Best Actress Ranking - Update

Here is a new update. The newly added performance is highlighted in bold. 

My winning performances are higlighted in red.

1. Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939)
2. Jessica Lange in Frances (1982)
3. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950)
4. Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress (1949)
5. Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (1967)
6. Janet Gaynor in Seventh Heaven (1927-1928)   
7. Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman (1978)
8. Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
9. Geraldine Page in The Trip to Bountiful (1985)
10. Susan Sarandon in Thelma & Louise (1991)

11. Edith Evans in The Whisperers (1967)
12. Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette (1938)
13. Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939)
14. Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
15. Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth (1998)
16. Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
17. Bette Davis in The Little Foxes (1941)
18. Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965)
19. Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame (1958)
20. Glenda Jackson in Women in Love (1970)

21. Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
22. Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
23. Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire (1941)
24. Julie Christie in Away from Her (2007)
25. Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun (1951)
26. Audrey Hepburn in Wait until Dark (1967)
27. Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
28. Anne Baxter in All about Eve (1950)
29. Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown (1997)
30. Helen Hayes in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1932)

31. Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1978)
32. Greer Garson in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
33. Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959)
34. Meryl Streep in One True Thing (1998)
35. Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (1953)
36. Katharine Hepburn in Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967)
37. Marsha Mason in Chapter Two (1979)
38. Jane Wyman in The Yearling (1946)
39. Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) 
40. Jennifer Jones in Love Letters (1945)

41. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year (1978)
42. Susan Hayward in My Foolish Heart (1949)
43. Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)
44. Diane Keaton in Marvin's Room (1996)
45. Loretta Young in Come to the Stable (1949)  
46. Mary Pickford in Coquette (1928-29)
47. Sissy Spacek in The River (1984)
48. Shirley MacLaine in The Turning Point (1977)
49. Irene Dunne in Cimarron (1930-1931)
50. Ruth Chatterton in Madame X (1928-29)

51. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1932-1933)

Jill Clayburg as Erica Benton in An Unmarried Woman

If I should ever make a list of performances that feel the most “lived-in”, where I have the feeling that I am watching a real person on the screen and are not even aware that I am actually watching a movie at all, Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman would certainly be on that list. Considering my ranking, I don’t mean to say that these kinds of performances are automatically the best – I also appreciate the work of other actors where I know that I am watching a movie but I am still in awe of the finished product. In the end, it all comes down to the role itself and Erica Benton is certainly a dream role for any performer but it’s still breathtaking to see Jill Clayburgh inhabit her so completely from start to finish.

In my first ranking, I had already appreciated her work very much but for the life of me, I cannot understand why I didn’t value it as highly back then as I do now. Reading various sites on the Internet, I am also surprised to see that this performance is somehow divisive and actually has as many fans as it has naysayers. And I get the flaws of the film from, especially from today’s point of view – Erica may have lost her husband but she gets to keep her apartment with a view of New York, she continues to work at an art gallery from time to time when she doesn’t meet her friends and she can tell all of her worries and sorrows to an expensive therapist. Yes, it’s certainly not a realistic picture of how most women have to deal with a broken up marriage but it’s a single story told in a time when many movies didn’t yet tell a story that showed that life can go on without a husband. And even if the flaws of the movie are obvious, Jill Clayburgh more than makes up for them.

From her first moment jogging with her husband to her last scene carrying around a big picture through New York, she creates a wholly authentic and living character. She starts it on a very relaxed level, having a little argument with her husband, then making love before doing her famous dance in her apartment. It’s a picture of a very happy and satisfied woman and relationship and Jill Clayburg’s unique charm and personality help to make it very likeable and engaging instantly. She has the exact right attitude towards her husband, her friends or her daughter to create a three-dimensional portrayal.

When her husband finally leaves her, it is again a scene that feels overwhelmingly real – there is no grand emotion but Jill Clayburgh’s face can express a thousand feelings and thoughts in one second. And she later makes a believable journey as she finds herself – it’s a very subtle transformation, similar to co-nominee Jane Fonda in Coming Home as both women don’t change her character but still become new people.

I think one of my main reservations about this performance in the past was that it loses some of its sparkle when Erica starts dating again. I agree that her relationship with an artist isn’t the most interesting part of the picture but Jill Clayburgh again totally nails every aspect – when she tells him how she is just happy, it’s just another of many small moments that become absolutely unforgettable in her work.

