What to say about this crop of Best Actor nominees except to say that they are unusually great, all of them? How about this: 1941 and 1952 are in conversation with each other. John Ford wins in 1941, never nominated again until 1952, where he wins again. John Huston's directorial is in 1941; by 1952, he's nominated against Ford...and a veteran Oscar winner. For unnominated films, Swamp Water is remade as Lure of the Wilderness. And, if we're talking repeat winners, Gary Cooper finally wins an Oscar in 1941...only to repeat, once again uncontested, in 1952:
But who do you even vote for in this lineup? The Academy spoiled us this year, as witness:
Marlon Brando as Emiliano Zapata
Viva Zapata!
*****
Brando can be an exhausting performer to watch, so self-aware is he of the Acting that he does. It makes him, actually, perfect for this revolutionary whose own self-awareness of his importance and effect on the people around him will eventually lead to bloodshed, betrayal, and martyrdom. The brownface turning him into a Mestizo farmer is, yes, dated and unfortunate, but as a performance, it's a great one. The aforementioned self-awareness; the quiet control, commanding a room without raising his voice; the time he takes measuring his words, both because he is illiterate and because he knows what meaning they carry. There's a courage in his self-consciousness; there's a pain in how morally consistent he must be. Physically, he is fluid in a fight and uncomfortable when in some sort of Official Status - politician, statesman, representative, suitor.
Gary Cooper as Marshal Will Kane
High Noon
*****
past winner, fifth and final nomination; Golden Globe nominee for Best Actor - Drama
Forced to be straightforward, stripped of too much dialogue, Cooper can play to his strengths: the body, the face, the even tenor of his voice. With all that, he projects, not confidence or courage per se, but rather the backbone to do what is right. Cooper does a lot of listening here: Lon Chaney tells him it's hopeless, Grace Kelly tells him it's not his fight anymore, the townspeople tell him it's inconvenient - and he plays creeping doubt and resoluteness across his face in varying degrees every single time. The most difficult thing that he gets across is the fact that it isn't stubbornness, vengeance, or pride on Kane's part that keeps him in town to face the outlaws, we can see that he's sweating it. Cooper shows us the nagging feeling of moral right, of processing that and answering to it.
Kirk Douglas as Jonathan Shields
The Bad and the Beautiful
*****
second of three nominations
Shields is manipulative, opportunistic, calculating, cruel. Douglas gives you all that without once sacrificing the genuine joy Shields takes in the creative process. He gives real energy, single-minded and boyish, to these films he's making, every single one a gamble, every single one worth all the tears and heartache and debt. Is he ruthless? Yes, he is ruthless, but you can't deny the results. If he was a devil, if he couldn't convey not just charm but sincere belief in the mission, we would dismiss Walter Pidgeon's attempt to coax old enemies into one last collaboration. Because Douglas has so effectively allowed us to see what a genuine bastard this guy is, we don't wonder why any Hollywood type would work with this guy again.
José Ferrer as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (and his father, Comte Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec)
Moulin Rouge
****
past winner, third and final nomination
A fine performance of a temperamental artist who wants to be loved but denies it when it comes to him, of a man besotted with the ugly corners of society because they better fit his idea of himself, of a man who can wax poetic but would rather collapse drunken. Also an interesting performance of a father (yes, Ferrer plays father and son) who's more like his son than he wants to face, cold, ashamed. He's tasked with carrying the film and he does it splendidly. If you love Ferrer (I do), it's more reassurance that he's a master of his craft; if you're cool on him, you'll recognize the bag of tricks hidden in the makeup and height gimmicks and be annoyed. Not revelatory, but still a great from a great.
Alec Guinness as Henry Holland
The Lavender Hill Mob
****
first of four acting nominations
Guinness had three films to choose from this year, all of which were nominated (The Card for Best Sound, The Man in the White Suit for Best Screenplay, and this one). He's good in all of them, riffs on the technically very polite, mild-mannered-seeming English lad in all of them. They picked the right one, though: as bank clerk Henry Holland, an unassuming man with a great heist in mind, Guinness gets to be devious, gets to be one of those quiet types who believes they're smarter than everyone. He's not smarmy, he's not overtly cocky, and, again, he's a bank clerk, so even as he's hatching his plan and getting irritated at his cohorts and fleecing schoolgirls, you never think of him as an entitled jerk, just a wage earner who's finally getting his. An appealing performance.
-------------------------
And who, in this who's who of perfection, do I give my vote to? That would be:
GARY COOPER
in
HIGH NOON
Tomorrow, the nominees for Best Actress: Shirley Booth (Come Back, Little Sheba), Joan Crawford (Sudden Fear), Bette Davis (The Star), Julie Harris (The Member of the Wedding), and Susan Hayward (With a Song in My Heart)
No comments:
Post a Comment