The Best Actress Project: 1944
It's been a while since the last Best Actress profile, and since I recently went on a big Best Picture-related tear through the movies of 1944, I found myself in a good position to review that starry field. On the pro side: five stellar actresses whose careers combine for 31 nominations and 7 wins. The winner is a solid choice by Academy standards, and at least one other nominee gives a certifiably iconic turn. On the con side: nearly everything else, including notably subpar work by two of the contenders.I bowed out of 1944 with only a few truly choice titles left to come, and even fewer that feature female leads: happily, I have the Hitchcock/Steinbeck collabo Lifeboat to look forward to on a big screen in May, and Powell and Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale—which wasn't Oscar-eligible until 1949—on the same screen, two weeks previously. I have a strong hunch that Tallulah will slay the competition in the poll about whose work I should check out to possibly displace one of my five current favorites, but go ahead, prove me wrong. Or prove me right. I love that, too.
Labels: Barbara Stanwyck, Best Actress, Bette Davis, Claudette Colbert, Greer Garson, Ingrid Bergman, Judy Garland
posted by NicksFlickPicks at 12:00 AM
34 Comments:
I adore your cohesive interpretation of what struck me as oddly unconvincing in Stanwyck's reading of the "I'm rotten to the heart" line (that whole speech, really), and in her seeming inability to nail a typical femme fatale demand as walking sensually down the stairs. Stanwyck just came off as too smart and anti-objectified for me to reconcile those contradictory shades to her character (and even as I accepted that much of her "character" might have been filtered through Neff's subjective memory). Also, I fault Chinatown for warping how I expected Double Indemnity, and Stanwyck's character, to turn out. I definitely need to watch it again to be sure.
I also recently watched Up the Yangtze and Bright Star, with mixed feelings about both (more negative for the former, more positive for the latter), but those two are definitely among the more interesting movies I could have seen during this period, despite all the Oscar movies opening now. Thanks for recommending both!
I love these!
I love the comparison between Bergman and Kidman, especially in these award-winning performances. I think that I hold both of the performances in higher esteem than you do, but I've seen The Hours so many times now that I'm probably overly biased.
And a third love to your write-up of Barbara Stanwyck's performance in Double Indemnity. I'm a huge fan of it to begin with, but now I get an extra layer of nuance to her; a woman trying to be a femme fatale rather a femme fatale through and through.
An interesting throughline of all these performances is that these films don't seem to be serving their actresses as best as they could. It's nice to see things have changed since then, right?
I first (and last) saw "Gaslight" when I was twelve years old, an early stage in my eventual full-blown love affair with Ingrid Bergman, and remember being slightly befuddled by the whole thing. I thought then there was a touch of school-play phoniness to any notion of suspense in it, but I'd probably be a lot more receptive to that -- and to lovely close-ups of Ingrid in distress -- now. You describe the film I think I saw, but make it sound rather more appealing in the process. A rewatch is in order.
I will not, on the other hand, be making even a first acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. Parkington-Skeffington after reading this. So thank you for that, and, as ever, for your writing.
I'm not yet intimate enough with 1944 to expand your list of alternates, but ... Lauren Bacall? Is she supporting, or are you just not sufficiently whelmed?
It does not speak well of me that I've never been more anxious to see Mr. Skeffington than I am right now.
I must beg your pardon and disagree with your take on Bergman - who I desperately love in the main, just to be clear - but I think it's her one really stiff, mechanical performance. As Guy says, I've always found the movie a bit befuddling, not least because the actress seems quite befuddled herself.
And then let me make it up by gawking in amazement and awe at that tremendous analysis of Stanwyck (one of my all-time favorite noir performances).
Claudette Colbert: God, she's amazing. Re-watched The Smiling Lieutenant the other day, and just sat their basking in her face.
@Colin: Ooh, I'll be interested to hear more about Yangtze and Bright Star. And it's true that watching almost anything with expectations shaped by Chinatown is just asking for trouble.
@Brook: I absolutely agree that these vehicles could all be serving their actresses a little better, even though (ironically) the #1 or #2 priority of all five of them, with the possible exception of Indemnity, seems to be showcasing the actresses. Though you can hardly, for example, blame Mr. Skeffington for this, since Davis seems to be aggressively clawing it away from everything else the director or the script might have in mind to do, before proceeding to claw away at herself.
@Guy and @Tim: I feel quite the same about Gaslight, and I saw it for the first time in my early teens, too. I've been pretty up and down with it, and the last time through was a good outing. Cukor seemed to be eliciting a certain mechanical quality in the character (never more obvious than when she hauls that picture out from behind that clock), and even though Bergman isn't quite nailing the transitions between her different approaches to "distress" (static, quiet, torrential, mechanical, naturalistic, expressionist), they're often quite effective in the moment.
@Guy: If Bacall were eligible, I'd hand her the trophy over Stanwyck, even, but To Have and Have Not was one of those Casablanca instances where it wasn't Oscar-eligible till the following year.
@Tim: If you think this was her "one stiff, mechanical performance," just wait till you see Saratoga Trunk. Or, don't. But in truth, I find Bergman a little mechanical as often as not.
Did not know that about "To Have and Have Not." You're a walking education, Professor Davis.
Eagerly looking forward, then, to someday seeing how Bacall stacks up against the similarly spotty Class of 1945. (Let's not even get into THAT Bergman nomination.)
By the way, I'd love to read a longer tribute to Greer Garson's effervescence one day, so that I might see it for myself. I dearly want to like her the way you so clearly do, but as irrational and wholly unfair as this is, there's something about her face that doesn't let me in. Does that make me a bad actressor?
I'm going to file my 2009 taxes with "Actressor" as my formally registered vocation. Thanks for that!
The answer is No, and in fact, I think it's a duty-bound facet of the job. There have to be actresses you simply can't account for disliking, or if not disliking, at least finding terminally inaccessible. For me, the recent example is Michelle Williams. I just. don't. get. it.
And yes: Bergman in St. Mary's is not to be approached without a bottle in hand - though that's down to the film as much as to the performance.
Love the Davis take-down. What a disaster that performance is. And I totally agree with you about the necessary irrationality of actress-worship. I just cannot do Audrey Hepburn, for instance (though I doubt I'm alone there).
You picked a canny example in Michelle Williams (as did Tim in Audrey Hepburn), given that I totally get (even love) them. So we are in balance, if not in harmony.
I'm knocked out with the flu right now, so all I have to do is lie here and think about actresses I don't understand. Audrey Hepburn is absolutely in my group, too, as are Wendy Hiller and Leslie Caron. Deborah Kerr is usually quite close. And please don't tell Nathaniel, but absolutely Natalie Wood.
Beautiful work, once again. It's funny because I saw Double Indemnity and Gasligh some months ago for the first time.
I think I agree with your opinion on both Stanwyck and Bergman but I think the latter had some moments of over-acting that seemed amateurish. I was actually a bit surprised since you seem to spot high level flaws in performances but you didn't seem to care much about this low level flaw. Was it just me and she didn't overact or were the things she did right enough for you to give her 3 stars? Again, I probably agree with you. It's just that I usually am easier to please than you are.
Something that randomly occurred to me just tonight: Wendy Hiller in Murder on the Orient Express = Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Seriously.
Sorry about your flu! Hope you didn't catch it off me by phone.
All of what you've written is elegant and incisive, but your analysis of Phyllis Dietrichson is downright revelatory. I know you have reservations about the film - in a way, so do I, since it doesn't truly, viscerally give me the buzz that sometimes even subpar noir does. But your writeup just gave me a bit of that buzz and all of a sudden I feel like I even love the movie a little more. It probably would have made me love Stanwyck a little more too, except that is of course impossible. I think I've now seen dozens of Stanwyck performances and I'm more and more certain that the woman never gave a bad one. Even her weakest (Sorry, Wrong Number, Stella Dallas) are absorbing. And some of her best (Baby Face, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Clash by Night) are sadly neglected.