I have to say that I am not too familiar with Jill Clayburgh’s filmography – I have seen some of her other movies but she never excited me on the same level as she did in An Unmarried Woman and even though she got another Best Actress nomination a year later, she was pretty much dropped again very quickly from awards races and critical acclaim. It just seems that everything fell right into place in this one performance but these cases do happen. In one scene, Erica and her friends are talking about movie stars of today and how they are not comparable to movie stars of the past such as Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn. And while I certainly would not put Jill Clayburgh ever on the same level as those legends, there was one small moment in time when she was totally their equal.

Best Actress Ranking - Update

 

Here is a new update. The newly added performance is highlighted in bold. 

Winning performances are higlighted in red.

1. Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939)
2. Jessica Lange in Frances (1982)
3. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950)
4. Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress (1949)
5. Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (1967)
6. Janet Gaynor in Seventh Heaven (1927-1928)   
7. Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
8. Geraldine Page in The Trip to Bountiful (1985)
9. Edith Evans in The Whisperers (1967)
10. Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette (1938)

11. Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939)
12. Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
13. Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth (1998)
14. Bette Davis in The Little Foxes (1941)
15. Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965)
16. Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame (1958)
17. Glenda Jackson in Women in Love (1970)
18. Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
19. Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire (1941)
20. Julie Christie in Away from Her (2007)

21. Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun (1951)
22. Audrey Hepburn in Wait until Dark (1967)
23. Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
24. Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1978)
25. Greer Garson in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
26. Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959)
27. Meryl Streep in One True Thing (1998)
28. Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (1953)
29. Katharine Hepburn in Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967)
30. Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) 

31. Jennifer Jones in Love Letters (1945)
32. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year (1978)
33. Susan Hayward in My Foolish Heart (1949)
34. Diane Keaton in Marvin's Room (1996)
35. Loretta Young in Come to the Stable (1949)  
36. Mary Pickford in Coquette (1928-29)
37. Sissy Spacek in The River (1984)
38. Shirley MacLaine in The Turning Point (1977)
39. Irene Dunne in Cimarron (1930-1931)
40. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1932-1933)

Jane Fonda as Sally Hyde in Coming Home

What the heck just happened? Did I really just upgrade a performance by Jane Fonda? After spending so many years on this blog criticizing her performances and declaring her win for Coming Home one of the worst Oscar decision ever (when I did this ranking the first time, she was among the Bottom 10 of about 350 performances). Yes, times have certainly changed. Who knows what happened? Maybe the fact that I have now seen all nominees in this category (except one…where are you, Betty Compson???) helps me to judge performances better in comparison to all the others. Maybe it’s the fact that I have now spent quite a good deal of time with Jane (I probably started ranking Oscar winners more than 10 years ago). Maybe my taste has just shifted…who knows…

Of course, it’s not like I now suddenly consider her performance my favorite of all time but her position has definitely improved as my appreciation of her work has grown over time. In the end it probably comes down to the fact that I am trying to be more objective than I have been in the past when it comes to judging these performances, helping me to have a more unbiased look. I was also actually expecting to upgrade Jane Fonda in my ranking when I started to re-watch Coming Home as I began to see a more relaxed and spontaneous screen presence than I did in the past and also still think very highly of Coming Home as a movie (despite some flaws that I will talk about soon) – in the past, I mainly credited the cast around Jane Fonda for the film’s success but I now admit that she is an important ingredient, too.

But why live in the past? Let’s just look at the performance from today’s point of view. Obviously, as you can see from the position in the ranking, I still have some problems with the performance but there are other aspects that I began to appreciate. I suggest we start with the parts that I don’t like so much here. First of all, I think I have to begin by saying that, in my humble opinion, Jane Fonda is actually miscast in this role. She is such a strong screen presence that I have a hard time believing her to be a shy and devoted housewife and I also think that she appears too old for this role. Apparently, after having worked with her on Julia the year before and sensing that she was going to be a very big deal, Jane Fonda wanted Meryl Streep in the part of Vi which would eventually be played by Penelope Milford. But I actually have a much easier time imaging the young Meryl Streep of 1978 in the part of Sally. There is something both plain and unique about Meryl Streep and I can easily see her going through Sally’s transformation process in a more believable manner.

