the character of Frank but it also has to be said that her role is still significantly larger than that of Patricia Neal in Hud and that Mrs. Hammond also plays a much more central role in the structure of This Sporting Life than Alma Brown in Hud. Okay, but comparing Patricia Neal and Rachel Roberts here is basically rather pointless since this review is supposed to focus on Rachel Roberts – the ranking at the end of the year can do the comparison. But what’s still left to say is the fascination in comparing these two actresses attack these two similar and yet also different parts. Patricia Neal took a part that offered her pretty much nothing on paper and added various dimensions and inner brokenness to turn Alma into the complex and earthy creation she turned out to be. Rachel Roberts on the other hand was given much more by the script – Margaret Hammond suffers from the death of her husband, her inability to deal with a man like Frank and her unwillingness to change her life outside or inside. Because of this, Mrs. Hammond was rather already fully developed before Rachel Roberts became her and the actress therefore had to follow a stricter guideline in her characterization. But since the character of Margaret Hammond is certainly an extremely fascinating one and Rachel Roberts’s own screen presence already suited to the part so wonderfully and she not relied on this screen presence but crafted Margaret’s rejection, fear and hate with a strangely intriguing coldness, Rachel Roberts’s performance is much more memorable, spellbinding and exciting than it could have been by either an actress who didn’t suit the part so well or by Rachel Roberts herself if she had decided to simply rely on her personal effect in that role instead of creating Margaret beyond that.

The first moments of Rachel Roberts’s performance happen as memories of an injured Frank – even though he has such strong feelings for her, the first image of her that seems to come into his head is that of her rejecting, disapproving glances and of the shoes that she keeps by the fire side. Shoes that used to belong to her dead husband and which she still cleans and polishes as if he might walk through the door any moment. Like an evil ghost, Mrs. Hammond lingers in Frank’s mind and even his memories cannot change her character – she tells him that she is sick of him and that she and her two children will be better off without him and in the delivery of Rachel Roberts, there is no doubt that Margaret really means those words. She also states that she won’t pretend to be happy for him – that angry, constantly disapproving face that seems to have not seen a smile in years is as strong a part of her character as her desire to clean the shoes of her dead husband. And when Frank asks her if she doesn’t want to be happy, her answer is a stern ‘If I’m left alone, I am happy’. Especially this last line is delivered by Rachel Roberts without any exaggeration and she did not try to turn this single bit of dialogue into the central symbol of her character. Again, a comparison with Patricia Neal can help because both actresses thankfully resisted the temptation to fill various of their on-screen moments with big declarations or attempts to make their words appear more important than they truly are – instead, both women live in their roles and show that her moments on-screen may be the only time the audience gets to know them but in their own world, they have already experienced a lot without the audience. Rachel Roberts shows that Margaret Hammond is not limited to the world of This Sporting Life but demonstrates in her acting that she is also a product of earlier times. But surely the most fascinating aspect of this performance is the fact that Mrs. Hammond can never be truly explained or understood – did she turn into this bitter and cold woman after the death of her husband or was she already like this before? There are rumors that Mr. Hammond’s death was not an accident but actually a suicide – does she realize this, is this the reason for her behavior or was her behavior maybe the reason for the suicide? Rachel Roberts gives no answer to this but it’s clear that, even though she still cleans the shoes of her dead husband, she does not live in a parallel fantasy world in which she expects him to return any moment – it’s not even clear if there was really love between them or if Mrs. Hammond treated her husband with the same kind of annoyed anger as she treats Frank. Maybe it is just the memory of him that she truly cherishes, the thoughts of a time in which there was a father, a mother and two children – surely an ideal situation for a woman who so often feels embarrassed because of what the neighbors might say about her and Frank. Overall, Rachel Roberts beautifully succeeded in turning Mrs. Hammond into a woman who is very secluded, off-putting and often downright disdainful without making her unlikable or an unwelcome presence in This Sporting Life, which might even be her biggest achievement in this part. That she was able to captivate the audience for so long and turn her character into a kind of fascinating enigma while basically constantly telling Frank and the audience to leave her alone with a voice full of hate and anger is certainly a remarkable feat. Mrs. Hammond is the kind of woman who can destroy every bit of happiness in others – when Frank tells her about his new contract and how much money he received, Mrs. Hammond only needs one small comment to ruin this whole moment for him. And just as Rachel Roberts gives no reason to the question how Mrs. Hammond became like this, she also leaves it open why she keeps acting like this, why she apparently feels the need to destroy happiness, push Frank away and almost retire from all human contact. But again, Rachel Roberts did a beautiful job in creating Mrs. Hammond like such an almost unbearable woman without becoming unbearable.