As for the rest of the 1944 slate, I've only seen Gaslight and Since You Went Away (though you've made Mr. and Mrs. Skeffington/Parkington sound downright tantalising). I remember liking but not loving Bergman (in fact, as an actress I've always liked and never loved Bergman, apart from individual performances and her formidable taste for auteurs) and as always enjoying Colbert and admiring how she pluckily transforms a turgid prestige package into something watchable and warm.
Also, like all of your readers I'm very excited that you get to check out Lifeboat and Tallulah very soon. It's been a while since I have, but I was glued to the screen.
Tallulah will be such a treat for you. If you want to continue the 1945 jaunt then A Royal Scandal, in which Bankhead also stars, is also very fun!
I have to concede that I was much less offended by Mr. Skeffington and Davis, despite the awful cosmetics, odd pacing, and perilous running time. I thought she suited the character's vanity. It's been a while, though.
Your write-up of Colbert is generous, and you're totally right that Selznick's script puts her in her place, which is why I'm a bit surprised about the three-star rating. I was kind of taken aback by how Selznick was able to flesh things out and make it feel so solid, convincing, and on occasion moving, though the contrivances do weigh the whole thing down.
And yes, this is not my favourite Stanwyck performance either, but it's probably one of the clearest "best" of an Actress Oscar line-up ever.
Really love these entries for their incredible level of detail. In particular, you really pinpoint Colbert's performance in "Since You Went Away" to a T.
I understand why you're appalled by "Skeffington," and I think you're on to something when you get at Bette's self-loathing underneath it all. For all its awfulness, it remains a guilty pleasure; I've seen it tons of times since I was a kid, too many, probably.
At 99 years old, Vincent Sherman did an audio commentary for the DVD--he was a bad director, but it's an interesting commentary. He says he basically had to service Davis sexually to get her to behave on the set; the film is such a mess mainly because he couldn't control her, and she demanded more scenes, more close-ups, more this and that. The length of the film is grotesque, and so is Fanny. And the score! Still, just hearing the name "Trippy Trellis" makes me laugh.
Actresses I don't "get": Kate Winslet. She's technically skilled, but there's always something half-hearted about her work, unfinished. And I wish I could get on the Nicole Kidman bandwagon, I really do, but even at her best she seems so hard and inexpressive, the very opposite of Bergman's almost over-expressivity. She tries very, very hard...but she has an armored little face that cannot register many emotions beyond "rapaciousness" and "discomfort." I love "Birth," but I would love it more with a more expressive actress at its center. I'd like to be convinced otherwise about Kidman, but she hasn't grabbed me yet, except maybe in "Moulin Rouge," but that movie was my first date with my bf, so it could be I'm just sentimental about it.
Wendy Hiller? The camera doesn't like her (very similar to Winslet, actually, in looks and manner). Michelle Williams? Too deadpan, maybe, but not uninteresting. Natalie Wood? Sorry, Nathaniel, but she's too much the child actress with her tiny bag of tricks, and her voice is the screechiest in movies when she gets upset. That being said, she loved her gays and sounds like she was a nice gal.
I love Audrey; she's not an actress, she's a phenomenon, like Garbo, or ice cream.
"Actressor" is going on my taxes, too.
Oh, and I didn't know where I stood on Deborah Kerr until I was asked to write an essay about her career for the Sydney Film Festival; looking at most of her films, in order, I came away really impressed by her intelligence, diligence and sensitivity. She wasn't flashy, but she's flat-out wonderful, and uncommonly relaxed, in "The Sundowners," very sexy in "Black Narcissus," and touching in "Bonjour Tristesse."