The other major problem I have with Jane Fonda’s work is how she reacts to the cast around her. First, there is her friendship with Vi. Again, the casting of a dominant actress like Jane Fonda makes their friendship appear rather unbalanced. It’s just hard for me to believe that 40 year old Jane Fonda would accept 30 year old Penelope Milford as her guidance and kind of role model and if the friendship works, I mostly applaud Penelope Milford for it. She is maybe not truly outstanding in her role but her ‘who gives a s**t attitude’ on the screen makes the whole thing work.

The bigger problem is the fact that Jane Fonda has absolutely no chemistry with Bruce Dern and this is also the most harming aspect of the whole movie. I don’t put all the blame for this on Jane Fonda. I think the casting of Bruce Dern, who is just too unconventional a screen presence to be the kind of ‘normal, American soldier’ he is supposed to play, does not work at all and he and Jane Fonda appear to be uncomfortable together right from the start. This also makes the whole story that follows often extremely unsatisfying. When it comes to Sally’s affair with Luke, Coming Home makes it just too easy to sympathize with Sally – after all, even a crippled Luke can bring more sexual pleasure to Sally than her husband and it’s also not very difficult to find more sex-appeal in Join Voight than in Bruce Dern. I wish the script and the casting of Bob had made this love triangle more balanced and even. But I also wish that Jane Fonda had invested more doubt and guilt in Sally. I don’t think that she misses her husband for his sake but rather for what he represents – security and comfort. Maybe this is even true but it’s nowhere to be found in Jane Fonda’s performance. I also don’t see any true guilt about her affair – she openly interacts with Luke, sitting on his lap on the beach, bringing him to her house, letting him pick her up at the hospital. Even their affair only begins after she actively suggests it to Luke – but this also just poses new questions as she did not even plan to meet Luke that night. Furthermore, her later arguments that she was ‘lonely’ are also not convincing as she begins the affair on the first night after her return from meeting her husband in Hong Kong and experiencing his pain first-hand. All of this also makes her final scenes feel too untrue – I just don’t believe Jane Fonda when she tells Bruce Dern “I love you” and the script again is working against her, letting Sally say “I’m not gonna make excuses for what happened BUUUUUUT…” (okay, not precisely with those words but still…).

So, the character of Sally Hyde certainly poses various problems that Jane Fonda is also not fighting, apparently hoping the audience of 1978 will sympathize with a woman who experiences her sexual liberation and who chooses the man who opposes the war instead of the one who fights it. But even beyond that, the character of Sally is not perfect. My major problem with this role in the past used to be that she feels so secondary even in her own story, watching how the men around her choose between different ideals and ideas while she only chooses between these men. And I still stand by this opinion. Sally is a very passive character, only acquiring ideas or ambitions when others show her the way and often remaining very pale.

But – now we come to what I began to appreciate by now. Despite the fact that Sally is such an uninteresting part, there is something fascinating about seeing a strong personality such as Jane Fonda attack this role and give it her own spin. She clearly tried to inject her own acting style that is so often praised for its spontaneity into Sally and so creates something that somehow now feels very satisfying in specific moments. Mostly, I enjoy her ‘small’ moments on the screen because that is when she truly feels to live her character and where I get the feeling that I am watching a real person saying things that are coming into her head just now. Scenes like the one at night in the hospital, when she sits on Jon Voight’s lap, feels a bit lost about the tension between them, laughs nervously and wants to leave. Or later again sitting on Jon Voight’s lap at the beach, unsure about the future and how they can go on with their affair or her shocked ‘Oh my God’ when Luke’s urine bag leaks on her dress. These are moments that get all their special appeal from Jane Fonda because she tries to add an unconventional acting style to a conventional part. Often, these moments are unfortunately connected to other scenes that don’t work as well. I truly dislike the way she reacts to the telegram that might or might not bring the news that her husband died as she seems to be only half-interested in its content, somehow forcing a concerned emotion that never rings true. As mentioned earlier, I also don’t care for her big scene at the end opposite her angry husband as her tears just don’t feel true but I absolutely love the way she reacts to Luke’s knocking at the door, showing confusion and honesty in a small, throw-away moment. And so my favorite moment of her performance is also one of these scenes – the way she talks to the soldiers on a bus about the women at the Officer’s Club and that they would not want to do an article about the situation at the hospital. She feels completely authentic at this moment and it also perfectly underlines how she has changed by now compared to her first day at the hospital when she could only react with a shamed silence to the ways the men talked (but I again do not care so much for the scene that showed the confrontation between Sally and the women at the club – Jane Fonda’s anger actually works well but I have a hard time to believe that Sally would ever have been friends with these women in the first place because Jane Fonda is just too different from all the other actresses around her).

