424 and Done: Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen

(the 424th and final Best Actress nominee!)

KATHARINE HEPBURN IN THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951)

The competition (Cliff: 5 for 5!)

Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire

Eleanor Parker in Detective Story

Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun

Jane Wyman in The Blue Veil

There’s so much more to say than I ever could about Katharine Hepburn and this film, and what they mean to me.  This quest could only conclude with an all-time legendary character, actress, and film.  What’s more, of course it had to finish with the story of an outlandish quest in and of itself, a journey that transformed all (characters and people alike) who took part.  As I’ve mentioned before, this was a film that I’d been deliberately saving since 2005, a time by which I’d seen 95 or 96 of the (original AFI 100 Years…100 Movies list, and nearly exhausted the filmography of my heroine, Katharine Hepburn.  Back then, I was so in love with the great movies on this and other lists that I feared there wouldn’t be any more great cinema to discover once they had all run out.  I stowed the pristine African Queen away, until such a day (that might never come) when I could face finishing off the canon.

I’m finally ready to do so, now that I know that of course my own personal canon is endless.  Big, popular lists like the AFI’s can only point you to big, popular films, never the intensely personal works that will resonate with only you.  Those you have to stumble across on your own, off the beaten path, at a random screening or buried anonymously in a random checklist of films.  I knew this all along, of course; I guess I just needed to really experience it a little before I’d truly be ready.  Diving into a pile of mostly unfamiliar, unheralded movies on this Best Actress Quest, I uncovered brilliant works like A Woman Under the Influence, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, or Seance on a Wet Afternoon, all of which I’d barely heard of (if at all) when I took my vow regarding The African Queen.  And of course, even the category of Best Actress cannot close the frontier of great leading ladies yet to be discovered, as my list of the category’s omissions suggests.  So I’m glad to polish off The African Queen, the AFI list, and the Best Actress category and strike out for more adventures!

But as far as the film went, I was again so very glad that I saved a genuine crown jewel for the finale.  This is a classic of such epic proportions that it deserves such a great first viewing: sitting smack-dab in the center of the stadium seating in the Egyptian Theater, absorbing the whole chromatic, humorous, and boldly unique experience.  The lush cinematography by Jack Cardiff, despite the many limits of location shooting in the 1950s, seared a vivid streak through my memory of Technicolor film.  I was of course reminded throughout of other films that touch (intentionally or not) on this one’s myth: Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo in the dreamlike travels through river and jungle; Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (another Huston) and the yet-to-be-released Gravity as regards the man and woman engulfed in the wilderness, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Sunshine in the crazy suicide mission.  I even caught a distinct whiff of Jaws in the final moments of the film.  This is a universal story, formed by a legendary filmmaker around two of the most mythic actors in film history, godlike in their personality and presence.

The characters were of course unmistakably the creations of Katharine and Humphrey, though I disagree with the popular perception of them essentially playing themselves, bringing their unadorned personas to shine on the screen.  They really almost play each other more than themselves: at the outset of the story, Bogie’s Charlie Allnut is practically a chatterbox, something that he never portrays onscreen, while Katharine’s Rosie Sayer is bestowed with a serene poise (you can feel the affinity with Bette Davis in the proposed 1930s and 1940s productions), seeming as if she knows from the beginning how all this is going to end.  In this performance, she emerges fully formed, ready to inject Rosie with the unflinching confidence and astounding fortitude that could ignite the characters’ wild commando mission and keep it in motion.  For all the musical biopics and maternal melodramas in the annals of the Best Actress race, Katharine is probably the only one who got there by pulling a boat by a rope, neck-deep in murky, leech-infested water.

This would of course become an era-defining mask for Katharine to wear, dictating the spinster character she would play, at least when it came to Oscar nominations, for the rest of the decade: Summertime and The Rainmaker, and even to a great extent Suddenly, Last Summer.  Of course, she only wore this mask for a time, one in a series of archetypes that could have individually made stars of four or five separate actresses.  Still, this is the role that breathed another act of her career to life, and Katharine embodies it perfectly.  So does she get my vote for Best Actress of 1951?  Well, she still has to contend with the breathtaking Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire.  The Davis-Swanson race from 1950 gets more attention, partly because of the dual comeback angle and partly because of the dark horse winner that forever set the two titanesses as equals in defeat.  However, I think that this race deserves almost equal billing.  At the end of the day I can’t deny Vivien’s equally legendary creation, and I’m glad to have Katharine there right behind her.