@Δημήτρης: Back on Bergman! In truth, the performance is one of the more difficult "grading" challenges I've faced in these write-ups (as is true of grading the film), because it's true that some of what Bergman does flatly doesn't work, but then a comparable number of her scenes are really thrilling... and the movie, for better and worse, relies upon a sort of emotional lability, so that it's both a plus and a minus for Paula and her interpreter to be a bit all over the place. I hear that Diana Wynyard manages the same part much more consistently and thrillingly in the 1940 version, generally considered to be superior, and one can easily imagine a different actress or even Bergman herself giving a better, richer reading of Paula, but I do think it's an interesting and accomplished piece of work nonetheless.
@Tim: The evidence speaks for itself. Now if only Dame Hiller would abruptly decompose into a thousand rats and scurry all over the floor, then she'd really be worth getting excited about.
@Goran: I'm so excited that you and other folks are so taken with the Stanwyck write-up... I was worried I was only going to have to defend the lack of a fifth star. It sounds like we're on exactly the same page about Bergman and Colbert, which makes it even more tempting to believe that I'll like Tallulah in Lifeboat as much as you do, too.
@Cal: I can't quite tell if you think I was too nice to Colbert or not nice enough? As for A Royal Scandal, I'd love to see it, but all of my attempts to track it down have so far come to nothing. I'm keeping my eyes open, though.
@Dan: I'm excited about those Kerr recommendations, since I haven't seen Sundowners or Bonjour, Tristesse, and I suspect Kerr may be one of those actresses who got nominated for several of the wrong roles (a theorem that her excellent, non-nominated work in Black Narcissus further corroborates). Still, even in better-than-average work like The Innocents, I find her a bit brittle, both in scenes where she's holding back and in those where she's going for broke.
I would say that a bad Kidman performance is one where not enough is happening, and a bad Bergman performance is one where much too much is happening, and in that respect I can agree with your "under-expressive" / "over-expressive" reading of these two actresses. But, for better and worse, whenever I watch both of them, I think about how hard they are trying, which is part of why they remind me of each other. I definitely don't find Kidman inexpressive in, say, Portrait of a Lady, and I think Birth might easily be ruined by a more "expressive" actress, given the predominating coldness of the film.
We're on the same page with Wood, and we half are with Hepburn, as long as you stop with "she's not an actress" (though I haven't seen The Nun's Story, which people tell me is the game-changer). I have a directly opposite view of Winslet: that she's not technically very skilled, but that she pours her whole heart into every performance, often with thrilling results. I have to admit, my mind reels at seeing anything in common between round-featured, urgent, emotionally voluble Winslet and dour, hard-edged, astringent Wendy Hiller, but it just goes to show that no two actressors are alike.
Oh I think you were kind to her! I don't think she has a great deal to do.
I saw A Royal Scandal on YouTube. I assume it's still there.
Wow - what a great tip! I somehow never think of YouTube in moments like this, even though my students make clear over and over again how much stuff is on here.
I thought that's what you meant about Colbert, but then you sounded so admiring of what Selznick ultimately pulled off, which is the only reason I was confused.
I definitely think Kerr was nominated for the wrong work; I mean, "Separate Tables"? That's probably her worst performance. And actually, I don't like her in "The Innocents"--I don't think she's nuanced enough in that. If you can see Bergman in the John Frankenheimer TV version of "Turn of the Screw," that's one of her best.
I like your distinctions between the over-expressive Ingrid and under-expressive Nicole. Winslet/Hiller: I think I'm stuck on that maybe-not-very-helpful "the camera doesn't like them." It maybe has to do with a kind of fakery, or something that says, "Hands off!" even when they're exerting themselves.
If you don't like Audrey, "A Nun's Story" will do nothing for you; it's a solemn, "big picture" thing, too long, not bad, but not very edifying. No one has ever said "I love you" on screen as convincingly as AH does to Albert Finney in "Two for the Road." Maybe that wasn't "acting," per se, but it's enough for me.
I don't think Hepburn hit form until the sixties. I found her unbearable in the Roman Holiday/Sabrina/Funny Face period, and was pleasantly surprised by her work in Tiffany's (iconised way too much but charming) and her hilarious Charade turn.
Kerr is very hit and miss but I actually really liked her in Seperate Tables.
@Dan: I absolutely need to get it together and throw that Two for the Road DVD I've owned for five years into the player. I'd love to see Bergman in Turn of the Screw and have looked, but again, I couldn't find it anywhere. Should I be trying YouTube again?
I can't help feeling that the camera absolutely adores Kate Winslet, even when she shouldn't be relying on that adoration quite so much, so someone else is going to have to break this tie.
@Cal: Interesting theory on Hepburn. I agree that the Tiffany's turn was interesting even though I don't remember loving it; I was a fan of what she pulled off in The Children's Hour, though, and I think she's pretty good in Wait Until Dark. I couldn't deal with a single thing about Charade, though, which is part of why I've assumed I just have Audrey Immunity.
Oh God, yes, please watch "Two for the Road." She really did fall in love with Finney on the set, and Lord, it really shows. It's her most mature performance, and treasurable, I think. In "Tiffany's" she runs hot and cold; there are good scenes and bad.
Bergman's "Turn of the Screw" is very hard to see; a private collector showed it to me--but it is the sort of thing that could turn up on YouTube. It's an incredibly sexual performance, and Kerr strangely declines to do the repressed sex that's necessary for that role.
Speaking of YouTube, I've been meaning to tell you that someone has uploaded a slew of Kim Stanley live TV dramas: "The Traveling Lady," "A Young Lady of Property," and a two-part Ben Casey thing that won her an Emmy where she plays a drug addict. All I can say is: I finally understand what everyone has talked about with her on stage. She's riveting in these TV things mainly because she's traveling in deep emotional waters, but she's always trying NOT to give in to emotion. I got totally lost in her moment-to-moment work, especially on the Ben Casey shows.
Feel better! Maybe you can use live TV Kim as Actressor medicine.
Can I just say I LOVE how "actressor" has so effortlessly slid into the vocabulary. If I have given the world nothing else...
Dyed-in-the-wool Audrey fan here, so all the obvious warnings apply, but I think you might find much to like in "Two for the Road" nonetheless. Easily the funkiest thing she ever did -- you can see her reaching for a Julie Christie modernity at times, and it may sound like a trivial point, but forcing her out of her beloved Givenchy and into off-the-rack Mary Quant completely alters the way she carries herself on screen.
Winslet fan boy alert :p
I'm not going to speak of any other role except her part in Extras. Didn't you think that she nailed all the technical demands of her role? It wasn't a role that she could pull off by giving all her heart to it. Although, you might say it had more to do with instincts and less with technical skill. But it surely wasn't heart.
I know that one exception (assuming you agree with me) doesn't make much of a point but it's that I don't think of her as a purely natural actress relying almost entirely on her expressiveness and the Extras example stroke me as the most convincing for my argument.
By the way, I know it's very early but I would really love to read tour thoughts on the upcoming Mildred Pierce. I say this because it will not be a theatrical film (Is that how they call them? Not sure). I know you loved Crawford's performance and it would be hard for Winslet not to seem inferior in your mind but I'm not expecting nice words. Only honest ones. (Did I use it the right way? :p)
I hope you feel better, by the way :)
@Dan: Two possible lines of thought on this. One is that premising one's sense of wellness on several hours spent with Kim Stanley seems like a foolish proposition. The other is, Can't wait! Thanks so much for passing that along.
@Guy: Surely you don't think I would find the relationship between an actress and her costumes "trivial." That movie barely needs any more selling points by now, but if it did, this would be a big one.
@Δημήτρης: I actually like Winslet quite a bit, even though the Reader/Rev Road double whammy and the overweening adulation that poured all over her work in them made me feel like I needed a break. Her range has started to seem narrower than what I used to think it was, but that may just be an issue of casting: people aren't pushing her enough in terms of what they're offering her—though I'm banking on Mildred/Haynes disrupting that pattern, profoundly. The fact that The Reader should have felt like a huge exception, but in many ways felt to me like "a Kate Winslet performance," is part of what's had me worried lately.
