What qualifies one as a lead? Peggy Ashcroft went back and forth the whole awards season for her performance in A Passage to India, winning three Best Actress awards and two Best Supporting Actress awards before finally getting the Oscar:
But was she lead or supporting? One can make the case that the leads are solely Judy Davis and Victor Banerjee, for reasons we shall get into when we cover A Passage to India in future posts. One can also make the case that Davis, Banerjee, Ashcroft, and James Fox all share lead status, or that Ashcroft and Davis are both leads, or that only Banerjee is the lead, or...well, as I said, we'll get into it. The only clear thing about Ashcroft is that she was going to win, period. There was not a single award that she was up for that she lost, and she was nominated for everything.
As was Christine Lahti for Swing Shift, a dramedy about women who went to work in the steel factories while the men were overseas serving their country during World War Two. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell star, but Lahti steals the show, and received the film's only nomination (by the way, although it doesn't have the best reputation, I quite like Swing Shift - it's more complex than its critics give it credit for, and if Hawn's protagonist seems a bit muddled...well, yeah, she is, so what?).
Another lone acting nominee here is the oft-nominated Geraldine Page for The Pope of Greenwich Village. The movie's about a pair of cousins, perpetual screw-ups who feel they can never catch a break, wind up causing a cop's death while trying to rip off mobsters. Page is the cop's momma, basically a cameo. I'm surprised hers is the only nod for her movie: while a little overlong and tonally all over the place, there are some solid performances throughout, the most notable being Eric Roberts as the most irritating piece-of-shit you've ever seen.
Also nominated were Lindsay Crouse, whose film Places in the Heart we've discussed before and will again, and Glenn Close for The Natural, where she plays the good girl hometown love of the titular character, a miraculously gifted ballplayer given a second chance. Interesting fantasy-sports drama, one we'll get into next week. Anyway, the nominees:
