Best Film Ensembles of All Time Part III: 11-20 Orrin's list

This is Part III of a series in which Adam Spector of Adam's Rib and I count down out top 50 film ensembles of all time. Part I is here and Part II is here. Because Adam and I went into so much detail, we split this entry into two with the other entry here.

Orrin’s List: 20. X-Men 19. Key Largo 18. It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World 17. Double Indemnity 16. Bridge on the River Kwai 15. Back to the Future 14. The Great Escape 13. North by Northwest 12. Dead Poets' Society 11. Judgment at Nuremberg

Adam's Response:

Orrin, now that are getting near the home stretch, I’m going movie by movie to make sure each one gets the attention it deserves.  Here’s your #11-20: 

11. Judgment at Nuremberg – You mentioned that you had reservations about the film, specifically how Montgomery Clift took advantage of Clift’s condition by casting him as the mentally disabled castration victim.  Certainly when you watch his performance, you can’t help but thinking of Clift’s 

real life struggles (with alcoholism and mental degeneration following an accident), but I disagree that Clift was somehow exploited.  When director Stanley Kramer offered him the part, Clift offered to do it for nothing.  He ended up agreeing to the minimum salary.  Clift often missed his lines, but Kramer told him he could ad-lib, and frequently reassured him.  According to a Clift biography, Spencer Tracy told him “Just look into my eyes and do it.  You’re a great actor and you understand this guy.  Stanley doesn’t care if you throw aside the precise lines.   Just do it.  Do it into my eyes and you’ll be magnificent.”  Clift did just that, focusing on Tracy during his performance.  Not only was Clift not exploited, but his castmates had his back, another way of demonstrating a strong ensemble.  Clift garnered his last Oscar nomination for this role.  Maximillian Schell was largely unknown in America going into the film but won the Oscar.  In fact this is one of the rare films with two Best Actor nominations: Schell and Tracy.  Throw in Marlene Dietrich, Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland, Richard Widmark, and a young William Shatner, and this film truly belongs on your list.  I may like your selection more than you do and am only upset that I didn’t include it.             

12. Dead Poets Society – An ensemble piece disguised as a star vehicle.  The film’s marketing focused solely on Robin Williams, as though this was a prep school version of Good Morning Vietnam. Williams is charismatic and funny, but the real stars here are the young men, led by Robert Sean Leonard, Josh Charles and a young Ethan Hawke.  These actors have a comfort and ease with each other that lends to their believability as classmates.   When I saw this in 1989 I didn’t realize that Norman Lloyd, who played the draconian headmaster, had worked in the Mercury Theater for Orson Welles and then later acted in two Hitchcock films.  Speaking of Hitchcock . . .  

13. North by Northwest – Ensembles don’t come to mind when considering Hitchcock’s films.  Many of them have characters who find themselves isolated, often only interacting with a small number of people.  North by Northwest may be an exception, even though the film’s signature scene is Cary Grant by himself running away from the plane.  Grant’s scenes with Eva Marie Saint sizzle with sexual chemistry.  James Mason serves as almost a mirror image of Grant, as though they were raised by the same parents but one turned bad.  Martin Landau gives his evil henchman so much more than what is on the page, even implying that he may be secretly in love with his boss.  Leo G. Carroll plays an American spymaster as the model of British efficiency.  Joyce Carroll Landis steals every scene she’s in as the overbearing, clueless mother (“Are you trying to kill my son?”)  Kudos, Orrin for digging deeper on this

14. The Great Escape – This is closer to what you traditionally think of as an ensemble film.  Effective mix of American (Steve McQueen, James Garner, James Coburn, Charles Bronson) and UK (Richard Attenborough, James Donald, Donald Pleasance, David McCallum) fitting for a World War II movie.

15. Back to the Future – Another one where I had to look twice, since I usually just think of Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd.  Still it’s Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson and Thomas F. Wilson who were funny and authentic as younger and older versions of the same character.  Wilson set the standard for playing mean, dumb bullies.  When Chuck Berry died earlier this year I also remembered Harry Waters, Jr. fine turn as Chuck’s fictional cousin Marvin Berry.   

16. Bridge on the River Kwai – This must be the World War II related section of your list, between this The Great Escape, and Nuremberg.  The film stands as a brilliant depiction of the madness that comes from war.  Still even though there’s a huge cast, the only ones that stand out are William Holden, Sessue Hayakawa, and of course Alec Guinness.  Guinness certainly deserved his Best Actor Oscar.  His scenes with Hayakawa work in part because they both let you see the grudging respect their characters have for each other underneath the enmity.  Just because it’s a great movie doesn’t always mean it has exceptional ensemble work.  

17. Double Indemnity – Case in point.  To this day, one of the archetype film noirs.  Exquisitely plotted, with crackling, biting dialogue.  Wilder is an underrated visual director, using light and shadow here to create an atmosphere of intrigue and eventually dread.   Still, I don’t remember anyone in the film besides Barbara Stanwyck, Fred McMurray, and Edward G. Robinson.   Yes, they are all at the top of their game.  Stanwyck remains the femme fatale that others are measured against.  But three standouts does not an ensemble make.    If we did that, why not Sleuth, with just Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine?  

18. It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World – The film that proves that just because an ensemble looks promising on paper doesn’t make it work on the screen.    It’s a Who’s Who of the top 50s and 60s comedic talent: Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, Jonathan Winters, etc.  Plus Spencer Tracy.  Too bad the story doesn’t give them much to do that’s actually funny.  The film is freaking 3 hours and I maybe laughed twice during that time.  They don’t seem to work that well with each other either.    Also, how can you cast the Three Stooges and not have them do anything?  There’s a reason Stanley Kramer didn’t direct a comedy before or since. 