Another highlight in Rachel Roberts’s work is her chemistry with Richard Harris. Both actors had a certainly very demanding task in crafting their own characters but also creating a believable relationship. Especially Rachel Roberts needed to work very carefully since her character basically loathes Frank and everything he stands for but also falls for him at some time – and she also had to make it believable that Frank would even want to get involved with her. Margaret tells Frank quite open that she does not care to see him play rugby, she does not want to go with him on a ride in his new car, she more than once tells him to go, that he makes her sick and what not – but for some strange reasons, the fact that Frank keeps trying to get involved with Margaret, that he wants her, does not seem unbelievable at all. Rachel Roberts is not a sex bomb and even downplays her looks in this role, so any kind of erotic attraction from his side is not the simple answer. Mrs. Hammond is also not the kind of woman who makes you want her by pushing you away. But there is a certain chemistry between these two actors and Rachel Roberts walked a very thin line between being completely unlikeable and unlikeable, but still appealing. Just like the character of Mrs. Hammond itself, the appeal of Rachel Roberts in this part is hard to explain but the relationship between Mrs. Hammond and Frank and the chemistry between Rachel Roberts and Richard Harris is strangely captivating and satisfying. When she finally decides to go to the country with Frank and her children, the viewer almost waits for her to destroy the happiness of the others but when she catches a ball and finally smiles, it’s almost a relieving moment. And Rachel Roberts again did not over-emphasize this smile as a fundamental change in Mrs. Hammond but instead showed that she can find a little happiness in her life without softening her character. When the relationship with Frank develops and Mrs. Hammond even puts her husband’s shoes away, Rachel Roberts lets her character even smile a bit more, talking about old times with her husband, making it again an enigma why she turned into such a stern and icy woman. But a relationship like the one between Mrs. Hammond and Frank is destined to be broken from the start and Rachel Roberts impressively displays how much Margaret hates herself for actually falling for him, how the embarrassment during a dinner in a fancy restaurant with Frank is hurting her inside and how she now hates herself even more for having given him a chance. And later, Rachel Roberts become immensely heartbreaking when she begs Frank to leave, packing his things while he hits her, trying to remove herself from him, fearful that he might again speak out about the rumor of the suicide, an accusation to which she replied with a shocked ‘You want to kill me?’ Rachel Roberts’s character and role may never be as prominent in This Sporting Life as that of Richard Harris but her powerful work certainly prevented her from being over-shadowed at any moment.

It’s a performance that mixes moments of pure intensity with shocking and heartbreaking images. Rachel Roberts can accuse Frank Harris of being a big ape and take a slap in the face outside of a church without any kind of emotional reaction. Very often, she moves her head away from Frank and the camera as if even the contact with the audience is too much for her but Rachel Roberts did not turn Mrs. Hammond into a lonely spinster nor a crazy woman who wallows in her own misery. It’s a very effective turn that leaves a lasting and hunting impression and for this she receives

Best Actress 1963: Leslie Caron in "The L-Shaped Room"

Leslie Caron had quite an impressive career start in the 50s – her first movie role was opposite Gene Kelly in the Best Picture winner An American in Paris and only 2 years later she would receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actress as a young, depressive girl who forms a strange relationship to a puppeteer in the musical drama Lili. After this, critical success became rather slim although she did star in another Best Picture winner, the musical Gigi. In this movie, just like in Lili, she played a young, inexperienced girl who needs a man to fulfill her own happiness. Finally, in 1963, Leslie Caron left her child-like image behind and starred as a young, unmarried and pregnant woman in the Black-and-White drama The L-Shaped Room. This controversial role is certainly as far removed as possible from the colorful, entertaining and sing-along world she had been mostly known for up to this point. And this time, critics were fully convinced and a win at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs must have made her a strong competitor for the Oscar statuette. Today, Leslie Caron does not necessarily hold a reputation as a strong dramatic actress – not only is she mostly remembered for her musical roles because these movies still have a lasting appeal while movies like The L-Shaped Room are largely forgotten but it seems that people want to remember her for her parts as Nina, Lili or Gigi, as if the innocence and sweetness she portrayed in these roles are the only aspects of her personality and her abilities as an actress that are worth cherishing. Leslie Caron may not have the same irresistible screen presence as another actress who started her career in the 50s, Audrey Hepburn, and she also was not really able to turn these roles into showcases for her talent and dedication like Audrey did, but she did possess a certain charisma that helped her to pull of such rather empty and thin characters because these characters mostly needed charisma to become alive. In her most famous parts, Leslie Caron may never be outstanding in any way and a more skilled actress might have realized these roles with more depth but Leslie Caron also never disappointed and gave performances that were satisfying enough to either carry the picture or become an enjoyable part of it.

In The L-Shaped Room, Leslie Caron did not have her usual advantages – being sweet or innocent would neither help her in a Black-and-White drama nor would it be believable in this kind of role. Furthermore, she could only use her acting talents in this case – the movie itself did not help her by surrounding her with entertaining situations that would enable her to show her charm and appeal, may it be by singing a song with four puppets or dancing through her apartment with a bottle of Champagne. No, The L-Shaped Room completely depended on her ability to communicate her character’s fears and worries while showing how her interactions with various inhabitants of an old English house, in which her character rents an l-shaped room to live in during her pregnancy, slowly changes and strengthens her character without either exaggerating or downplaying this transformation. In her role, Leslie Caron had to find new ways to use her usual screen personality while redefining it at the same time. And while Leslie Caron may not be the greatest actress in movie history, she was always able to portray her character’s inner feelings and emotions with a surprisingly subtle facial work that could easily build a connection between her and the audience without making it appear as if she was acting for the audience. Leslie Caron could easily portray likeable heroines that become an easy object of affection for her male co-star or the viewer. This aspect certainly helped her to find the necessary appeal in Jane because even though the character may not resemble her usual parts, it still benefited from her way of appearing so naïve and child-like but also so practical, grown-up and experienced.

In the 1963 Best Actress line-up, Leslie Caron is the only nominee who truly had to carry her picture. Both Patricia Neal and Rachel Roberts faced slightly limited parts and also played second fiddle to their powerful male co-stars who were the real centre of Hud and This Sporting Life. Shirley MacLaine’s role in Irma La Douce was considerable longer but Billy Wilder’s direction made it very clear that he was only interested in providing a showcase for Jack Lemmon’s comedic talents and considered Shirley MacLaine as an obligatory necessity. And Natalie Wood played the female lead in a romantic comedy with serious undertones but a movie like this obviously also featured an equally important male lead. In this case, Leslie Caron’s performance stands out among the nominees this year but at the same it’s surprising that hers is by far the most ‘passive’ and reactive part out of the five contenders – Jane is a character that mostly reacts and listens, one who is influenced by her own journey of thoughts and experiences. Because of this, Leslie Caron needed to craft Jane with even more dedication because the character could easily have gotten lost in a movie that is actually about her. And Leslie Caron achieved this goal beautifully by presenting Jane as an ever-developing character – she did not present her with any clear ideas or thoughts of how Jane should behave or what she expects. Instead, she showed that Jane is a woman who has no idea about her future, about her life and her present – she is still developing her own feelings and thoughts about both her current situation and her life when her child will be born. In this way, she used her usual screen presence as a woman who is wondering about what life will bring her while denying the audience her usual sugar-coated approach to this material. Usually, Leslie Caron’s presence was mostly needed for some more emotional, maybe even superficial moments – even in her own star-vehicle Lili, the more dramatic depth was given to her co-star Mel Ferrer. But in The L-Shaped Room, it fell upon Leslie Caron to provide the dramatic arc of the story while her male co-star Tom Bell was the one to provide charm and sweetness.