The End of the Quest

Time to sit back and exhale after a much-needed 48-hour hiatus to attend to the little things: sleep, school, life.  Thoughts on Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen are to come later this evening, and I’ll post my final picks for all 85 Best Actresses tomorrow!  For the moment, though, I’m quite glad to gaze at this spreadsheet:

423 Down, 1 to Go: Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde

(the 423rd of the 424 Best Actress nominees!)

FAYE DUNAWAY IN BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)

The competition (Cliff: 5 for 5!)

Katharine Hepburn in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Anne Bancroft in The Graduate

Edith Evans in The Whisperers

Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark

What is there to say about an American classic that hasn’t been said already?  I absolutely agree with the praise.  What I saw was a cinematic Rhapsody in Blue, an ebullient American classic: chaotic and free-formed in appearance and yet meticulously masterful in every detail.  This is a masterpiece on every level, and I’m crushed that I had to miss it at TCM (I was trying out for an Academy Awards-themed trivia game show, which I consider a justifiable excuse), but thrilled to have finally added this landmark to my movie experience.  I guess the best thing for me to focus on is how the film lived up to its gargantuan reputation.  In addition to the French New Wave-inspired, kinetic energy that Arthur Penn breathed into American filmmaking for the next decade, and the fraught glorification of outlaw violence underlying the entire film, there were many discoveries that diverged from the movie I was led to expect.

There are things in classic films that nobody really pays attention to (I remember, when I caught up with Taxi Driver, how surprised I was that the political campaign takes up such a huge chunk of the narrative).  Here, I was surprised by the sexual difficulties between the two characters; his reluctance toward her advances being a storyline that I had not known of beforehand, and a layer to the characters that added such a complex twist to their charisma onscreen.  I was struck by the intricacies of the story (the duo car running a truck piled with high with furniture off the road during their first getaway, a truck just like the one belonging to the evicted farmers who inspired them to start robbing banks), and in the filmmaking (the in-a-blink game played with the audience when a police officer reaches for a weapon and the retaliatory gunshot that precedes the cut to Warren Beatty firing his gun by several seconds), and the confidence that issues from every choice, from the insistent photo montage in the opening credits to the boldly abrupt end to the final shot.

However, the biggest surprise to me, fittingly enough, revolved around Faye’s astonishing character.  I had always perceived Bonnie and Clyde as essentially a buddy picture, an equal duet between two iconic American figures that could only be perceived as a single unit.  I was unprepared for how much the film takes on Faye’s perspective as the small-town girl swept up and transformed into an outlaw heroine.  The film begins with Faye’s own gaze, regarding herself in the mirror and then watching Clyde unseen, as he attempts to lift her family’s car.  It gives her a narrative voice, in her composition and recitation of “The Story of Bonnie and Clyde.”  And it subtly privileges details of her performance, such as the sound mix accentuating her gasp of delight when she first sees & hears a gunshot, or the camerawork barely catching the tops of her knees, pressed up against her chest as she tries to watch The Gold Diggers of 1933.  And of course, Faye imbues the character with rough-hewn energy: a vulnerable, girlish (almost still-innocent) dissatisfaction wrapped up in boisterous gangster bravado, dynamically balancing the woman with the myth.  With such a rich character, beautifully through Faye’s magnetic performance, I guess I have no choice but to give her my vote, over stiff competition from Anne Bancroft and Edith Evans, for Best Actress of 1967.  An unparalleled performance for the penultimate film on the quest!

It’s hard to believe that the next time I get up from watching a movie, I will be at the end of this wonderful, ridiculous, and surreal film-watching saga.  It’s a bittersweet moment to be sure, and the perfect opportunity for a few extraneous reflections on the whole journey.  Stay tuned!

8 Down, 2 to Go: Ann Harding in Holiday

(the 422nd of the 424 Best Actress nominees!)

ANN HARDING IN HOLIDAY (1930)

The competition (Cliff: 5 for 5!)

Marie Dressler in Min and Bill

Marlene Dietrich in Morocco

Irene Dunne in Cimarron

Norma Shearer in A Free Soul

As I’ve mentioned, I have anticipated seeing the original film adaptation of Holiday for quite some time.  I have a strange fascination with films that take a hard look at the upper class (Love Me Tonight, Howards End, The Rules of the Game), and the 1938 film adaptation of Philip Barry’s play, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, provides perhaps the most incisive and comprehensive American critique of the deep-seated prejudices of wealth.  This iteration of the play preserves most of its sparkling energy, revolving around Ann’s sister of a wealthy heiress who brings home a self-made fiance after a whirlwind romance on holiday.  Ann’s character, immediately more of a match for the man than her sister, at first sits back and attentively observes other characters’ subtle and polite clashes of will, only gradually emerging as the film’s heroine, the rebel leader against the suffocating force of her family’s iron will.  I found this adaptation to be delightful, filled with a cast mostly able to match the later remake, with a glimmer of two of pre-Code flavor.

Is it even possible to fairly judge a performance, when this is all you can see?  I knew, though, that thanks to Holiday’s lack of home video release, finding decent viewing conditions would be a challenge.  The VHS transfer I tracked down erases most of the nuance in Ann Harding’s (and the rest of the cast’s) performance, as well as the finer features of her beauty, and I’m left only with the broad strokes of her characterization.  Admittedly, then, I am judging the performance only based on the limited amount I can discern, so my apologies to Ann if I do her an injustice.

From what I can tell, Ann’s stagey rendition unfortunately suffers by comparison against the effusive Katharine Hepburn in the 1938 remake.  I think of the character of Linda Seton as a combination of stubbornness and spontaneity, capable of rebelling against the “reverence for riches” that corrupts or paralyzes every member of her surrounding family.  Ann has the stubbornness down; I give her full credit for digging in passionately in the battles against her domineering father.  Ultimately, even disregarding the immediate comparison, what I miss in Ann’s performance is the spontaneity: her dialogue feels more like lines on a page than thoughts springing fiercely to her character’s mind.  In her scenes with the fiancé and her brother (the two characters only partially in thrall to the family’s will), I can’t find the tenacious spark that makes me believe Ann capable of not only resisting, but completely breaking free from her family.  I still give her credit, though, for a respectable portrayal of an excellent role, and cast my vote in agreement with the Academy for Marie Dressler’s acerbic mother with a heart of gold in Min and Bill.

7 Down, 3 to Go: Liv Ullmann in The Emigrants

(the 421st of the 424 Best Actress nominees!)

LIV ULLMANN IN THE EMIGRANTS (1972)

The competition (Cliff: 5 for 5!)

Liza Minnelli in Cabaret

Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues

Maggie Smith in Travels with My Aunt

Cicely Tyson in Sounder

The story of The Emigrants should be quite well-known: enchanted by promises of plenty, a family leaves behind their impoverished life in the Old World and weathers tremendous hardship on the journey to America.  The story is central to the American mythos, so much so that I would swear I’d seen it filmed a dozen times.  However, while movies such as The Grapes of Wrath tell a similar tale of migration within the American interior, and for as common as immigrant narratives are, especially centered around Ellis Island (The Godfather: Part II, Gangs of New York), I doubt I’ve ever seen the story of the journey to America told with the powerful care of The Emigrants.  The first hour of Jan Troell’s epic takes place in the Swedish region of Smaland, the second on the ship across the Atlantic, and only the final half hour on North American soil.  Residing offscreen, manifesting only in the hopes and tall tales shared by the Swedish voyagers, America truly exists in The Emigrants as an idea, a state of mind that takes deep root in those who brave the journey.  The film reveals a mighty side of the American myth, a fortuitous and excellent supplement to that year’s Best Picture winner The Godfather.

The Emigrants is grand and substantial enough that, unlike many of the ones I’ve watched lately, it boils down to more than just a referendum on its leading lady’s performance.  However, if Liv is only character among many, the film still gives her the most excruciating arc, making her the enduring vessel for the agony and ecstasy of the journey.  In Smaland, she bears the desperation of family’s strife as pregnancy after pregnancy adds to the strain of their struggle to survive.  Later, confined to the inky lower depths below the ship’s deck, she takes on in physical form all the suffering of the hard voyage, withstanding a pregnancy, lice, and a nearly devastating illness (in the throes of which she still preserves a measure of saintly forgiveness).  When the family finally reaches land, there is a scene in which Liv lies down on the grass and lets the New World seep in through every pore in a joyous healing of the wounds inflicted on the journey.  Liv’s preternatural beauty adds to the sublime quality of her ordeal, giving her a fitting Oscar debut after building her stardom in bravura performances for Ingmar Bergman in the 1960s.  For 1972, I still can’t deny the force of nature that is Liza Minnelli in Cabaret, but I am glad that such a legendary actress has such a worthy nominated performance.