 

19. Key Largo – You rebounded with this pick.  The confined space where most of the story happens tightens the pressure and brings out the best in the fine cast.   This was the last Bogie-Bacall film, and is less focused on those two then their prior three.  Seeing Bogart and Edward G. Robinson go toe to toe is a treat.  Lionel Barrymore gives the film dignity and moral weight.  But it was Claire Trevor that won an Oscar.  She excelled at playing women weighed down by bad luck and bad choices. 

   

20. X-Men (2000) – A superhero movie here?  Yes, and it belongs.  Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen bring dramatic heft and gravitas to Professor X and Magneto.  Hugh Jackman became a star overnight through this film.  Then add in Anna Paquin (who already won an Oscar), and Halle Berry, win one who would soon.  Much of the fun comes from the byplay among the mutants.  Jackman and James Marsden have terrific chemistry as frenemies vying for Jean Grey’s love.  Among the humans, Bruce Davison, one of the most underrated character actors around, brings heart and vulnerability to what could have been a standard villain role.  Unlike some of the future installments where some of the actors got lost or overlooked, this one gave all of the key players moments to shine.

   

Orrin's Response:

Adam, you nailed my reasoning in many instances.

Dead Poets Society is not just about how well the film accomplishes the difficult feat of creating a young group of actors in chemistry, but think of how impressive it is to have  simultaneously discovered Ethan Hawke, Josh Charles and Robert Sean Leonard while they were all in their late teens. Similarly, you're correct that Key Largo for me is about the greatest of different generations sharing the screen as much as it is about the classic Bocall-Bogart and Bogart-Edward G. Robinson pairings at their best. While I’m in agreement with the critical consensus that this isn’t the best Bogart-Bacall pairing or the best gangster movie of all time, it’s a great film and holds a special place in my heart (my grandparents lived not too far from the hotel where this film is set) and I’m glad you share an appreciation.

I think we also agree that Hitchcock doesn't always have a focus on acting--the documentary Hitchcock/ Truffaut emphasized that he wasn't particularly fond of listening to or collaborating with actors-- but North by Northwest is archetypal as far as I'm concerned: Eva Marie Saint is the empowered beauty (more Halle Berry than Britt Ekland if we were to go for a James Bond analogy), Martin Laundau (a personal favorite) is the most memorable of henchmen, Cary Grant's abilities at reactive physical comedy made him the best of Hitchcock's fish-out-of-water heroes, and James Mason is so denobair as the villain.

As for some of the ones you disapprove of:

Credit: Alamy dot com

The Bridge on the River Kwai is a film that earns a place this high on my list because of the performances of four actors: William Holden, as far as I’m concerned, is the most exciting actor of his generation (and if I ever contradict this in past or future discussions, you have permission to beat me with a cane). Every leading man from Jimmy Stewart to Henry Fonda to Gregory Peck had a certain screen persona that they used to carry them through most of their movies with the occasional variation (like Henry Fonda in How the West Was Won).  Holden had leading man charisma but you have absolutely no idea what you’re going to get with him. To see him acting alongside Mr. Chameleon himself, Alec Guinness (in a very focused role, no less), is quite a treat. Additionally, Geoffrey Horne plays a green-eyed private with a palpable sense of fear and naiveté about killing another person. In an epic war movie (particularly one with a British styling), I’ve never seen a character like this: Typically, soldiers are just about marching onwards and forwards for the Queen and all that. Lastly, how can you not appreciate Sessue Hayakawa?  As someone who’s always talking about minority representation (along with nearly everyone else in film criticism), there’s a great deal of history of East Asians treated abysmally on screen that’s been overlooked. What’s more Hayakawa wasn’t a foreign import who had great success in Asian cinema (like Ken Watanabe or Michelle Yeoh) before coming to Hollywood. He had been acting in films since 1914 and experienced a lot of the casting bigotry first hand. He is tremendous here alongside Guinness.

Back to the Future is primarily about the fact that the five leads--Christopher Lloyd, Michael J Fox, Thomas Wilson, Lea Thompson and Crispin Glover-- all do great, great work here that, as far as I know, has never been matched in any of their respective careers (although Wilson has a couple great stand-up clips). Whether you’re next greatest film ranges from Who Framed Roger Rabbit to Howard the Duck (sorry Lea Thompson for bringing that up), I get the sense that Robert Zemeckis really took the care to pick the absolute best actors for these parts. Evidence of this meticulousness is also reflected by how sacrificed much of the wiggle room in their budget by replacing Eric Stoltz after filming had commenced.

Credit: Q104 Cleveland

As for Double Indemnity and It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, I’ll just concede they were bad picks because your arguments were strong enough to convince me otherwise. I remember Jean Heather and Tom Powers as the rest of the Dietrichson clan in Double Indemnity and the shady underworld figures that populate film noirs, but maybe you’re right that it’s too reliant on just those three people. I think that Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson are all extraordinary here, but maybe we should try to have a minimum of four here (you don’t want to exclude, say, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, do you?), and to be fair, Robinson and Stanwyck are great in A LOT of films. I think it’s a pretty awesome achievement that Kramer was able to get all those comic actors in one movie, but you make a good point that he doesn’t necessarily utilize that dearth of talent other than simply putting them in bit roles.

Let me close out with a couple additional questions: X-Men is a film I picked because not just the actors are great, but because it feels like a turning point to comic-book/superhero movies being taken seriously and that is precisely because of the ensemble. To me, the difference between putting say Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando in Superman and Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, and Patrick Stewart in X-Men is that, in the latter, the actors were taking their parts as seriously as a prestige film. Perhaps you might have a bigger familiarity with tent pole movies than myself. Is that an accurate assessment?