So, there is “good” and “bad” in this performance but more “good” than I had been willing to admit in the past. Again, it is mostly Jane Fonda’s often very modern approach to a rather old-fashioned role that creates some thrilling and unforgettable moments. And most of all I appreciate that Jane Fonda never tried to bring more to the part than necessary – her outburst opposite Luke when she asks him why he has to be such a bastard could have done with much more fireworks but it makes sense that a shy woman such as Sally would stay rather calm and quiet, even in a moment like this. And while I also used to complain that the change in Sally was non-existent in Jane Fonda’s acting, I now appreciate the subtle approach to this change. Her Sally never becomes a new person, she still stays true to her core identity but there is still something new about her. The woman who awkwardly met Luke at the hospital for the first time, who had drinks at the Officer’s Club is not the same woman who lives at the beach or visits her husband in Hong King – the changes are small and affected her character without changing her personality but they are there and achieve an overall satisfying character journey.

So, I now conclude that Jane Fonda gives a sometimes thrilling but also often disappointing performance that lives from her personality but could have used more depth and consideration to be truly outstanding. Still, there is more to enjoy here than I used to see in the past and it makes me look forward to re-rank her other performances in the future.

 And a hint to the next performance that will be ranked:

YOUR Best Actress of 1978

Here are the results of the poll:

1. Ingrid Bergman - Höstsonaten (23 votes)

2. Jill Clayburgh - An Unmarried Woman (10 votes)

3. Geraldine Page - Interiors (4 votes)

4. Jane Fonda - Coming Home (3 votes)

5. Ellen Burstyn - Same Time, Next Year (1 vote)


Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1978 - the resolution!

After having watched and reviewed all five nominated performances, it's time to pick the winner!

5. Jane Fonda in Coming Home

Jane’s performance never fights against the weakness of the script that reduces Sally to a boring love interest but rather even emphasizes it by also investing Sally with nothing else but a simple-mindedness that does nothing to make her the least bit interesting.

4. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year

                     

Ellen Burstyn’s performance is charming and lovely, sometimes amusing, sometimes touching, but her acting stays mostly on the surface and she is never able to create a full-flesh human being out of her paper-thin character.

 3. Geraldine Page in Interiors

Even though her screen time is limited, Geraldine Page still dominates the whole movie with a convincing, shocking, frightening and sad portrayal of a woman who loses control and is not able to deal with the failure of her own marriage.

2. Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman

Jill Clayburgh is smart, funny, sexy, strong, weak and, most of all, very natural and always confident while she creates a very relaxed and self-assured character with a wonderful mix of strength and humor.

                

1. Ingrid Bergman in Höstsonaten

Ingrid Bergman gives a devastating performance as a woman who lives a live of pretending, who can associate with everyone but her own daughters and who finally has to look into her own past and her own soul to see who she really is.

Best Actress 1978: Geraldine Page in "Interiors"

Geraldine Page’s role as interior decorator Eve in Interior, Woody Allen’s homage to Ingmar Bergman, is another of those borderline cases where both the Supporting and the Leading category would have made sense. Had Geraldine Page entered the Supporting category, she probably might have won (just as she did at the BAFTAs) but so she had to settle for a nomination.

Geraldine Page is very famous for being an actress full of tics and manners and these features worked very well in her performance as Eve who is a neurotic mess. Eve is a woman who is just as sterile and cold as the designs she uses to decorate other people’s homes. Even though the role of Eve is not very large, she is still a very overpowering presence in the movie since almost all the talk and conversations of all the other characters (mainly Eve’s two daughters) is about her. That way the viewer learns more about Eve by other characters than by Eve herself.

At the beginning the viewer sees Eve for the first time when she is visiting her daughter and her son-in-law whose apartment she decorates. Eve seems very stressed, uneasy and tense. It seems that she can’t make up her own mind about what she wants. And it becomes very clear that she is a woman who needs control over everything. When she finds out that her son-in-law moved a lamp that she bought for the bedroom and put it in the living room, the idea seems unbearable for her. Eve is a woman who needs control, who must be in charge and who can’t stand the thought of being unable to influence any situations.