In her role, Leslie Caron benefited the most from the fact that her movie takes such an unspectacular look at her personal situation – The L-Shaped Room never feels like a cheap attempt to ‘shock’ the audience of 1963 with an unmarried, pregnant woman nor like a voyeuristic look into the exciting life of a ‘girl in technical difficulties’, as Gregory Peck called it the Oscar ceremony that year. Instead, The L-Shaped Room is as subtle, quiet and straight-forward as possible (even though it does feature some occasional melodramatic moments) – it takes a completely ordinary approach at this extraordinary story, treating Jane with a welcoming distance that allows her to develop as an independent creation while also letting Leslie Caron’s performance work in beautiful harmony with this unspectacular style. Her simplicity in a part that could have been an over-the-top portrayal of worries, grief, regret, hope, love and desperation is beautiful to watch and by playing her role just as unspectacularly as the screenplay writes it, she creates an atmosphere that is neither overly tense nor tired but moves the picture along smoothly, with a touching quietness and captivation. Sadly, there are moments when Leslie Caron tends to become that cute, little girl again, may it be Gigi or Lili, who only wants to be loved by a man, especially when the screenplays asks her to show a more desperate side or when she is worrying about the whereabouts of Toby. In these moments, the effect of her work becomes somewhat less satisfying but Leslie Caron finds enough positive moments in her work as a compensation. Her big, dramatic speech to Toby at the top of the stairs is played with just the right mix of over-the-top and honest reality and her tears never feel forced and her voice never appears to be trying too hard. Overall, her chemistry with Tom Bell is one of the strongest aspects of The L-Shaped Room, no matter if the characters are fighting or lying in bed together. Unfortunately, the role of a man in Jane’s life is often too overemphasized in a movie that is actually about a woman trying to organize her life alone – an obligatory love story was probably wanted but not truly needed. Still, Leslie Caron did her best by never insisting that Jane is actually looking for a man. Instead, she seems to enjoy Toby’s presence and certainly feels an attraction towards him but she never truly wanted this relationship to develop the way it did – Jane likes the idea of being loved but sees herself alone. This way, Leslie Caron avoided to turn Jane into ‘the woman’ even though she does sometimes exaggerate her needs for affection.

But apart from Tom Bell, Leslie Caron also works well with the other players of The L-Shaped Room. Since the journey of Jane is influenced so much by the other characters she meets in the little house, Leslie Caron always has to step back a little while those characters and actors get their little moment in the sunlight but Leslie Caron did her best to show that Jane is not only listening to their words but is actually also touched and influenced by them. This way, the journey of Jane turned into the journey of a woman who finds new ideas for her life but who also remains the same person she was before. During her stay, Jane accepts certain ideas while remaining strong about her own. She may have used this little, l-shaped room to retreat from the world but she used it to develop and face this world again. Leslie Caron shows Jane as a woman who tries to hide her fears and who does not have any illusions about her live but who is still a little puzzled by it. When she decides to keep the baby or shows Jane’s happiness when she realizes that she did not lose it, Leslie Caron never portrays these worries as grander than they really are – her Jane never tries to become a symbol of lost hopes or regret of the past. In this way, Leslie Caron succeeded the same way Patricia Neal succeeded in Hud – by focusing on the character instead of trying to go for more. And especially in the scenes opposite the father of her unborn child, Leslie Caron crafts Jane with a refreshing individualism – Jane neither wants to apologize for her behavior nor does she expect any support in this moment, from the father or the audience. Instead, she is very honest as a woman expecting nothing.

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. What the character of Jane may miss in mystery, depth or really captivating qualities, Leslie Caron makes up by finding beauty in the ordinary. For all of this, she receives

YOUR Best Actress of 1951

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Vivien Leigh - A Streetcar named Desire (43 votes)

2. Katharine Hepburn - The African Queen (6 votes)

3. Shelley Winters - A Place in the Sun (2 votes)

4. Eleanor Parker - Detective Story (1 vote)

5. Jane Wyman - The Blue Veil (0 votes)

Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1963: Patricia Neal in "Hud"