Adam's Last Words:

Orrin, I was critical of some of your picks, but not Back to the Future.  In fact, I agree with every point you made.   I was merely stating that I did not immediately think of it as an ensemble film.  When I saw it on your list, I looked back through a different lens, past Fox and Lloyd.  With Glover, Wilson, and Thompson, even smaller bits by James Tolkan as the uptight principal (“Slacker!”) and Harry Waters, Jr, who I mentioned before, this truly belongs.  

With The Bridge on the River Kwai, Horne’s performance did not register for me the way it did for you.  However, I am on board with Holden, who you will see later on my list.  Holden was a more modern leading man, perfect for the 1950s.  He would seem one way on the surface, but always had something going on underneath.  Holden had a certain mischievous charm that blended perfectly into a more weathered, worn performance when needed.  

Intriguing question about X-Men.  Certainly before Stewart and McKellen you had big name stars in comic book movies.  Besides Brando and Hackman, you had Jack Nicholson, Tommy Lee Jones, etc.  In many cases they were playing self-aware villains who were having fun and they acted accordingly.  Yes, Stewart and McKellen played their roles as if they were serious dramatic parts, and that’s in part because they were written that way.  Professor X is part teacher, part civil rights leader, while Magneto sees himself not as a bad guy but as a freedom fighter.  That’s not to take anything away from their performances.   They helped pave the way for the Dark Knight series.    

Credit: Yogadork.com

You have a valid point about Wes Anderson’s work, which are all fine ensemble pieces.  You can make a case for any one of them, and I wouldn’t argue.  In fact, it may be too much of a good thing, where to avoid taking all of them and having it be a huge chunk of the list, I stuck to one.  Granted, that’s not solid logic, and you could justifiably ask me why I picked more than one from other directors but not Anderson.  All of his films have wide ranging ensembles, and he has developed a stellar stock company over the years (Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston).  I picked The Royal Tenenbuams for two reasons.  First, it features Gene Hackman’s last iconic performance.    Second, it had the widest and deepest cast.  Not just the big stars, although it had plenty of those – Huston, Murray, Wilson, Danny Glover, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow.  Also lesser known actors such as Anderson mainstay Kumar Pallana.  He performed when he was younger and then Anderson (re)discovered him in his 70s.   Pallana conveyed a sense of having seen everything, while also displaying terrific deadpan comic timing. 

More Random Trivia Items

Whenever I hear some interesting about a film, I often add it to the trivia section on IMDB. Over the years, I've accumulated quite a few contributions and since they are my own property, I occasionally post a few here. Give a thumbs up if you find any interesting:
 
Review

• The season finale to the first season was shot with the intention that the show would not be renewed.
• Andy Daly said in a Reddit AMA that the writers decided that Forest should get divorced early on so he could go on sex adventures.

Back to the Future II

• The motivation for writing a scene with an automatically hydrating oven in the future was due to product placement needs with Pizza Hut's sponsorship.
  Pizza Hut provided a professional food stylist and pizza kitchen to be at the set of the future McFly house to make hot, attractive pizzas for each take.
• The plot line of George McFly dying in 1985 was based entirely on Crispin Glover's refusal to do the sequel.
• Screenwriter Bob Gale was inspired to write science fiction by the George Powell version of The Time Machine that he watched as a kid and subsequently gobbled up a lot of time travel novels thereafter.
• One of the conceptions of the 2015 universe that didn't make it on screen because of the budget cuts was a sport called "Slam Ball" that would be played in an anti-gravity chamber and combine Jai Alai, handball, and roller derby.

The Brink

• Not only are the translations accurate when characters are speaking in Hebrew, Urdu, or German but the dialects are as well.
• The show was screened for Ex-President George HW Bush who is friends with Executive Producer  Jerry Weintraub 

School Daze

• Thanks to Columbia Pictures exec David Pickler, Spike Lee got final cut rights for the film which was pretty rare for any director at the time.
• "Straight and Nappy" was written by Spike Lee's father Bill Lee. His sister, Joie Lee, who would play a more prominent role in "Do the Right Thing" also got a small part in this film as well.
• Despite mixed reviews, the film cost $6.5 million to make and grossed $15 million making it one of Columbia Studio's most profitable films of 1988.
• To the degree that the film is considered a musical, it is the first studio-funded musical to be directed by an African-American. 

Key Largo

• In honor of its connection to Humphrey Bogart with this film, Key Largo, FL hosts a Humphrey Bogart film festival every year. 
• Rocco's character was modeled after Al Capone who retired to South Florida shortly after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
• An urban legend has sprouted from a misquoted line of Rocco's dialogue that this film predicted the recount battle in the 2000 presidential election.
• Claire Trevor didn't want to do the singing scene and was tricked by the director, John Huston, into doing a take that ended up winning her an Oscar

X-Men (Cartoon Series)

• The voice actors were largely cast from the Toronto theater scene
• Fox initially had a lot of resistance to the cartoon series before it became a success. They felt that the target audiences, kids under 10, wouldn't be interested in a romantic love triangle between Cyclops, Jean, and Wolverine. They also thought kids wouldn't keep up with a show that was serialized
• Story editor and writer Eric Lewald liked the "Nightcrawler" episode best because he felt that the religious themes made the episode weightier than the network usually permitted
• Stan Lee was not creatively active with Marvel comics at the time the series was being produced so his involvement wasn't particularly big on the series. He gave some producers notes on the first thirteen episodes

The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3 (2009 remake)

•  The production team worked closely with the MTA and was given access to the MTA control room for research
• The actor who plays Bashkim was an ex-convict, just released from prison, who was originally hired as a consultant for the film. 

Charlie Wilson's War

•  Charlie Wilson's aides in his Senate office were all beautiful well-endowed women nicknamed "Charlie's Angels." In real life, his chief aide, played by Amy Adams in the film, was often played by a man.
• Former New York City mayor and presidential candidate is referenced in the film. Rudy Guiliani was never able to find enough evidence that Wilson had done cocaine, though Wilson hasn't flatly denied it either.
• In addition to the deviant lifestyle being portrayed on screen, Charlie Wilson also had a DUI Hit-and-Run Charge outside Georgetown on the Key Bridge. If indicted, he would have been far less successful in securing money for his project in Afghanistan, but thankfully he got away. The History Channel documentary about his life suggests that he drank that night and other nights to ease the pain he felt for the Afghan people.

Key Largo, Identity Thief, and Jack-of-all-Genres Movies

Key Largo (1948):
Starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor, directed by John Huston, based on a play by Maxwell Anderson

Identity Thief (2013):
Starring Melissa McCarthy, Jason Bateman, John Cho, Amanda Peet, T.I., Genesis Rodriguez, Eric Stonestreet, Robert Patrick


I've always had a fondness for this John Huston semi-classic due to the fact that it features my favorite place on Earth. My grandparents retired to a spot in the upper Florida Keys (approximately three miles below the southern tip of Key Largo) and being in the Keys has always been a calming happiness-inducing experience for me so it's fitting that the film is thematically centered around the redemptive powers of Key Largo. If you think about it, there's no overt romance between Bacall and Bogart's characters, and his resolution comes through finding peace with his new place.

The story follows a World War II veteran Frank McCloud (Bogart) as he travels to a hotel in Key Largo to meet the father, Mr. Temple (a wheelchair-bound Barrymore), and widow, Nora (Bacall), of a fallen comrade in the Italian theater. Warm feelings are shared between the three and it's established that Mr. Temple is a beloved community advocate of the Indians.

Since the film can't be entirely about three people reminiscing, drama eventually happens when it's revealed that all of the hotel guests hanging around the lobby are employed by notorious gangster Johnny Rocco (Robinson) and in a sudden flash, the jovial atmosphere turns into a hostage situation. If you're watching the film blind (having no knowledge of  the plot), as is often the case when you're watching TCM, that split second where everything turns topsy-turvy is a very effective moment.

The film is adapted from a play so it's fitting that it takes on a meditative tone. As various characters point guns at and try to outmaneuver each other, there's a lot of philosophical discussion. At the core, the film is about Frank and his lost sense of idealism. Does he believe only in self-preservation or heroism? There's also a parallel sentiment among the gangsters who mourn the glory days of the prohibition. A number of these thematic undercurrents, however, are left dangling. One gets the sense that the remiss gangster who keeps muttering to himself that prohibition will be back again, or the relationship between Temple and the Indians are remnants of the stage version that dealt more fully with these issues.

In the third act, the film goes back to full-on action mode as McCloud becomes a man of action on the high seas. Many of Huston's films have an adventurous tone, and this is no exception. Although, Key Largo isn't as acclaimed as Huston's films African Queen or Treasure of the Sierra Madre, it has a lot of strengths relative to those films. It's more tightly scripted, succeeds better at creating suspense, and the final set piece tops any scene  from either of those two films. The film also won an Oscar for Claire Trevor

Ironically, anyone who's spent any time on Key Largo knows that the island's most famous classic movie landmark comes from another John Huston film: At the Holiday Isle resort, the boat from the African Queen is on display and visitors can even take a tour on it.  While most of the film was shot in Los Angles, the exterior shots of Key Largo were shot at the Caribbean Club and while the property still exists today, much of the old exterior was destroyed in a pair of fires.


In thinking about how Key Largo combines action, staged drama, meditative dialogue, quasi-romance and the gangster genre, I was thinking about a recent article I read that said that Hollywood is pressing movies to include as many genres as possible.

This is why the latest buddy films (i.e. Hangover, Horrible Bosses) and romcoms (i.e. Date Night) often have a few action scenes added in and why the super hero genre is being infused with massive amounts of buddy action (Green Hornet), humor (Iron Man), or light-hearted romance (Spiderman).

The latest example of this is The Identity Thief starring Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy which would be a perfectly substantial film if the characters' lives were never in danger. Rain Man; Planes Trains and Automobiles; Trial and Error, Every Which Way But Loose, and the very recent Due Date all work as road trip buddy films without needing to double as double as action films.

Nonetheless, Identity Thief works and it's hard to argue that the action scenes detract from it. The film is paced well, genuinely sentimental at times, and features surprisingly good chemistry between Bateman and McCarthy. I didn't jump on board the McCarthy bandwagon when she was unexpectedly nominated for an Oscar for Bridesmaids, but she won me over here. As great of a script as Bridesmaids was script, the humor serves McCarthy even better in this one (read: far fewer fat jokes).

It's also interesting in the wake of his slightly darker turn in Arrested Development's Season 4,  Bateman plays a guy who's unapologetically an asshole if he needs to be. It would be even more interesting if I saw Arrested Development and this film in the order they came out, but still.

Best Supporting Actress Grades (Pt I)

A list of every Oscar-winning performance I've seen for Best Supporting Actress with my grades and assessments.

[Edit: Since originally posting this list, I have now seen:

Jo Van Fleet, East of Eden, 1955; Ruth Gordon, Rosemary's Baby, 1968; Meryl Streep, Kramer vs Kramer. I might to add them in a bit]

1939 Hattie McDaniel, Gone with the Wind C+
Character: Mammie, the house servant

Analysis: Imagine that you know nothing about the Oscars but are armed with a relatively good knowledge of the Civil Rights movement and have seen your share of old-timey films. Now someone asks you when do you think an African-American first won an Oscar. Your guess would probably be way later than 1939.

It’s a pretty remarkable, forward-thinking achievement that the Academy honored someone like McDaniel this early in history. At the same time, McDaniel’s character is controversial because it was very much a stock stereotype (known in cultural studies textbooks as “the Mammy“ which I believe was named after her) that contributed to the negative perceptions of blacks as joyfully subservient to white overlords. The debate when discussing McDaniel has always been centered on whether she transcended the mammy stereotype. I’d say only marginally.


1947 Celeste Holm, Gentleman’s Agreement A


Character: Magazine fashion editor Anne Dettrey who befriends and takes up the cause of the crusading journalist protagonist (Gregory Peck)

Analysis: It’s a testament to Holm’s staying power that most comments I’ve read about this film come from people who are baffled as to why Peck’s crusading journalist character ended up with Dorothy McGuire’s weak-willed heiress rather the outgoing fashion editor. Holme’s Anne Dettrey is spunky and outgoing and I might have considered her a little over the top until I came to the conclusion that her profession basically required her to be a socialite. I could have easily seen Holm's character cut out of this film and pasted into a screwball comedy in place of Barbara Stanwyck or Rosalind Russell. At the same time, it never feels like Holm is in the wrong movie here.




1948 Claire Trevor, Key Largo B+
Character: Gaye Dawn, a washed-up floozy hanging out with a  band of mobsters as they seek refuge a hotel in Key Largo, Florida amid a storm

Analysis: I like to see a film like Key Largo rewarded here because while it's not quite a classic, it's a solid film that’s overshadowed by other entries of a legendary director's filmography. The film might very well contain John Huston's best set piece and could be arguably counted as his most suspenseful and tightly scripted piece of drama.

What's interesting to note here is that Dawn was mostly  superfluous to the plot. For most of the film, she's neither vital towards Rocco's plans nor the protagonist's development. When she does finally impact the plot, it's not a particularly well-thought-out plot point (she took one gangster's gun but what about the other 3 on the boat?). 

I only mention that as a curious side note because it really has no bearing to how I viewed the character. Trevor's portrayal of Dawn was a little deeper and a little sadder than your average floozy helped out by a couple of stand-out scenes. Dawn's sad tolerance of her gangster cronies insulting her and her begging her  boyfriend not to leave her are both stand-out scenes. What likely clinched her the Oscar, however, was her a capella rendition of "Moanin' Low" sung as a last-ditch effort to get one more drop of alcohol. Trevor has the hard job of singing well but not too well as she's supposed to be playing a has-been.

The backstage story here is interesting:  When Trevor learned that she had to sing, she asked Huston if she could take singing lessons. Although Huston granted her request, the director wanted her to sound unrehearsed so he surprised her by shooting that scene before her first singing lesson and the rest is history.
 

1950: Josephine Hull, Harvey B
Character: A middle-aged woman, Veta Louise Simmons, mistakenly incarcerated in a mental institution when she tries to seek mental help for her brother (Elwood, played by James Stewart)

Analysis: Josephine Hull reminds me a lot of Aunt Bee from “The Andy Griffith Show” or Margaret Dumont from the Marx Brothers movies. The stuffy quasi-motherly old lady upon who (in the case of the latter) makes a perfect foil to the chaos and comedy that engulfs the scene.



I'm going to make it a rule to avoid comparing the Oscar winners to their competition in that given year, but that doesn't mean I can or should avoid comparing these actresses to past versions of themselves. If Hull, for example, is being rewarded for adding a dark twist to the prissy aunt character (trying to lock up her brother so that she’ll once again fit in with her society friends and attract a proper suitor for her daughter isn’t really the most honorable of intentions), then this role pails in comparison to her performance in "Arsenic and Old Lace." As Aunt Abby, Josephine Hull seems like the sweetest old lady until we learn 20 minutes in, that she and her sister lured old men to her basement to poison them. Her past self is the ultimate in dark humor and it's hard to ignore the comparison here.

The clincher in Hull's performance is the film's resolution which centers around her understanding and empathizing with her brother. It's an emotional moment pulled off by Hull that justifies the film's status as something more than a simple popcorn comedy.

1953: Donna Reed, From Here to Eternity A
Character: Alma Burke, a sophisticated call girl (aka prostitute) in Hawaii as the bombing of Pearl Harbor nears, who gets romantically entangled with a rebellious young private (Montgomery Clift).

Analysis: “Analysis” might not be a fitting term here because I just loved this character and there’s not much more to it that. Montgomery Clift’s antihero character is so enigmatic and Alma’s slow crawl to his heart is just about the only thing that makes us empathize with him.

1961: Rita Moreno, West Side Story A
Character: The fiery Puerto Rican Anita is the proprietor of a dress shop and confidante to Natalie Wood’s Maria

Analysis: There's a personal authenticity to this role as Rita Moreno herself was one of the few Latin American actors in Hollywood at the time who didn't whitewash her name (although it should be pointed out that Moreno isn't her real last name but you get the point) or ethnicity (see Rita Hayworth, Martin Sheen, etc). It's also a well-known fact that Moreno was also raped as a child and channeled those repressed emotions during the scene where she's roughed up by the Jets in Doc's general store.

My praise isn't just reserved for Moreno, however. The demanding nature of the song and dance numbers leaves me impressed with the entire ensemble. Each of the three secondary leads (Moreno, Russ Tamblyn as Riff and George Chikaris as Bernardo) brought their own talents to the mix and it's just as sweet that Chikaris also won an Oscar for that film.

