1997 Oscars: Best Actor

Hard to oversell what a slam-bang lineup 1997's Lead Actor was, is. One of those years where any one of them could win and it wouldn't be the wrong choice. The one that did win? A great choice!:

The nominees, as ranked by me:

Oscar '85: William Hurt and Best Actor

My two all-time favorite actors are William Hurt and Vincent Price. Only one of them won an Oscar:

It was the first of a three-year streak of the Academy loving Hurt's performances, which I've discussed before in my coverage of 1986 and 1987 (linked below). You can tell that the room was with him - a semi-standing ovation, a shout of support, an incredible wave of adulation. And being that he is my favorite actor, you could perhaps assume what my take on his performance, his win, and his competition may be. But read it for yourself:

1970, Day Ten: Actor

The Best Actor nominees this year were all nominated at the Golden Globes for Best Actor in a Drama. That includes, among the other previously discussed and soon-to-be-discussed films, The Great White Hope, a compelling drama about a black boxer who becomes a target of the US government not just because of his becoming heavyweight champion of the world over all the white competitors, but because of his relationship with a white woman. Thoughtfully written, perfectly cast (in addition to nominees James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander, the ensemble boasts Lou Gilbert, Beah Richards, Marlene Warfield and Hal Holbrook), with an eye for detail and a scale of design on par with most epics.

But there were no Comedy/Musical Globe nominees! Just straight-faced misses. That means the Oscars skipped out on:

• Richard Benjamin for Diary of a Mad Housewife. As the ambitious husband pressuring his wife to help him surpass the Joneses, Benjamin is obnoxious, thoughtless, amusing. He's also supporting Carrie Snodgress, and supporting is where he belongs!
• Albert Finney for Scrooge, a musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Finney was in his early 30s when he took the role of 50+ Ebenezer Scrooge. Despite winning the Golden Globe and already being a nominee for Best Actor, he missed out...though he'd eventually return to the Academy's good graces. I'm glad they didn't. He's...miscast.
• Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland for MASH. As Trapper John, M.D., and Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce, respectively, Gould and Sutherland anchor the anarchy. Gould was nominated the year before for Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice; Sutherland is still waiting.
• Jack Lemmon for The Out-of-Towners. Lemmon's everyman routine gets an edge. Visiting NYC for a business meeting that he hoped to parlay into a getaway with his wife, the domino effect of just terrible mishaps that greet them quickly take him from harried businessman to entitled asshole. It is hostile and the best.

Instead, they went for:

1992, Day Four: Supporting Actor

Like Emma Thompson's Best Actress win, Best Supporting Actor was a march towards the inevitable:

But does inevitable mean deserved? Let's talk:

Day Five: Best Supporting Actor, 1969

We wrap up this first week with 1969 with a look at Best Supporting Actor:

Fifty years later, one name rings out above all the rest: Jack Nicholson. While he was no newcomer to Hollywood - he made his movie debut 11 years earlier in The Cry Baby Killer and contributed to the screenplay for the Monkees film Head - Easy Rider announced him as a true presence to be reckoned with, a Star for the ages. He may be approaching his tenth year of retirement, but Nicholson still looms large in the industry - my God, I still hear twenty-somethings debate his performance in Batman, get bowled over by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, quote Anger Management.

Also worth mentioning: Rupert Crosse's nomination makes it the first in this category for a black actor. Crosse was an Actor's Studio alum who trained under John Cassavetes and is best known for his work in the director's Shadows...although, sadly, I first knew him as the actor who had to drop out of The Last Detail due to cancer. It would be another 12 years before another black actor  was nominated (Howard Rollins, Ragtime) and another year after that before one would win (Lou Gossett, Jr., An Officer and a Gentleman). Fifty years later, Mahershala Ali stands as the reigning Best Supporting Actor champ, the only black actor to win it twice. Here is the legacy of Rupert Crosse.

Nicholson, Crosse, and the rest of the competition - after the jump...

Best Actor, 1987

Very late, but family was in town, so I have no regrets. Besides, why not start the week with five legendary leading men?

Let's get into them, after the jump.

Two for One: Best Supporting Actor, 1983

It's rare enough that a single film takes up two nominations in an acting category -- but in three of them?! Thus was the case in 1983, and while The Dresser is to thank for that occurring in Best Actor, Terms of Endearment had that on lock - two nominations in Best Actress, and another two here in Best Supporting Actor.

Jack Nicholson, who won the Oscar, plays former astronaut Garrett, who we glimpse throughout before he finally starts courting Shirley MacLaine's Aurora about halfway through (maybe more?) into the film. John Lithgow, nominated the previous year for playing a transsexual in The World According to Garp, here plays a lovestruck banker in a handful of scenes. One is coarse, the other more refined; one is single, the other married; both are lovers of the leads, but there's little hope for commitment there.

Another previous nominee: Charles Durning, here playing a Nazi officer in To Be Or Not To Be. The Mel Brooks comedy actually makes some poignant observations about Nazi-occupied Poland - but one of the film's great strengths is Durning's comic doofus, a man reveling in his authority, whose indulgences are a symbol of the excesses of the party. He's also quite funny.

But there was also new blood this year! Sam Shepard was an early front-runner thanks to his quiet performance in The Right Stuff, the epic about the beginning of the American space program. Shepard plays Chuck Yeager, the first to break the sound barrier. Much of his narrative encompasses the first 30 minutes of the more than 3-hour film, though we do check back in on him from time to time.

Also among the newbies: Rip Torn, nominated for Cross Creek, in which he plays a resident of the Florida swamps, a neighbor of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings...who would base the character of the father in The Yearling on him. He has a handful of children and a wife who used to entertain in town, before he wed her and took her to the swamp. Hard living, that is.

Nicholson won, as I said, and for many it was a no-brainer. But is it a no-brainer for me? Check after the jump...

Two Uniforms, a Con Man, and a Pair of Middle-Aged Sadsacks: Actor, 1973

The five men nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role all walked away with an Oscar -- in different years, of course, and some in different categories. Only for Jack Lemmon was it this year, this category.

Men of Dishonor: Actor, 1975

The nominees for Best Actor are:

Walter Matthau in The Sunshine Boys

***

Matthau's an odd duck when it comes to comedy. He can go completely deadpan and subtle, or he can go hammy and demand a laugh. Much of The Sunshine Boys is spent in the latter, which is appropriate for the hammy, old-fashioned Willie Clark, a vaudevillian who refuses to retire. It's annoying as hell, of course, but it is appropriate. It's an amusing performance that kills when paired with George Burns, but some of his interactions with the other cast members -- his nephew, his nurse -- come off as more forced, more "acted", if you will.

Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

*****

What, like I need to tell you what a great performance this is? I love how Nicholson never tries to make McMurphy smarter, kinder or more selfless than he really is; instead, the small ways in which he saves and inspires the people around him come almost by chance through his arrogance and self-aggrandizement. He's an uneducated, vulgar, manipulative man, but he believes in the patients' ability to help themselves and even delays his own escape to allow the happiness of one of them. From his narrating an imaginary World Series to wiping snot from his nose during a basketball game, Nicholson's deft handling of big moments and little details illustrate an uncomplicated yet somewhat complex human being.

Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon

*****

I love everything about this performance. Pacino gives Sonny a bizarre energy, like an easily-distracted child making his own rules to a game everyone else has played. His various forms of self-delusion and self-pity are fascinating to watch, particularly in his interactions with his "wife". The slow slide from energized media hero to exhausted Man is subtly charted, so that Pacino's eventual hopeless acceptance at the end is organic, disquieting, and inevitable.

Maximilian Schell in The Man in the Glass Booth

**

The film is a bizarre, pretentious, dull mess, based upon the stage play by great actor Robert Shaw: a Jewish sculptor living in New York is arrested and tried as, and confesses to being, a notorious concentration camp official. But is he? Half the film leads up to the arrest, exploring this odd millionaire with the uncomfortable, gallows humor; the second half is the trial. Schell's performance is mesmerizing at times, but it also plateaus a bit, as he shouts with a mad expression throughout much of the runtime. He's getting a kick out of playing this mysterious and eccentric character, but it's exhausting.

James Whitmore in Give 'Em Hell, Harry!

**

The one-man show starring Whitmore as President Truman is quite literally a taped stage performance, often stopping to accommodate laughter and applause. One could forgive this were it a more challenging role, yet Whitmore is given little more to do than channel GREAT and AMAZING and OH IF ONLY OL' HARRY WAS STILL AROUND, with some sideswipes at then-recently disgraced Nixon. Honestly, I kind of wanted to yell at him every time he stopped himself to go, "Now, wait, now, hold on, just a minute, there, HOLD ON!" It happens constantly, and comes off more as poor improv than scripted mannerism.

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In one of the most deserving Oscars ever received, Nicholson won the Academy Award. And yet....I have to give credit to the colorful, engaging, fearless performance from another great actor. My Oscar vote goes to:

AL PACINO

in

DOG DAY AFTERNOON

The Men In Charge: Best Actor, 1974

Let us begin with the men.

 
1974 was dominated by male-centric films, whether focusing on an ensemble of Hollywood stars saving the women and children from disaster (Earthquake, The Towering Inferno), a mafia don and the saga of his sons (The Godfather: Part II), a vengeful father (Death Wish), or a parody of the classic Hollywood cowboy (Blazing Saddles). It was also dominated by a slew of classics and cult flicks -- how many times have The Godfather: Part II, Young Frankenstein and Chinatown appeared on "best of film" lists? These are movies we have memorized before we even see them, and they needed someone with balls in charge. In the case of these five films, quite literally.

Art Carney in Harry and Tonto

**

Check out the other performances and you'll see actors headlining a murder mystery with a morally ambiguous ending, a warts-and-all biopic with a sad ending, a cynical noir with a pessimistic ending, and a crime epic with a exhaustingly tragic ending. Then there's this film, a light-hearted road movie centering on an octagenarian going cross-country with his cat after his New York apartment is demolished. I'll get into what I feel about the movie itself when I cover its screenplay nomination, but let me preface my take on Carney's performance with these words: I just don't like this movie. It means well, but as a whole I just don't care for it.

Not that Carney is the issue. I think he's quite capable in the role of Harry, subtly underplaying it most of the time so that his outbursts of real emotion are all the more effective. When I think about what I like about Harry and Tonto, I think about his forcing a Greyhound bus to stop because his cat needs to pee. Or his tearful exit after identifying a body at the morgue. Or, my favorite scene, his visit to a nursing home that ends in a dance with an old flame. That moment is just beautiful enough to make me like the film and performance a little more. In the end, though, I don't think the role is challenging, and I don't think Carney's performance is either.

Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express

***

Agatha Christie once stated that she could never write her popular detective Hercule Poirot for the stage because he was too over-the-top. In close-up the role is just as jarring as Christie expected. Heavily made-up and speaking with a gruff accent, it's hard to believe this is Albert Finney. He gets Poirot's watchfulness, ego, and amusement, in ways both subtle and not very subtle at all. The challenge, of course, is to make an interesting character out of someone who is conducting interviews for two hours, and Finney rises to the occasion. He's soothing here, accusatory there; Poirot adapts to the occasion spontaneously.

This also makes Poirot pretty inscrutable. When David Suchet went from righteous anger to soothing calm in the television version, you could chart that progress. Finney's Poirot, on the other hand, is a cartoon, yelling at inappropriate moments and muttering Shirley Temple tunes under his breath. His individual interviews are great, and he nails that final ten-minute monologue, but the performance rests on the mannerisms.

Dustin Hoffman in Lenny

*****

Is there a more perfect marriage of actor and role? Hoffman, as we've seen, is a notorious improviser who never plays the same scene twice. Lenny Bruce, according to Albert Goldman, was a notorious improviser "whose ideal was to walk out there like Charlie Parker, take that mike in his hand like a horn and blow, blow, blow everything that came into his head just as it came into his head with nothing censored, nothing translated, nothing mediated". Bring the two together and you get a performance that just sizzles.

I don't know how to express my love for this performance. Never before have I seen Hoffman this hilarious, vulnerable, adorable, maddening and charming. His nerdy exuberance when romancing Honey is infectious; his single-minded obsession with his obscenity trials is frustrating. His performance makes the disparate images of the responsible father and the drug-abuser just different parts of the same man. I really just want to show you the movie and yell, "SEE? LOOK AT THIS!" every scene. But that would be annoying, so I won't.

Jack Nicholson in Chinatown

*****

I imagine it must be difficult to play a gumshoe, since your role is either to react or offer exposition. Yet it's not hard to see why Nicholson was the frontrunner this year. Of course, Robert Towne's screenplay and Roman Polanski's direction lay enough groundwork for Nicholson to work with, but it takes a special kind of actor to make the private dick effective. I'm not talking charm, I'm talking smarm, and Nicholson has it. It's a sleazy job -- and that defense at the barbershop seems to be more for his benefit than his neighbor's -- but dammit he's good at it.

Perhaps the strongest element of his performance is his incredulity. Jake Gittes can usually weasel his way into anything, but this case, taking him from a simple case of adultery into a conspiracy within the Los Angeles County Water Department, manages to catch him off guard at every turn. He trusts the wrong people, follows the wrong leads, accuses the wrong culprit. Gittes is as human as you or I, a man whose past hurts inform his present relationships. He's vulgar, quick-witted, suspicious...really, there are few I'd rather spend two hours watching. Indeed, this was one of the few movies that I never took my eyes off of once, and Nicholson's performance is a HUGE part of the fascination.

Al Pacino in The Godfather: Part II

****

Pacino ups his game from the original. There's no trace of the Michael Corleone who once assured Diane Keaton, "That's my family, Kay, that's not me." Michael is calculating and cold-blooded. The man calmly orders the assassination of Hyman Roth, gives his brother the kiss of death, and manipulates the witnesses of a grand jury investigation. He rages at his wife and his consigliere -- powerful moments, indeed, for they go against his usually controlled demeanor. It's fascinating to see a man so changed, yet refusing to acknowledge that his relationships have. The aforementioned argument with Kay is rightfully legendary, and that final shot of Michael sitting alone after "settling business" haunts me still, a full two months since I saw the movie.

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Oscar chose Art Carney, but if I had to choose between these five, the Oscar goes to...

DUSTIN HOFFMAN

in

LENNY

a magnetic performance, beautiful and ugly, triumphant and tragic

Justice is Served

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. It has come to my attention (and thank you, Salon.com), that the first three Oscar winners of the season have been announced. My friends, read this:

Actress Lauren Bacall, producer-director Roger Corman and cinematographer Gordon Willis are the first Oscar winners of the season.

The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Thursday that the three will receive honorary Oscar statuettes.

You see the most important name there, right?



Roger Effing Corman.

Producer-writer-director Corman has been in the business for, like, a hundred years and has made over 200 million films. Or something like that. He started the careers of Francis Ford Coppola and Jack Nicholson. He nurtured Vincent Price's reputation as a horror star. He was an extra in Rachel Getting Married. And now, he's getting his due.

So, to the man who made House of Usher, Death Race 2000, The Little Shop of Horrors, A Bucket of Blood, Caged Heat, Creature from the Haunted Sea, and many many more, I send out a congratulatory toast. Here's to you, Mr. Corman!