Ah, the never-ending debate…leading or supporting? Even I have had various discussions about this topic on this blog already but the simple truth is that there is no truth. Everybody will see the input and influence of a performance differently, everybody has different criteria for the definition of ‘leading’ and ‘supporting’ and everybody has quite simply a different opinion overall. So, my opinions on Patricia Neal’s Oscar-winning turn as Alma Brown, the lonely and earthy housekeeper in Hud: slight borderline case with a strong tendency for supporting. I used to call this a clear supporting performance in the past – and for good reasons. I still insist that, if the film makers had wanted to, the part of Alma Brown could have been left on the cutting room floor without affecting the overall plot of the movie. The whole story of Hud circles around Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas and Brandon De Wilde with Patricia Neal providing some more emotional moments from time to time but she never does either become a part of the main storyline nor does she ever get her own. She is Paul Newman’s object of affection and as such written surprisingly thin. But somehow, Patricia Neal’s screen presence and her unique take on this character help her to achieve a level of visibility in Hud that other actresses might have missed and her status as the only female presence in this modern Western somehow makes her classification as Leading Actress more understandable. In the end, it’s all relative – the Golden Globes nominated her as Supporting Actress (but the winner was Margaret Rutherford for The V.I.P.s which has to make Patricia Neal’s win truly unique – has there ever been another Best Actress winner at the Oscars who lost the Golden Globe as Supporting Actress for the same performance?) while the critics in New York, the National Board of Review and the BAFTAs awarded her in the leading category. So, even though I would probably still put her in the supporting category if I could decide the category placement myself, her entry as leading actress does make enough sense. But: what about the performance? I often complained that if an actress is not given enough material to build on, material that presents her with a developed character and allows her to find additional depth and aspects herself, it is very hard for her to compete with other, more fully realized performances in this category. After all, Vivien Leigh had probably over three hours of screen time in Gone with the Wind, plus a demanding character that goes through various transformations while Patricia Neal has maybe 20 minutes of screen time and is given a character that only exists to reject Hud’s sexual advances. How can they compare? Well, to sum it up: Patricia Neal does suffer from the thin writing and the fact that Hud creates its own world that Alma Brown is barely touching at all – but it’s also the truth that it’s all about quality and not quantity and one critic was certainly right when he stated that Patricia Neal fully realized all of the part’s potentials, no matter how small or scattered they may be.

As Alma Brown, Patricia Neal had to fight hard to make her presence noteworthy and to let her character truly become a part of Hud instead of an occasional addition. And for this fight, Patricia Neal chose a very intriguing approach that does not include any scene-stealing, overacting or exaggerating – instead, her performance is one of the most straight-forward, subtle and low-key pieces of work this category has ever seen. There are no big break-downs, no big scenes, no big emotions. Alma Brown is one of the most calm, relaxed, wise and unflashy creations in movie history, a woman who breathes and lives but does not overwhelm the audience. It’s an extremely interesting and unique approach to a part that could have been played in a thousand different ways and that could have invited countless actresses to try to leave a big impression as desperately as possible – but by not trying to make any big impression at all, Patricia Neal found a way to create Alma as a woman who escapes the usual logic of characters like these and she underlined the script’s writing by showing Alma as an outsider by choice but making her a part of Hud by her behavior and interactions with the other cast-members. Her Alma is fascinatingly mysterious and yet very familiar, she is neither a very deep nor a very complex character but she benefits a great deal from Patricia Neal’s interpretation which is able to suggest a whole life beyond Hud, a journey that Alma has gone through and that will continue long after the movie has ended. Because of a lack of an own plotline by the script, Patricia Neal had only herself to rely on and her acting choices, even though not always able to truly overcome the limits of her character, made it possible for her to leave a distinct mark on her role and the movie and she was able to add various layers beyond the surface of Alma, added only by her own interpretation. Patricia Neal showed that she did not truly need a script to help her – because while her work with her dialogue is very intriguing, it’s mostly her unspoken scenes that truly turn Alma into a the memorable character she turned out to be: little looks at Paul Newman, short moments of doubt or regret, decisions of strength played with a certain vulnerability or little gestures of joy that make her interactions with Paul Newman so tense and yet so relaxed.

In her first moment on the screen, Patricia Neal already demonstrated how unexpected her interpretation of Alma Brown is – her delivery of the line ‘He parked right on my flower bed’ after the arrival of Hud lacks all the emotions that usually would accompany a line like this: hidden pain or suffering, regret, a secret longing, everything that could help an actress to tell all the untold secrets of Alma Brown in one second. Patricia Neal instead delivered the line without any of these emotions and stated it in a very matter-of-fact way, with maybe a slight annoyance but still a tone that expressed even an acceptance of his behavior since she already knows what to expect of him. And when she later asks him why he chose to park exactly on her flowers, her voice again speaks with clear composure that is not trying to hide any deeper feelings but again shows how well she knows Hud and men like him. In her first interactions with Paul Newman, Patricia Neal also lays the foundation of their relationship – her Alma Brown is a woman who clearly enjoys all his stories about the countless women he goes to bed with, who likes his behavior and apparently never thinks of herself as an object of affection but rather someone who prefers to meet Hud on the same level when it comes to their private lives. This way, Patricia Neal also underlined that Alma knows her position as housekeeper in the Bannon household but neither in this position nor as a woman she is willing to put herself under Hud’s influence and charm. During her later scenes, Patricia Neal slowly shows how much Alma has been shaped by the life she led so far – the dialogue about her past is only minimal but her facial acting and the way she speaks her lines make it clear that Alma is a woman who experienced a great deal during her life so far, good and bad. The way Alma behaves around the household, as the only woman in a world of men, demonstrates that she is already used to this life kind of life. Patricia Neal crafted Alma as a woman who has her own philosophy, her own wisdom and the strength to live her life accordingly to it. She is not a saint nor a mysterious creature that came out of nowhere – instead, she is very much a part of her environment, earthy and real, transcendent and not at once. Patricia Neal turned Alma into a real three-dimensional human being, a woman who possesses the toughness she needs in a world like this, the no-nonsense attitude that helps her to keep her strength and her dignity but also the joyful spirit that allows her to always enjoy life, no matter how little it may offer to her.

Since Alma is mostly written as a female counterpart for Hud, Patricia Neal’s scenes opposite Paul Newman (which are most of them) are the most important factor in her work. She could have easily suffered the same fate Eleanor Parker in Detective Story or Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun did 12 years earlier – playing characters that are only seen as important as long as they provide a storyline for the central male character. But Patricia Neal did not fall under this pressure but instead was able to craft Alma Brown as a woman who clearly exists independently from Hud and this way prevented her from turning into a plot device that only exists to give Paul Newman more screen time. Her chemistry with Paul Newman is the most deciding aspect of her work and both actors did their best to combine a certain level of mutual indifference, respect, friendship and clear sexual interest to achieve a wonderful and captivating chemistry. In various little moments, Patricia Neal shows that Alma is a woman who cares more about Hud than she should and who sometimes thinks about him in a way that is different from their moments of relaxed honesty as she sometimes seems to enjoy the idea of being an object of affection to him. But she can also suffers from his constant insults, disinterest and behavior like everybody else. The look on her face as she is doing the dishes, a look completely rid of any emotions which again underlines Patricia Neal’s straight-forwardness in the part, tells how easily Hud can hurt her, despite Alma’s own protectiveness. And so, despite her longing for him she keeps her distance. Or better: she keeps him at distance. Her slight annoyance after one of Hud’s rather unsubtle advances on the porch or her delivery of the line ‘Way over’ when Hud, obviously drunk, again tries to make a pass at her in the kitchen, show that there are no illusions in Alma’s life and that her own experience and her own wisdom prevent her from surrendering to her physical desires. And the scene when she talks to him in her little house, after having quickly removed her underwear that was hanging outside to dry, shows an almost burning passion between these two without ever losing the subtlety of the character – her smiles, her eyes all tell of a certain longing while her words are trying to keep Hud at a distance. It’s mostly this relaxed, open but sexually filled atmosphere between Patricia Neal and Paul Newman that is one of the most fascinating aspects of 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. Of course, this beautiful portrayal still exists inside the possibilities of Patricia Neal’s work – it’s easy to praise an actress for doing so much with so little but it does not change the fact that this ‘little’ is still holding her back in a certain way. She certainly succeeded in the role but this success is just as limited as the role itself. Still, Patricia Neal used her limited screen time and material very wisely and was able to create a memorable, three-dimensional character by completely focusing on the realism of Alma Brown’s life, her present and her past, a woman who does not spend her life thinking about what could be but only about what is. She brought a wonderfully sad, longing quality to her part and that way took it much further than the screenplay allowed. In her final scenes, her sudden tears are such a start contrast to her earlier characterization that the effect is overwhelming for a short moment until Alma again turns into the woman she used to be. Her husky voice and her body language all show a certain sexuality behind her tough façade, but also a lot loneliness and the trace of a hard life, a relaxed and self-assured but still doubting woman who more than once suffers from her own wisdom, her own choices to remain at a distance to her environment and protect herself against being hurt again. And even during her final talk with Hud, in which she again shows that she knows men like him and that the only thing she can do now is leave, Patricia Neal delivers her lines in which Alma finally tells Hud that she did have some sexual interests in him, again so completely straight-forward and without trying to turn them into anything noteworthy that Alma leaves the movie just as quietly and incidentally as she entered it. So, for her unique and captivating approach to this part, she receives