BUT, I'm overstating the case when I say she's all heart, no technique. What I mean is, when her performances don't work, I tend to think it's because something in the role is requiring a technical finesse or a capacity for really fine-grained nuances in the character that (for me) tend to be the weaker areas of Winslet's arsenal; when in doubt, she barrels ahead with her profound emotional urgency and transparency, which are hardly to be sniffed at. I think instincts is a much better word that just heart for what she does when she's "on," so I'm glad you said that... and it's obvious that you couldn't get through Eternal Sunshine, Jude, S&S, etc., as gloriously as she did without thinking your way pretty fully through the part.
So, no offense intended! Fanboy away! I am delighted to host separate but equal actressexualities on this blog.
Unless somebody doesn't like Tilda. They need to get. lost. (Just kidding) (Sort of) (No, really)
Nick, I just now came across your (typically) fascinating observations on the ladies of 1944.
Glad to see you gave Joan Fontaine an honorable mention for "Jane Eyre". She's also fun - glamorously impatient as she rocks an endless series of period wigs and gowns - in Mitchell Leisen's sumptuous semi-piratical garden fete "Frenchman's Creek". Fontaine's a far cry from her Bronte heroine here.
Closer in a way to Blanche Ingram, the character Hillary Brooke played the elegant daylights out of in "Eyre"
I was surprised to hear about Bacall's ineligibilty. Too bad, because she certainly hit the ground running in "To Have and Have Not". Glad you like Colbert in "Since You Went Away". Just being around her seemed to bring out the best in Joseph Cotten. And why oh why couldn't the Academy acknowledge the quality of what Judy was doing in "Meet Me in St. Louis? "Oh it's just a musical, sorry - no nomination. Let's give it to Greer or Bette instead".
Funny to think that while one unit at Metro was fine-tuning the perfection of "St. Louis", another was using equally lavish resources to perpetrate "Mrs. Parkington".
As far as my own tips go, I really hope you get a chance to see Irene Dunne in the
woefully under-celebrated "Together Again". It's a rematch with her old co-star Charles Boyer - and contains what I'd rate as the lady's most perfectly sustained comic performance. Which is saying something. I'd also suggest checking out Edgar Ulmer's little poverty row jewel "Bluebeard". John Carradine's intriguingly restrained in a rare lead and Jean Parker seems totally and endearingly)invested in her role as potential sweetheart/victim. A friend of mine once said that if it'd been physically possible for Ann Sothern and Jean Arthur to have a child together, Parker would have been the result. The evidence onscreen in "Bluebeard" provides charming confirmation of said theory.
@Canadian Ken: It's never a real party until you're here! That's not meant to offend anyone above, but really, who else was going to announce the virtues of Irene Dunne in Together Again. I've already filed a request for this DVD through my university library and will eagerly await it; The White Cliffs of Dover, the Dunne vehicle I had in mind to try (and a Cinematography nominee, to boot) didn't look like my favorite sort of Dunne vehicle, so I really take this suggestion to heart. I've been curious about Bluebeard, too, and after a description like that, how could I not be intrigued to see the Arther-Sothern pseudospawn?
Now I fell in love with Deborah Kerr with Tea & Sympathy but it might not be your, well, cup of tea, so I would recommend watching her performances in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (she plays three characters!) and The Night of the Iguana (at her spiritual best!). :)
I don't know why but I keep falling in love with these women whom Oscar keeps having an affair with but never comes home to (Kerr, Russell, Ritter, Close)
Blimp I'm excited about, Iguana I didn't care for so much. I was actually more taken by Ava Gardner in that, at least as I recall.
I'm with you on Ritter and Close. Roz Russell and I have never gotten along at all outside of His Girl Friday, but that's a glorious, glorious exception.
This whole thread blows my mind. And I have no idea what to add except... more, please! I am feeling like a thoroughly part-time actressor here.
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