By flashbacks the story tells the viewer that Eve’s world collapsed when her husband suddenly left her. Eve takes this news with a combination of denial and rejection. When her own daughter describes her mother as ‘a sick woman’, the viewer begins to see her in a different light. Suddenly it becomes clear that her cold emotions and her obsessions show a woman always on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She actually already tried to kill herself once and she prepared her flat to fill it with gas just with the same precision as she would think of interior designs. But even after her suicide attempt, she did not change herself and thinks that her husband will return to her in the end. Geraldine Page’s acting when she receives a get-well-card and flowers from her husband is magnificent and shows a woman who is unable to show any emotion while she is filled with false hope at the same time .

Geraldine Page’s acting effectively points out all of Eve’s characteristics. Her major decision was to play Eve with a constant masque-like face that perfectly underlines her distance and coldness to everyone around her. Geraldine shows Eve as a woman who is unable to be emotional and whose mind breaks when her own world, which she wants to be as perfect and organized as her own designs, falls apart. The highlight of her performance is certainly the scene in the church when her husband tells her that he wants to finalize their separation with a divorce. Geraldine Page’s face shows terror and devastation while showing nothing at all. Her face is again like a masque but Geraldine Page expresses an enormous amount of feelings at the same time. Slowly, her masque begins to drop until Eve finally shouts out her anger and desolation. Geraldine Page’s tics and manners are all visible and her performance constantly feels very calculated but it all works for the character of Eve.

Geraldine Page as Eve also succeeds in making her character the exact opposite of Pearl, her husband’s second wife. Pearl, played by the wonderful Maureen Stapleton, is full of life, open and a real fresh of breath air in a family that is forever influenced by an overbearing and unstable mother.

Even though her screen time is limited, Geraldine Page still dominates the whole movie as a woman who loses control and is not able to deal with the failure of her own marriage, who is terrified of a new life alone. It’s a convincing, shocking, frightening and sad portrayal that gets

Best Actress 1978: Jill Clayburgh in "An Unmarried Woman"

Jill Clayburgh received the Best Actress award in Cannes, critical praise and an Oscar nomination for her performance as Erica, a woman whose world is suddenly turned upside down when her husband divorces her.

The character of Erica must certainly have been a revelation in 1978. A woman beyond her 30s with a teenage daughter who learns that her live doesn’t end without a man. A woman who speaks about her first period with her psychiatrist. A woman who is confident enough to rediscover her own sexuality without having to defend herself.

In the role of Erica, Jill Clayburgh is smart, funny, sexy, strong, weak and most of all – very natural and always confident. Jill Clayburgh does not only play Erica with a lot of confidence but she also invests Erica with a very relaxed self-assuredness that is thrilling to watch. She never lets Erica be pushed around in any way but instead always shows her strength and her humorous nature even in the most serious situations. She is such a bubbly presence on the screen that everything besides her seems to fall into darkness.

Jill Clayburgh visible portrays that Erica is more than satisfied with her life. She is married to a seemingly great guy with whom she still has exciting sex but she also constantly holds her own against him and never lets him reduce her to a little wife. She also regularly meets with her girlfriends who always talk about love and relationships and Erica’s steady marriage seems to be one-of-a-kind among the group.

Already in the early scenes of An Unmarried Woman, Jill Clayburgh shows all the facets of Erica and establishes her as a self-assured woman who later must redefine her life. But Jill Clayburgh never ever makes Erica arrogant or dominant in her self-assuredness but instead shows that she is a woman who enjoys life and who knows who she is, what she can do and what she want.

Her most outstanding moment comes when all these believes are put to test when her husband walks with her along a street and suddenly stops and breaks into tears before he admits that he has an affair and wants to leave Erica. The look on her face while her husband is crying and saying how sorry he is (in a very unlikable way because it makes him look like he wants to tell her “Hey, I know, I am a bad guy and I feel terrible about it – so forgive me!”) is unforgettable – this confident woman who always believed in her marriage suddenly faces the ruins of her life. In this moment, Jill Clayburgh is incredibly powerful and incredibly subtle at the same time as only her eyes really show the devastation inside of her.