6 Down, 4 to Go: Joanne Woodward in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams

(the 420th of the 424 Best Actress nominees!)

JOANNE WOODWARD IN SUMMER WISHES, WINTER DREAMS (1973)

The competition (Cliff: 5 for 5!)

Glenda Jackson in A Touch of Class

Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist

Marsha Mason in Cinderella Liberty

Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were

So what is the meaning of the title Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams?  It turns out to allude to the work of Ingmar Bergman (who has used all four seasons in titles of his various movies), in a film that transposes Isak Borg’s magical realist tour of his past in Wild Strawberries onto the life of Joanne’s nightmare-plagued New York housewife who attends a screening of the film with her mother (Sylvia Sidney).  As she lapses into another dream (quite reminiscent of the one at the start of the movie), her reverie and the screening are both interrupted by her mother’s fatal heart attack.  Thereafter, her troubled dreams turn into waking apparitions as she revisits her childhood home and wanders through her semblance of a life, haunted by aching regret and wistful nostalgia.  It’s certainly a derivative concept, but Joanne works wonders with the material in her character’s long thaw.

Joanne begins the film playing her character as a genuinely unpleasant and insular woman (her severe hairstyle and down-turned, thin line of a mouth already form an austere pose), shutting out true emotion and scarcely asking any sympathy from the audience.  Only her anemic gestures toward her harridan of a mother, as well as our literal glimpses into the character’s dream life, betray any glimpses of her buried emotions.  However, her chance to revisit her childhood farm following the mother’s death brings faint, distant feelings rushing forth in seen and spoken recollections of her past.  Although the film tries to put as much on the screen as possible through her character’s hallucinations, this is one film where the monologues are the real deal.  In her effortless reminiscences of her cherished childhood, Joanne lavishes attention on special details and suddenly recalls others to her surprise, providing a rich and satisfying meal of storytelling that lingers through the long stretches of petty family strife in between.  While the film forces her in these scenes into perhaps too much hysterical crying and shouting, I’ll remember the film for those warm and human flights of fancy through her character’s past.  My vote in 1973 goes to the queen of all desperate mothers, Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist.  Joanne, however, in her fearless portrayal of a schizophrenic in The Three Faces of Eve (the Academy’s choice in 1957) and a bemused Midwestern businessman’s wife in Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, cements herself as one of the greats among the Best Actresses as I close out this quest.

Five Final Films, all of which I already know (I just haven’t seen them)

Not to overly commemorate the final stages of this countdown, but it’s remarkable to stand less than twenty-four hours away from the completion of this quest, faced with a final five actresses:

1. Ann Harding in Holiday (1930)
2. Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen (1951)
3. Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
4. Liv Ullmann in The Emigrants (1972)
5. Joanne Woodward in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973)

Of course I’ll have plenty to say about the movies and their leading ladies as I watch them one by one tonight and tomorrow.  However, I just want to say a little bit about the phantom relationship that I already have with all five of these films:

• An epic saga of Swedish-American pioneers nominated for Best Picture, Director, Actress, Adapted Screenplay, and Foreign Language Feature (the year prior to all the other nominations), The Emigrants was for a long time my Questing Beast out of the major Oscar nominees.  Part of a two-film sequence, with the following year’s The New Land, neither is available on DVD in any format with an English language option!  The best I could find was a dubbed VHS release until earlier this week when a helpful messager on the IMDb Boards pointed me to YouTube, where it lies waiting for me, in subtitled glory!  I cannot wait to see Liv Ullmann–and hear her voice–opposite Max von Sydow in this non-Ingmar Bergman landmark film in Swedish cinema.
• The original Pathe version of Philip Barry’s play Holiday, later made into a Columbia screwball dramedy about the American class divide starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, has long been a film I’ve been hungry to watch, even in the pitiful viewing conditions of the copy I procured (as you can see from above).  The Columbia version serves as a delightful but somewhat darker sibling of Barry’s The Philadelphia Story, also a signature film for Katharine, and Holiday‘s Linda Seton may be my all-time favorite of Katharine’s characters.  All of this makes me itch to see how Ann stacks up in the original film portrayal.
• The wildcard in the mix is Joanne Woodward in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, a film of which I remained deliberately uninformed because of how captivated I became with its evocative title.  I expect very little from this film, except perhaps a quality performance from the miraculous Joanne, and perhaps as well from Sylvia Sidney in the sole Oscar-nominated performance of a career that stretched from Rouben Mamoulian to Tim Burton!
• Of course, I’ve learned all about American cinema and the long, long shadow that Bonnie and Clyde casts upon it.  I’m someone who tries not to thwart a film with high expectations, but for many people this one of the masterpieces of cinema, let alone the New Hollywood Era, and I’m curious to see if it will join the likes of Nashville, The Crowd, Stagecoach, Fargo and a handful of others in my personal canon of the Great American Movies.
• Last, and certainly not least (perhaps even most!) is the legendary The African Queen.  To be clear, this film will ring down an era in my film viewing, beyond just the completion of the Best Actress quest.  I was a Katharine Hepburn fan from my early teenage years, and of course I am in awe of Humphrey Bogart and his long-time collaboration with the brilliant John Huston.  Back when I was watching the masterpieces of cinema at an alarming rate, I became rather frightened of running out of good movies.  I now realize that this was a silly fear; there are far more great films to discover than one can possibly know, but I took a vow to preserve this last great work from the oeuvres of Katharine, Humphrey, and John, until I could give it a fitting viewing experience.  I hope that watching it on the big screen at the TCM Classic Film Festival tomorrow evening will fulfill the promise I made years ago!