1966: Sandy Dennis, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf  B
Character: Honey, an invitee to a small dinner party that descends into a night of hostility and chaos

Analysis: For any fans of the Office out there, the fourth season episode "Dinner Party" was modelled after this film.

This performance topped the list by Movieline.com of the 10 most histrionic Oscar-winning performances for a supporting actress ("She sells a performance that should be shown at Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings"). It also topped an internet poll for best in show.



It is certainly a performance that's out there. The play as a whole is just a bizarre piece of drama in which four people (two couples) are constantly changing from being offensive to being offended to being giddy and carefree, to being devastated, to everything in between. The screenplay alone requires all four actors to clear massive hurdles before the storyline begins to make sense to the audience. I think Sandy and the others completed it. My only issue is that I felt like the other three actors were leading the race (to continue the hurdling analogy) while Sandy Dennis was struggling to stay in the field.

1970: Helen Hayes, Airport D+
Character: Ada Quonsett, a scheming senior citizen who cheerily scams her way aboard several flights and racks up frequent flier miles at the expenses of the airlines.

Analysis: Jacqueline Bisset as a flight attendant who is coping with her newfound pregnancy at the hands of her lead pilot; Jean Seberg as the whipsmart right-hand man of the workohaulic airport manager; and Maureen Stapleton (an eventual Oscar winner 11 years later) as the preoccupied wife of a potential suicide bomber are all better choices than Helen Hayes here. Hayes' character provides some welcome comic relief and there's a certain delight in discovering that Ada Quonsett is not all that she seems, but there's a difference between how a character might bring a lot to the story verse an actor bringing a lot to the character.

The only silver lining here is that the film that served as the inspiration for the now-more-famous Jerry Zucker comedy "Airplane!" is an unexpectedly rich and entertaining film with characters that go very deep. With great performances by Bisset, Seberg, Stapleton, as well as Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, George Kennedy and Van Heflin, Airport has a very underrated ensemble for a disaster film and I'm glad that at least someone won an acting Oscar for this film.



1974: Ingird Bergman, Murder on the Orient Express C-
Character: Greta, a Swedish missionary on board a train car the night someone is murdered


Analysis: There are few standards by which I can universally measure all of these performances but a cold and hard rule should be that you shouldn't expect an Academy Award if you can't even outact the other supporting actresses within your own ensemble. Granted, the film boasts one of the best ensembles of the decade and the equal share of screen time between Bergman and three or four other ladies might lead to a splintering of opinions on who stands out the most. Still, I have trouble even seeing the argument that Bergman is the ensemble's stand-out character. In my opinion, Bergman has nothing on the flamboyant performances of Lauren Bacall or Jacqueline Bisset in terms of dramatic impact. Although there's something to be said for the power of a quiet performance, Bergman is  practically invisible in this large ensemble piece. Besides, it's not that much of a stretch playing Swedish when you consider that's Bergman's home country.

1975: Lee Grant, Shampoo C-
Character: Felicia Karpf, the wife of a Los Angeles businessman who introduces her on-the-side lover and hairdresser to her husband so that he may invest in his hair salon

Analysis: If I fail to touch on any prevalent attitudes about what Shampoo is really about in this analysis, bear in mind I'm writing about this performance and film in somewhat of a vacuum, as I know nothing about the film except what's on the back of the DVD cover. With that being said, Grant also commits the cardinal sin "Thou Shall Not be Overshadowed by your Costars and Expect to Win an Academy Award."

To be fair, the story demands that she be a forgettable character: The thematic thrust of the film is that the protagonist has lost his moral compass in his sex life and, as a result, the three women he's screwing are all interchangeable to him. Goldie Hawn plays the woman he begins the film with, Julie Christie plays the woman he hopes to end with, and Lee Grant's character is just a conduit in the middle. So to be fair to Grant, her character's not supposed to be remarkable because the story's told from the point of view of a person to whom Grant's character is insignificant. Of the Oscar races I'd like to see unfold in real time, Lee Grant's would be an interesting one because I have no idea what Oscar voters saw in her.


1976 Beatrice Straight, Network B
Character: Louise, the estranged wife of a television executive engaged in an extramarital affair

Analysis: Straight was on-screen for five minutes and forty seconds, making her performance the shortest of any Oscar winner to date. It seems a little unfair that for just six minutes of on-screen work, someone should be granted what now amounts to the greatest honor an actor can have. At the same time, if you took the highlight reel of some of these other performances, you'd probably get about six really good minutes.




That being said, this is a film that will make drama teachers' mouths water. There are several scenes that should be watched a minimum of fifty times by aspiring drama students. Beatrice Straight's one big scene (she's in another scene that lasts about 10 seconds) where she confronts her cheating husband fits that bill. She descends into all kinds of different emotional levels and it's a very convincing transition through each of them. When she goes from yelling at her husband to facing the fact that neither of them knows what to do, her delivery of the line "I'm not gonna give you up that easily Max" is just so perfect in the moment.


1980 Mary Steenburgen, Melvin and Howard B
Character: Lynda Dummar, a go-go dancer married to a perennially unlucky drifter of a husband

Analysis: Well, the feminist movement can be relieved that this award didn't start a "Show your boobs and get an Oscar" trend. For those who are curious, Steenburgen shows significantly more skin here than Auntie Clara in Back to the Future III. I was not expecting that.

Moving on...., Steenburgen's character has a little bit of ditziness to her which adds color to the character. Underneath that, however, she's not only a forward-thinking woman, but she is more mature than her down-on-his-luck husband and can see that he has no place in her future. It's a performance to which there's quite a bit underneath the surface.

1982 Jessica Lange, Tootsie B
Character: Julie Nichols, Soap opera actress and single mom who's the object of the cross-dressing protagonist's (Dustin Hoffman's) affections

Analysis: The question I'd like to pose here is: Does it take more acting effort to fall in love with someone than to be the person that someone is falling for? In the case of the latter, you have to sell the audience that you're the kind of girl who's worth all the trouble. Lange also has to make the character innocent (or at least naive enough to be fooled by Dorsey/Dorothy's ruse) but not entirely stupid. With her trademark Southern charm, Lange sells those qualities-innocent, virginal, charming- in every film she's in. Nothing new here, but it's a role that highlights her pretty well.

1983 Linda Hunt, Year of Living Dangerously A
Character: Billy, a half-Chinese photographer who gives professional and personal guidance to an Australian foreign correspondent (Mel Gibson) covering the Indonesian civil war.


Analysis: When I wrote "Billy" in the synopsis, I was not misspelling "Billie." The character in the source novel is male and director Peter Weir opted to cast a female. Supposedly, it's not some commentary on gender roles but rather Weir just felt Hunt was best for the part. This would make sense in a high school play where your star drama student is a female and maybe there aren't enough guys trying out. But this is Hollywood where there should be more than enough capable males showing up to audition for any speaking part in any movie you are casting for.

In the end, I have absolutely zero complaints because even if I'm not reading the film as any commentary on gender and don't award Hunt any "degree of difficulty" points for switching sexes, it is a terrific performance. Billy's eager smile when he meets Guy fills the mood with a childlike enthusiasm. It later resonates in a haunting way as he/she bears that grin with his/her last words. It's also a testament of just how seamlessly Hunt fit into the role that the interplay between Billy and his unrequited love (played by Sigourney Weaver) comes even halfway close to working. The sight of Sigourney Weaver dancing with a woman nearly two feet shorter than her who has romantic longings for her is highly jarring (and must have been even more so in 1984 when lesbian pairings were less common on screen) but it halfway works here (to be fair, it probably wouldn't work with anyone), but it would be a complete disaster if Hunt hadn't played it so well.

1984: Peggy Ashcroft, Passage to India B-
Character: Mrs. Moore, a liberal-minded woman in England traveling to visit her son in India. She does not share his racist views and wishes to see the "real India"



Analysis: Ashcroft had been acting as early as 1935 (she was in the Hitchcock movie "39 Steps") so it's been a long time coming for the lady. I'm a softie for awards that are given to someone at the end of their career if it doesn't come off as a lifetime achievement award. In this case, it didn't. Mrs. Moore displays a certain amount of youthful exuberance and she's enigmatic enough to make the deep levels of symbolism work.

My favorite film for each letter of the alphabet: Alphabet Meme

This was started by a guy who runs the website blogcabins.blogspot.com/ and it's made it's way around the internet like chain mail. I was tagged by Dan Johnson at filmbabble.blogspot.com:

A is for Apollo 13 (1995), my favorite film from my childhood. It's an amazingly tight and exciting docudrama that even made me want to go to space camp and be an astronaut. Ron Howard has rarely ever been so good. There are a lot of good As, however: American Graffiti, the best coming-of-age film ever, in my opinion, as well as

B has a lot of good sci-fi flicks: Blade Runner, Brazil....but I'm going to go with Back to the Future (1985), another classic film that I grew up on and I find unforgettable.

C is for Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1973), neo-noir film and one of the greatest classics of all time. A great story of such emotional resonance and poetry. The dialogue and performances by John Huston and Faye Dunaway are to die for. Charade, Citizen Kane, City Lights, City of God, City Confidential, and a family film I really like called Cheaper by the Dozen were all ones I considered

Although, I was thinking of drawing attention to the old-school sci-film The Day the Earth Stood Still which is being remade, D is for Double Indemnity (1944). When we talk of good dialogue, the way Billy Wilder was superhuman in his ability to write sharp stylized dialogue, and there's no better example of this than the interplay between Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck's characters as they attempt to plan a perfect murder.

For E, I couldn't really think of too much, except the musical Evita (1996), which made a splash in the 90's but had a rather short shelf-life and only people who followed Madonna's career incessantly would even remember this. Perhaps, Alan Parker's dismal rep or the timing (musicals didn't really regain their steam until Moulan Rouge or Chicago, let alone operettas) sunk the film, but it was an interesting piece of work. The score was great, Antonio Banderas did his best work here, and the subtext is almost as detailed as a textbook on Latin American history.

F is for From Here to Eternity (1953) which stands as my favorite war film. Montgomery Clift plays a tragic antihero in an army private in Hawaii during World War II who refuses to play the bugle or box for his company, out of principle and Frank Sinatra won an Oscar as the man who befriends him and lives to tell the tale. Also famous for the make-out scene between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr.

G is for Grand Hotel a Best Picture Oscar winner that doesn't get much credit for anything these days. It starred five of the biggest stars of the 1930's and was set in a hotel where the lives of five guests intertwine, it’s breezy, lively and light-hearted enough to rival an art deco musical in escapist value. At the same time, it is a very telling story of class conflict that resonates with a lot of weight when the five stories come together so serendipitously

H is for High Noon, socially powerful, tightly coiled, notable for its score, cinematography, social climate in which the film was made, the gun battle at the end, and its real-time gimmick that was the precursor to the TV show 24. I can't really think of too many other H's but House of Sand and Fog comes to mind, or from the same year (2003) Hollywood Homicide. In the latter, Harrison Ford sort of mails it in as a cop who doesn't care about his job and wants to sell real estate while on duty. Not many people got the joke but I did.

I could be for It's a Wonderful Life or another Frank Capra classic It Happened One Night, but I'll go with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

J is for Junebug (2005), the North Carolina-set family melodramedy (new word I just coined) that launched Amy Adams' career. The other ones that come to mind are the historic picture Jazz Singer, Sam Mendes' docudrama of an uneventful war Jarhead, and the recent It film Juno. However, Juno tried just a little too hard to be hip, and Junebug just let it all flow naturally.

K could easily be for King Kong, but I wasn't crazy about the old King Kong and have yet to see the new one, so I now have a choice between two older films, neither of which is regarded as a great classic but which I'm personally fond of. There's Vincente Minelli's musical Kismet which came at a later point in his career and he denounced as a failure in his autobiography. Don't be so hard on yourself, Mr. Minelli, I personally loved the musical take on the Arabian Nights tale with the enchanting songs including "Stranger in Paradise." However, in honor of my grandmother's birthday, I will go with the John Huston film Key Largo (1948) where the bar where much of the film was shot at, still stands on Key Largo. Modern-day gangster films need to show a lot of carnage to illustrate just how bad the gangster is, but Edward G. Robinson showed that all you need is some flair and style and a muggy facial expression.

L is for Last Samurai (2003). The art direction is superb and it stands out quite a bit from all the recent historical epics because of its sincerity. Ken Wattanabe gives a great performance that's deserving of that Oscar nomination and as an interesting footnote, it was Tom Cruise's last big successful role before Oprahgate derailed his career.

M is for Manchurian Candidate (1962), an amazing story, political thriller, mystery, and showcase of great acting. This movie had people worrying about ammending the constitution to include foreign-born citizens as eligible for the President and had me worrying about John McCain, a former P.O.W., as being President as well.

N was originally for Network, before I remembered that North by Northwest (1959) also begins with this letter. Thrilling, romantic, endearing, shot in great locations, everything a good film should be, and it's the epitome of Hitchcockian style

O is for On Golden Pond (1981), the story of a somewhat dysfunctional father-daughter relationship that a daughter attempts to fix in her father's last days, starring real-life father and daughter Jane and Henry Fonda. Katherine Hepburn was also in the film. To show that I don't completely dislike the Coen Brothers, I would have included their Mississippi-set epic Oh Brother Where Art Thou, and truth be told, it was pretty much a tie between these two great films.

P was one that I had the most difficult time with, I could think of three that I really liked: Prairie Home Companion, Pirates of the Carribean and Paths to Glory, but I chose Prairie Home Companion (2006) largely because I already have enough from the action/blockbuster genre on my list. PHC was Altman's swan song and was an eerie foreshadowing of his imminent death within a few months of the film being released. The movie is highly entertaining, quietly profound, and has all the strengths of an Altman film.

Q is for Quiz Show (1994), Rob Redford's gripping docudrama about the Game Show scandal of the 1950's with performances by John Turturro and Ralph Feinnes that make for two very interesting portrayals of real-life figures who everyone knew so little about beneath the surface (i.e. they are basically remembered as two guys who cheated on a game show but no one even knew why)

For R, I'm going to go a little foreign with Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game (1939), rated consistently near the top of the best films of all time by Sight and Sound's decennial poll.

S, like P, has a lot of options I consider of equal merit: Star Wars, Singing in the Rain, Swing Time, Stagecoach, Searchers, etc. To break this tie between musicals and Westerns, I'm going to go with a biopic, Billy Wilder's Spirit of St. Louis (1957), which I saw in 9th grade and absolutely loved. It was quite an achievement to be able to make us engaged to what was essentially a one-man show.

People will always remember Citizen Kane, but for me Orson Welles is a genius because of his last film (in America, at least) Touch of Evil (1958) which is my T.

The letter that took me the longest to think up a film is Undeclared (2006) for the U. Starring Justin Long, Jonah Hill, Lewis Black and Maria Thayer, the film is a spot-on comedy that brought me back to the days in high school where I was scared to death over not getting into my top choice college.

V is for Vertigo (1958). Just the story alone makes it a winner. Tell a three-line summary of this film to anyone and see if they're not intrigued. I imagine that there was the most consistency on this letter among the other lists without actually looking.

For W, I'll go with the culturally delicate and serene cop drama Witness (1985) in which Harrison Ford must hide an Amish boy from corrupt cops in an Amish community where he is a fish out of water. I was also strongly considering Wild Strawberries, just to prove that I've seen more than one foreign film, but no need.

X is for X-Men 2 (2003), the best in the trilogy although I will take a bold stand in saying that X-Men 3 is almost as good.

Y is for You Can Count on Me (2000), the brother-sister relationship piece which launched Laura Linney and Mark Ruffallo's careers. It almost won Kenneth Longorean an Oscar for screen-writing as well.

Z is for Zoolander (2001). To be clear I don't really like this movie and only find it mildly tolerable, but Z is a letter which gives me very little manuevering room

Are John Huston films a lost genre?

I just saw Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and all I can say is I love John Huston's movies. Beat the Devil, Key Largo, Man Who Would be King and African Queen are the ones i've seen, and they all are great adventure rides. Part of the fun of the story is being taken off to some far exotic land (The Florida Keys were more exotic back then) and seeing it in a way that you wouldn't have otherwise seen it.

Like Alfred Hitchkock, John Huston could be said to have been in a genre of his own (although nowhere near as prolific or as well-received by academics, of course).

I don't know if that genre of films still exists. We had Indiana Jones though or Romancing the Stone and that might have been the closest that we have had in the blockbuster era to John Huston. Maybe, the era is lost or maybe with the world having become more and more global
in the last 20 years, exotic places no longer exist. Still we can do that movie in a retro era.