From that moment on, Erica is a different woman who is trying to go on with her life and see what else it has to offer. Jill Clayburgh certainly gives an amazing performance in an unlikely role. On paper, Erica is an interesting character but never outstanding enough to justify awards attention. But Jill Clayburgh turns her into one of the most fascinating female characters from the 70s. After her life has changed forever, Erica does not retreat but she finds herself again and also experiences a new sexuality with new partners.

In her scenes with her psychiatrist, Jill Clayburgh wonderfully shows Erica’s fears, her doubts, her drams and her hopes in a very captivating way. Her performance always remains as natural as it is impressive. And also when Erica starts a new relationship, Jill Clayburgh’s performance never stops to show Erica as a witty, independent woman who always knows what she wants even if she sometimes loses her way.

Not a lot of actresses could have turned Erica into such a rich and complex character and make An Unmarried Woman a very strong and absorbing movie. Jill Clayburgh’s performance is the only real strong ingredient An Unmarried Woman has but it so strong that it turns the movie into gold. Jill Clayburgh is able to make Erica’s journey so captivating because her character is so easy to recognize but at the same time she always shows new layers and a constant development in Erica. At the end of the movie, Erica is still the smart and funny woman she always was but she also is a new person and Jill Clayburgh is able to portray this without over- or underplaying it.

It’s a very unique performance of an ordinary, but also extra-ordinary woman that gets

Best Actress 1978: Ingrid Bergman in "Höstsonaten"

Ingrid Bergman received her final Oscar nomination for what was also her final movie performance in the Swedish movie Höstsonaten. Ingrid played Charlotte Angergast, a famous pianist who visits her estranged daughter and her husband.

This was the first time that Ingrid Bergman worked with the famous Swedish director Ingmar Bergman who more than once has led actresses to give compelling and outstanding performances and Ingrid Bergman is no difference. What probably also helped Ingrid in her work was the fact that she acted in her native language which resulted in a very relaxed, but also outstanding performance.

When Charlotte first arrives at her daughter's house, she and Eva (played by the always amazing Liv Ullman) seem very happy about their meeting. Both are very polite and behave in the expected way but it seems that there is something beneath their friendliness – some unspoken truth that really defines their relationship.

Charlotte very soon starts to talk about Leonardo – a man who was very close to her and who recently died of cancer. The looks on Ingrid Bergman’s face when she tells how she was always with Leonardo in the hospital until he died is an overwhelming moment – the mix of grief, fear and relieve over her friend’s release is unforgettable.

While the movie goes on, the viewer learns more and more about Charlotte and her connection to her daughter. This visit is apparently the first time that they have seen each other in years – even when Eva’s little son died, Charlotte did not come. It becomes clear very soon that her career was always the most important thing for her. Charlotte toured the world while Eva was always of secondary importance – now and also years ago, when Eva was a little girl.

The tension between Eva and Charlotte can be felt at every moment of the movie. Charlotte is a rather cold and distant woman who tries to keep an emotional distance from Eva. Whenever they talk and chat, it always seems superficial and Charlotte seems to try her best to prevent any real closeness between her and her daughter. Whenever Eva opens up, talks about her dead son or other personal feelings, Charlotte obviously becomes uneasy.

The viewer also learns that Eva is not Charlotte’s only daughter – there is also Helena who is paralyzed and seemingly also suffers from a mental disease that prevents her from speaking or communicating in any way. It is obvious that Charlotte is not happy to see Helena – she would like to avoid meeting her but as a mother, she has no other choice. Ingrid Bergman wonderfully shows the conflict in Charlotte as she sits at Helena’s bedside. She again acts nicely and friendly as if nothing had happened, but from time to time we see how uncomfortable she is around her own daughter, maybe she is even ashamed. Eva herself later says that her mother gave a great performance in Helena’s bedroom.

Ingrid Bergman in no way tries to hide the fact that Charlotte is a woman who never cared about her daughters and who also doesn’t care about them now. But she is not a cold-hearted woman – instead, she never thought that she would harm her children in any way. In her own eyes, she did the best she could and as much as she could even if she always kept her daughters at a distance. For Charlotte, her live as a pianist was always more important than her life as a mother even if she maybe never admitted that to herself. But her distant nature has damaged her daughters more then she ever expected. The thin line between love and hate is constantly visible between Charlotte and Eva.

Finally, late a night, Eva lets her feelings overcome her and begins to talk about her hate, about the past and everything that was always a burden on her soul. Ingrid Bergman’s teary-eyed face in this night is probably the greatest close-up of her career. She doesn’t look glamorous, she doesn’t look like a star, but she looks real – a woman who finally has to answer for everything she has done.

Even though Ingrid Bergman doesn’t give the best performance of the movie (that honor goes to Liv Ullman who is just riveting as Eva), her magnetic movie star personality combined with her undeniable talent as an actress make her a dominating force.

Ingrid Bergman is wonderfully able to constantly show Charlotte’s emotional distance and her own justification for everything she did but she is able to mix it with a certain regret and fear. Her facial expressions when she watches her daughter play the piano is one of the greatest moments of Ingrid’s career. She shows that Charlotte is a woman who lives a live of pretending, who can associate with everyone but her own daughters and who finally has to look into her own past and her own soul to see who she really is.

This is surely one of Ingrid Bergman’s greatest performances. Her distant, emotionally unavailable mother is a timeless creation for which she gets

Best Actress 1978: Ellen Burstyn in "Same Time, Next Year"

When Ellen Burstyn won the Oscar for Alice doesn’t live here anymore, she wasn’t at the ceremony because she was appearing in a play called Same Time, Next Year in New York. In the same year she won the Oscar, she also won a Tony for her performance in this play and later she received another Oscar nomination for her performance in the movie version. Considering all this praise for her performance, the final result is a bit disappointing.

From the first moment to the last one, it is very obvious that Same Time, Next Year was born on the stage. The whole plot happens in a little guest house in California, where Doris and George, played by Alan Alda, meet once a year for a secret affair. Of course, the movie version also gave us some shots outside the house and shows us the Pacific Ocean, but overall, the whole movie sometimes seems like a taped play.

Thankfully, Ellen Burstyn knew the difference between these two mediums and her performance is able to entertain the audience without ever making its theatrical roots visible. But even though Ellen Burstyn is able to fill her part with life and her usual charming self, Doris is a paper-thin character who exists in a paper-thin, clichéd story without any real highlights.

The movie begins incredibly cheesy with George and Doris meeting in a little restaurant while a schmaltzy song is playing in the background. A little later, the two of them wake up in bed together and even though they are both married, they take a very relaxed attitude about their time together and soon they agree to meet again at the same time, next year.

The biggest problem of the movie is that it is simply not very good. It has some entertaining moments but overall it is a boring and overlong story about two not very interesting people. The movie follows their romance/affair over a time span of 25 years and during their talks we also get to know more about their “normal” life. Unfortunately, Ellen Burstyn is never given the same quality material as Alan Alda. Ellen Burstyn may be the better performer, but Alan Alda gets a very dominant and moving back story that develops over the course of the movie. While he gets to use this material very effectively, Ellen Burstyn often has nothing else to do than react to Alan Alda. Almost all the good moments in the story come from him while Ellen Burstyn is never able to create a full-flesh human being out of Doris which is more the fault of the script than Ellen Burstyn. She shows that Doris is a little naïve, but also smart but she never makes her really interesting.

Both the script and the performances of the leading actors underline that they never feel bad in any way about their adultery. Since this is supposed to be a light comedy, it makes sense that there are no scenes of remorse or guilty feelings but it deprives the actors from playing three dimensional characters. Ellen Burstyn’s joyful and optimistic performance may be charming and easy to like but it seems the actress decided to play her part mostly on the surface.

The real highlight of the movie is the chemistry between Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda who believably show how their characters age and the relationship between them becomes closer and more mature.

The main concept of the movie is that the viewer only sees the two lovers meet every five years and each time, the big question are how they look like and what is new with their life. While George basically remains a rather conservative business man his entire life, Doris goes through various phases in hers. She starts as a little wife, later she gets to do some comedy when she is pregnant (here, Ellen Burstyn gets to make her only really funny line of the whole movie about pregnancy and Butterfly McQueen), later she becomes a hippie and finally a successful business woman. Ellen Burstyn portrays all these stages well and never loses the core of the character, but the scenes never really connect and apart from the obvious change on the surface, the script never really gives Doris and Ellen Burstyn much to do.

But even though the part of Doris is no Blanche DuBois, Ellen Burstyn is still able to make the most out of it. Her performance is charming and lovely, sometimes amusing, sometimes touching and her interaction with Alan Alda helps to keep everything going smoothly. She is very natural in her part and handles the various stations of Doris’s life with ease and grace. This is especially remarkable because in some way a lot of humor in the movie comes at Doris’s expanse since it is easy to laugh at her for her constant changes in life but Ellen Burstyn always prevents her character from losing her dignity in the process.

Overall, it’s a nice and harmless performance that gets

Best Actress 1978: Jane Fonda in "Coming Home"

Jane Fonda received her second Oscar for her performance as Sally Hyde, an army-wife who starts an affair with a paraplegic soldier and begins to doubt the American war in Vietnam.

This performance is very frustrating because it is hard to ignore that the character of Sally had a lot of potential but both the script and Jane Fonda’s performance reduced her to a thin, underwritten woman that is invincible for most of the time. Sally is never allowed to become a real, three-dimensional person. Everything she does is because of suggestions by others. She only works in the hospital because a friend does it, too. She only starts to see things differently because Luke inspires her to do so. And even when her character goes through a change, it is done in such a rushed, uninteresting way that in the end, Sally hasn’t changed one bit except the fact that she has began an affair. This way, the character of Sally is reduced to nothing else but a boring love interest and Jane’s performance never fights against the weakness of the script but rather even emphasizes it by also investing Sally with nothing else but a seemingly simple-mindedness that does nothing to make her the least bit interesting.

The viewer is supposed to follow Sally’s journey from a loyal housewife to a free-spirited woman but Jane Fonda’s acting always remains the same and she never shows any development in her character. The only thing that changes is her hair. One the one hand, Jane Fonda does a smart choice by staying true to the character and not turning her a 180 degree around the first moment she met Luke which would probably have resulted in an unconvincing characterization. Instead, she always keeps the core of the character but on the other hand, Jane Fonda never allows Sally to develop herself and it seems that everything that could be said and shown about Sally was done in the first 5 minutes and after that, Jane shows us nothing new anymore.

This is also visible in the fact that Jane Fonda keeps the same face and the same line-reading for almost the entire time. When Luke tells her that her husband will probably not come back alive and she follows him to confront him, she plays her anger and her fear in such a sleepy way that you are wondering if she is angry of bored. Again, it actually makes sense because Sally is a very introverted character who wouldn't make a big scene in front of other people but if this is a moving moment, then only because of the situation and not of Jane's acting. It seems that the hollowness of the character prevents Jane Fonda from doing even just one interesting acting choice. Instead, her performance never leaves the unchallenging comfort zone of the script.

Jane Fonda is also completely overshadowed by the two male actors in the movie, Bruce Dern and especially Jon Voight. The main reason is simple: these two actors have interesting, three-dimensional characters. They both have to face their inner demons, they have to make important choices in their own life while Jane Fonda’s only choice is between these two men. Oh, and a different hair cut.

What works about this performance is Jane’s chemistry with Jon Voight. Her shy behavior when she meets him in the hospital, her nervousness when she invites him home for dinner, her passion for him, these parts are all demonstrated well.

The most exciting scene involving Jane Fonda comes almost at the end when her husband threatens her and Luke with a gun. The way she freezes opposite him with her arms hold out to him is the only interesting thing Jane Fonda does in the entire movie. Her complete inability to move or say something underlines the tension of the situation and shows how she is torn between her loyalty to her husband (something that wasn’t shown so far in the movie and again seems like a wasted opportunity to make Sally more interesting) and the fear she is feeling at the same time. Most people would hold up their arms and don’t move when they are threatened like this, but she holds her arms and hands in his direction, to reach him, to comfort him and then she freezes. For one moment, Jane Fonda steps into the foreground and holds her own against Bruce Dern and Jon Voight but only because the script finally offers her something more to do than play Luke’s object of affection.

So, Jane Fonda suffers from the same problem like Dorothy McGuire in Gentleman’s Agreement: she gives an uninteresting performance of an uninteresting character but in Jane Fonda’s case it seems like she didn’t even try to do anything to illuminate Sally at least a little bit. It’s a serviceable performance that serves the scrip well but that could have been much better. For this, Jane Fonda gets

Best Actress 1978

The next year will be 1978 and the nominees were

Ingrid Bergman in Höstsonaten

Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year

Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman

Jane Fonda in Coming Home

Geraldine Page in Interiors