So the quest will be complete very soon, after which I’ll indulge in my evaluation of the very best (and maybe a touch of the worst) of the 424 nominated performances.  In the meantime, let’s see if I can effectively balance eating sleeping, driving, and watching films!  Wish me luck! in this vaunted category.

5 Down, 5 to Go: Gena Rowlands in Gloria

(the 419th of the 424 Best Actress nominees!)

GENA ROWLANDS IN GLORIA (1980)

The competition (Cliff: 5 for 5!)

Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter

Ellen Burstyn in Resurrection

Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin

Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People

Gloria isn’t the intensely cubist portrait of a woman’s psyche that A Woman Under the Influence was; this film is linear, plot-driven to great extent, and shaded with Hollywood tropes.  It even has a familiar setup: a woman unexpectedly finds herself the caretaker of a young child.  Of course, there are some unique wrinkles to the formula: the child is the survivor of a mob bookie’s family, brutally erased at the beginning of the film.  And the neighbor who takes charge of him is no mere woman next door, but the frumpy, irascible, and infinitely tenacious Gena.  I am utterly in love with the character that she plays, a woman whose selfishness and conscience, exasperation and patience seem infinitely at odds when it comes to the grieving child who has become her responsibility.  She provides a volatile center for the film, propelling the story forward at every turn even as her conflicted feelings delay her gradual transformation into the ballsiest, most powerful protector in the greater New York area.

The film sustains an odd rhythm throughout, looping around in curlicued cycles as the characters gradually extricate themselves from the apartment building at the scene of the crime (with a spectacular view of Yankee Stadium) and out into the city, hounded at every turn by tendrils of the mob, who are still after the boy and the damning ledger entrusted to his care.  The reluctant mother and confused boy must part ways a dozen times in the film, whether she’s casting him off, he’s running away, or they’re split by accident.  Each time, they’re drawn back toward each other, continuing their journey for another stretch before repeating the cycle.  I think that the central reason for this film to exist is to examine the act of parting and reunion from as many angles as possible, exposing the maternal mechanism that lies deep within this seedy woman whose name, Gloria Swenson, is patterned after the immortal silver screen diva.  Unfortunately, Cassavetes’ penchant for untrained actors yields a truly poor performance from the young boy, who occasionally registers a proper emotion but usually delivers his lines in a flat and forced manner.  It’s to Gena’s credit that she remains unfazed by the disparity, illustrating her side of the relationship with a coarse charisma.  For 1980, my vote goes toward a polar opposite of Gena’s character, the icy biological mother played by Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People, but I’m thrilled to add this remarkable study in threadbare strength to Gena Rowland’s masterpiece of a first nomination.

4 Down, 6 to Go: Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade

(the 418th of the 424 Best Actress nominees!)

DIANA WYNYARD IN CAVALCADE (1933)

The competition (Cliff: 3 for 3!)

Katharine Hepburn in Morning Glory

May Robson in Lady for a Day

Reluctantly, in order to finish the Best Actress nominees in a timely fashion, I gave up on my goal of seeing the last Best Picture winner on my checklist on the big screen, settling instead for a VHS copy from A Video Store Named Desire in West L.A.  Finally watching it, I felt an embarrassing surge of affection for the Academy Awards  overtake me and my regard for the film.  In so many ways, this is the epitome of a Best Picture winner: epic scope and intimate family drama, splendid historical sweep viewed through the prism of reassuring modern sensibilities.  Indeed, Cavalcade is Forrest Gump sixty years earlier, and a film that in spite of its stuffiness I think I could watch many times more.  Like Gump, it works historical references into its British family saga six ways from Sunday, my favorite coming when one of the boys carves out sand sculptures of the “Important People of 1909:” Theodore Roosevelt, Emmeline Pankhurst, even Estee Lauder.  Of course the family is directly touched by the tense struggle of the Second Boer War, the tragedy of the Titanic, and the horrors of World War I (represented in a stunning montage that I must say captures the sheer scale of human loss in the conflict), finishing off with a note of stoic assurance in the face of the Depression.  This kind of film belonged to a whole cycle in the early days of the 1930s, with fellow Best Picture winner Cimarron and a personal favorite of mine, The Conquerors, telling of strong families bravely enduring the troubles of the past, as though to minimize the world’s current economic travails.  All in all, this is far from the most flawless Best Picture, but one that stands for so much of the beautifully earnest and middlebrow sensibilities of the Oscars that it somewhat transcends them.

Where, in the midst of this historical sweep, does Diana’s staunch matron of the family fit in?  She has a remarkable look but an ineffectual acting style still indebted to stage; playing each emotion to the balcony and making sure to divorce her movements from her dialogue.  In its sixth year of existence (and the fifth year of the talkies), the Academy was still torn between its reverence for the greats of the stage and the inconsistent quality of their performances (see Lynn Fontanne).  She is directed by Frank Lloyd, whose Mutiny on the Bounty I love for its stunning ensemble, but who directs the cast of Cavalcade as unimpressively as in his other Best Director win for The Divine Lady (also featuring a lackluster Best Actress nominee, Corinne Griffith).  For as often as I was distracted by her abrupt and fulsome acting throughout most of the march through the early Twentieth Century, she admirably redeemed herself in the final moments of the film, in which she seems to shed her affectations to play an elderly version of her character with a simple grace.  My vote for 1933 goes to a far more tender and proficient performance from May Robson in Lady for a Day, but I still have a guilty soft spot for this film, and a love for Diana’s final scene.

3 Down, 7 to Go: Marsha Mason in Only When I Laugh

(the 417th of the 424 Best Actress nominees!)

MARSHA MASON IN ONLY WHEN I LAUGH (1981)

The competition (Cliff: 5 for 5!)

Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond

Diane Keaton in Reds

Susan Sarandon in Atlantic City

Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant’s Woman

I’m not sure, but I think Marsha Mason is playing Marsha Mason playing Marsha Mason.  The role is that of a Broadway actress—for the second time—is that of a recovering alcoholic reluctantly starring in her playwright ex-boyfriend’s new play Only When I Laugh, which features a character modeled loosely on her.  It’s certainly a flawed and unsure work in places; both writer and actress seem to be stepping outside of their comfort zones for each other’s sake.  For Marsha, the wife of screenwriter Neil Simon, who authored three of her four Best Actress-nominated parts and got a divorce from her the year of this film was released, this film is a devilish mise-en-abyme to close out her Oscar career.

Between the two, I believe that Marsha turns in the stronger work, digging deep into her character’s frustrations and producing a mortified sense of humor that’s a notch darker than in her previous roles.  She maintains this throughout an hour of maudlin scenes with her lunch friends (fellow nominees Joan Hackett and James Coco) and daughter (Kristy McNichol), her tinge of desperation nicely foreshadowing the plunge her character will soon take.  Unfortunately, the film then takes a long, painful turn following her character’s backslide over a single night, in which she does not play the dissolving drunk quite as convincingly (her life-of-the-party scene is particularly overdone).  Along the way comes a disturbing physical assault, with the possibility of unacknowledged sexual assault as well, and Marsha re-emerges with a heavier dose of self-loathing than ever before, but still held aloft by her own humor.

One Best Actress side note: Marsha’s character, an alcoholic since her teenage years, at one point confides that growing up she always wanted to be Susan Hayward—a remarkable choice for a role model!  Altogether, this film in spite of its flaws raised my regard for Marsha as an actress, however much she owes her place in this quest to Neil Simon.  For 1981, I’ll go with Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant’s Woman for another actress-playing-an-actress role, over he Academy’s (and my) sentimental temptation Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond.