The Final Conclusion - Best Actress 1975

1975

So the much anticipated ranking is:

5. Ann-Margret in Tommy

Shame on the Academy. I'm sure this performance has its share of fans but I'm a staunch naysayer to this one. Not only is it ridiculous at some points, but it's also unbearably boring. The best thing that I can say about this performance that it's certainly unforgettable though in this case being forgettable would be way better.

4. Glenda Jackson in Hedda

I'm just as stunned about this as you are. While I expected her to become my pick, I was really disappointed by Glenda Jackson in Hedda. The movie itself had a lot to do with that but still. Althuogh this performance also has its share of fans, I'm not one of them, either. Personally, I would expect more from Glenda.

3. Carol Kane in Hester Street

You might be surprised that she's only third as I seemed reallly fond of her in my review. To tell the truth, I would have praised any great performance to graces after Ann-Margret. Still, Kane is really good as Gitl, her presence is just lovely and I really cared about her and was interested in what comes to her next.

2. Louise Fletcher in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

I used to be stunned by the fact that she won but right now I'm not that shocked considering her competition. Although she's supporting, she still pulls off a great performance as the evil Nurse Ratched and she indeed created an iconic character. It's just that I wasn't that blown away by her work in this movie.

1. Isabelle Adjani in The Story of Adèle H.

The saving grace. The shining light. My only hope. If it wasn't for Adjani's performance, I would stop reviewing after this horrid year. Thankfully, Adjani is just astonishing as Adèle Hugo, giving one of the most interesting and unique performances that I've ever seen. She's so full of passion, drama and romance that it's a real emotional joy to see her. Her beauty and talent shines through the movie and makes it even better than it already is.

So I can proudly announce

the winner is...

Isabelle Adjani

in

The Story of Adele H.

Easy win.

Final thoughts: Horrible year, arguably the worst one ever. Only Isabelle Adjani was really, truly worthy of the Oscar, the others... Wow. Fletcher, Kane and Jackson were all good, I just wasn't amazed by them. The ranking could have been any way. I don't even want to talk about Ann-Margret. I guess my thoughts on this year weren't exactly loved, to put it delicately, sorry about that.

About the next: this year was requested by the winner of the last predicting contest and it's full of romance and grief.

What do you think? Any thoughts on your mind?

Carol Kane in Hester Street

Carol Kane received her only Oscar nomination for playing Gitl, a young Jewish woman who comes to America after her hsuband in hester Street. It's pretty much a miracle that Kane was nominated for the Oscar. She was extremely young, she played in an incredibly small movie, most of her performance was in Yiddish and she wasn't nominated for anything else. I think she was either fourth or fifth in the voting, despite the fact that she's way better than the horrible Ann-Margret. I think in Carol Kane's case it was true that "It's an honor just to be nominated."

Hester Street is quite a good movie and I enjoyed it quite a bit. One can consider it as a kind of sequel to Fiddler on the Roof. They have nothing to do with each other but Hester Stret shows a great portrait of how Tevye and his family must have felt after they left for America. Although Hester Street is a seemingly low-budget movie, it's really a well-made, well-written movie and the direction is also quite great. The characters were realistic and the performances were quite good, especially the one by Doris Roberts who's really excellent.

I really don't know much about Carol Kane. I've only seen four of her movies (counting Hester Street) and while I think she was good in all of them, I don't think that she's the best actress ever. I guess I shouldn't make judgements so soon but I don't feel that she truly rocks. Still, I can still enjoy her in her roles and that was most certainly the case with Hester Street, in which she played Gitl, a woman who doesn't know what to do to both please her husband and keep to the traditions. Although Gitl is a very simple person, I think she's a very interesting character, mostly because of the changes that she goes through.

Kane plays Gitl in a very subtle way and she shows that Gitl is a very shy and repressed woman who's willing to obey. She's a bit of like O-Lan from The Good Earth though there's a big difference between them. There's a point for Gitl when she says that she's had enough. And it's most certainly a very significant moment in Kane's performance.

But I wouldn't go that far yet. When we first see Gitl, she's the previously mentioned shy, obedient woman. She's so real as Gitl in those moments. It's almost impossible not to be touched by Gitl's storyline in this movie. His husband, Jake is a really hysterical guy and Gitl's quietness is such a great opposition. You can really feel the tension between them. Gitl represents the old country, Jake's new lover represents the USA, the freedom.

Gitl, however, tries to get used to America and she tries to become an American woman despite her initial opposition to it. It's really sad moment when we see her with her new hair and her husband wants to get it off and she says that it's not a wig, it's her real hair. That's probably the only loud moment in the performance and that's the siginificant moment when Gitl's revolt begins. Kane shows Gitl's development really well and all the actions were understandable and logic.

It's probably Kane's charisma that makes Gitl such an interesting character. Her work here is not amazing or ground-breaking at all but it's really lovely. And thtat has a lot to do with Kane's on-screen presence. Whenever Gitl is there, I felt fine because I knew that it was going to be a nice scene. I know that sound a little bit awkward but it totally true, I think.

All in all, this was a really great performance by Carol Kane that may not reach the stars but it's a really enjoyable piece of work. Kane plays Gitl with very much charisma and she makes Gitl a very interesting and loveable charater. Although she's not amazing, she's still a great relief in a year where one has to watch horrid performances like Ann-Margret in Tommy.

At last, a normal rating.

What do you think? The Final Conclusion comes soon.

Glenda Jackson in Hedda

Glenda Jackson received her fourth Best Actress nomination for playing Hedda Gabler, Ibsen's heroine in the 1975 film version, Hedda. When you get a really weird year like 1975, you don't know what to think about how the voting could have been. I guess the two traditional performances (Fletcher and Adjani) were the most popular among Academy members and the two of them got the 75% of the votes. The order of the other ladies could have been anyway. They might have thought that Ann-Margret was due (God forbid!) or they were charmed by Carol Kane or they loved their favorite, Glenda Jackson in Hedda. I guess the Academy wasn't keen to give her a third award (since she didn't care if she had one, let alone three) so she didn't get that many votes.

Hedda is a really weird movie (OK, in 1975, weird is another way for me to say BAD). I tell you how the filminf of Hedda must have looked like. The played as if it was a play and there were a couple of cameras there to record it. This movie is nothing but a filmed stage play. There isn't anything special about it, even the sets are like on the stage. I guess this movie works for television but not for the big screen. And we can see that in the performances of the actors. First they are great but the immense amount of energy that's inside them becomes really tedious after a while. These are stage performances.

I'd like to say that Glenda Jackson's work here is different but it isn't, unfortunately. I really love Glenda Jackson and I consider her one of the greatest actresses. I think she was the Cate Blanchett of the 70s. An Oscar-favorite actress who has an incredible, radiant presence and a very uniquel beauty. Whenever I see Glenda Jackson, I immediately think "great actress, great actress, great actress". In each of her moves you see the brilliance that she has. And that's also apparent in Hedda. Still, I had very serious problems with her performance.

As I said, Hedda is like a stage play and the performances are all really theatrical (1975 wasvery unusual in that way, too, they also nominated James Whitmore in Give 'em Hell Harry!) and so is Glenda's work. At the beginning Hedda's character is really deliciously full of malice and she's a very enjoyable presence. In some times, all those mannerisms that she uses become tedious because they all seem to much. What I'm trying to say, that this would be an amazing performance on the stage but in a movie, it isn't. Plain and simple.

I really liked that Glenda made Hedda more and more nervous and desperate. Hedda is a very controlling, cold woman who becomes a victim after all. I feel that Glenda developed Hedda quite well and she really made Hedda a believable person. I just didn't feel that Hedda was such an extraordinary character. I guess this must be blasphemy but I think it's Ibsen's fault. I really didn't feel interested in Hedda as she didn't have much depth written to her. Still, I think that Glenda put enough emotion into her work and it all worked this way.

However, what I mostly love about Glenda Jackson's performances, a strange, indescribable feeling that I always feel, wasn't present in Hedda and that was probably the biggest disappointment of all. In the beginning, it was there in bits and pieces but as the movie went on, it just disappeared. That strange, mysterious thing made her work in the lightweight A Touch of Class brilliant and it wasn't here to make her performance as Hedda Gabler great. Overall, that was the biggest problem here.

Still, towards the end, her performance becomes much more dynamic and the ending is really great. It's theatrical and yet there's something really haunting about it. To tell the truth, while it wasn't amazing, it was really great and memorable.

All in all, this performance was still a huge disappointment for me. I guess the play wasn't for my taste or the movie affected me. I can't really believe that it was Glenda's fault as I always love her. While I don't think that she was really great here, I don't feel either that she was bad at all. This was a really decent job but I would expect more from Glenda Jackson than a decent job.

What the hell is going on with this year?

What do you think? It's time for the last predictions. If you want to see Hedda, click here.

To see Tommy (good luck), click HERE.

Ann-Margret in Tommy

Ann-Margret received her second Oscar nomination for playing Nora Walker, the mother of the title character in Tommy. She had already won a Golden Globe and she was a big star but I don't think that the Academy really warmed up to her performance in Tommy. The younger generation, maybe, but I just can't imagine Irene Dunne or Joan Crawford voting for Ann-Margret in Tommy. I think she was either fourth or fifth, depending on how much they loved Carol Kane in Hester Street. I guess Ann-Margret was more popular and that gave her the edge over Kane.

Tommy is such a starng, unusual movie. I mean its trailer promises that your senses will never be the same. That's not true, however, it's a really dazzling experience. It seems as if the filmmakers were high on drugs while they were making it. Everything is irreal, illogical, chaotic, weird and it's very unbearable in the beginning. Although in time I got used to it, I never really liked it as it's really about nothing and it doesn't even have a meaning even though it's desperate to be very "in" and meaningful. It isn't, it doesn't say anything, there's absolutely no point in it. There's so much "vibration" that The China Syndrome plaes in comparision with it. Gee...

I have never seen a weirder Best Actress performance than the one that Ann-Margret gives as Nora Walker. I am not that much of a fan of Ann-Margret in general. While I have no problems with her, I don't think that she's that great as an actress. Of course, she sings very well and she has lots of charisma but I never felt that she bursts with acting talent. That being said, I was still hoping that this performance of hers will make me change my mind about her. It didn't, unfortunately.

Again, the best best word to describe her work here is weird. In a movie like Tommy, you don't expect any development in the characters but Nora is actually chaning during the movie. However, Ann-Margret has almost nothing to do with that. Everything is so illogical about her. I guess that was the point but I think the characters should make some sense in any movie. I mean, there are at least 10 Noras in the movie and Ann-Margret plays them all. We begin with a silent, kind and beautiful Nora. Ann-Margret doesn't speak at all there and I guess those scenes were handled quite well.

Her singing is excellent but for performer with her routine it's really not a big deal at all. She doesn't put any real emotion into the songs. There were places when I was touched by Nora but those moments were so minimal. In bits and pieces, she was great but somehow I had a very odd and almost disturbing experience and not in a good way. In some of the scenes, Ann-Margret is horrible, plain and simple. I mean that dancing in front of the mirror is just ridiculous and way more exaggerated than it should have been. I guess the director, Ken Russell should have held her back. I was laughing so hard that I almost drowned and couldn't breathe. It was really a failed moment.

And this is not even my biggest problem with her. For most of the time, she's in the background, just standing or sitting next to her son. Although sometimes she hugs her son and such, I never really felt any connection, or special love between the two of them. Sometimes they seemed like lovers not a mother and her son. I guess they wanted to make this a very odd relationship. It is odd and yet it was so obvious for me. Not even Ann-Margret's charisma could save those moments. Everything just failed.

If you ask me, this performance is a total failure and I'm astonished that it was actually in contention for an Oscar nominateion, let alone a win. Ann-Margret has a great presence but she's unable to make anything out of this mess of a movie. There are attempts but all of them failed. A true disappointment. A bad performance, plain and simple. Not mediocre, not weak, BAD.

I'm astonished that I have to give such a low rating.

What do you think?

Louise Fletcher in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

Louise Fletcher received her only Oscar nomination and Oscar win for playing Nurse Mildred Ratched, an evil nurse in a mental instituition in Milos Forman's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's easy to see why Fletcher won the Oscar: she was in the Best Picture winner and she she was the only one who had a traditional Oscar role. Most of the other movies were really small and/or unusual and Fletcher's only real rival, Isabelle Adjani had a mostly French-speaking role. I guess she still threatened Fletcher but I guess she had an easy win after all. 1975 wasn't the greatest year when it came to Lead Actress performances so a supporting performance could actually even win.

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is a movie that varies with my all the time. Sometimes I can go crazy about it and sometimes I can't stand it. Right now, I really loved it and I was blown away. I admire Milos Forman as a director very much even though I feel that his Czeckoslovakian movies were probably his best ones. Still, he's a great director anywhere, I'm just saying. The only thing that I always appreciate about this movie is Jack's leading performance as McMurphy. He's just brilliant though I would have probably voted for Al Pacino (but not as easily as I would have earlier). Brad Dourif is quite good and deserved his nod though I wouldn't give him the win.

Louise Fletcher was a so-called "one hit wonder". It's always very dangerous to win an Oscar when you're not that famous as they begin to typecast you (Fletcher) or they just forget you when it's proven that you're not what they wanted (Luise Rainer). Nurse Ratched was a role that was turned downed by some great actresses like Jane Fonda (I'm just wondering how she would have been here), Faye Dunaway, Anne Bancroft (she would have killed in this part, I think) and Angela Lansbury (wow, I wish that had happened, she would have been so interesting). So the relatively unknown Lousie Fletcher played the part. I guess, with hindsight, it was a great decision as many love this performance.

But I'm not one of them, unfortunately. Honestly, I really tried to like her and I actually did, I just never felt that this performance was as amazing as some say. Although she has her moments, her whole work is nothing really remarkable. First of all, I couldn't really decide if Nurse Ratched was really that evil. I suspected that she just wanted to keep a distance while she was doing her job. Some say that she's the devil itself but I wouldn't say so. She's a cold, and probably even manipulative woman who just wants to keep order. She's always deathly calm and she doesn't seem to be terrified by the patients.

What I do like about this performance is that Fletcher plays nurse Ratched with such calmness and subtlty. There are no over-the-top screams by her, mostly she's just sitting and looking in a very icy way. I could say that she did nothing in this part and I would probably be close to reality, however, I felt Fletcher got very much out of this part that's isn't exactly deep. She's not amazing because she cannot be amazing as Nurse Ratched. She's a very simple, uninteresting woman and there isn't much drama about her. She's just there and we can see some of her actions. Yet Fletcher did her best to make Nurse Ratched interesting. I guess she succeeded in a way, as her performance was never that boring, I just could't see the real brilliance.

However, I did like the nuances that Louise added to the character. I don't know why I felt that but this character seemed a bit delicious, especially when she was being quite mean and cold. For example, in the end, she tortures a boy into suicide and that's a brilliantly acted moment by Fletcher. That scene impressed me very much and I thought it was handled extremely well by her.

Still, I don't know what to say about Louise Fletcher in this movie. She's indeed very good but nothing amazing. Although some go crazy about her subtle evilness, she left me a little bit cold. There are excellent moments and the overall effect on me was really positive, I just feel that she wasn't that great.

Very hard rating. She's between a 3,5 and a 4. It might be surprising that I went with the latter. I just compared her to other performances and she was better than some who got 4s.

What do you think?

Isabelle Adjani in The Story of Adèle H.

Isabelle Adjani received her first Oscar nomination at the age of 20 for playing Adèle Hugo, the troubled daughter of the famed French author, Victor Hugo, in Francois Truffaut's movie, The Story of Adèle H. Adjani caused a real sensation with this performance of hers and I think that she would have won the Oscar if Louise Fletcher had been nominated in the supporting category (where she really did belong). Adjani was the critics' favorite, she was young, she was beautiful and had a great chance of winning that year. I guess the fact that she was relatively unknown and she was in a French movie prevented her from winning the Oscar. I still believe that she was much closer to winning than some would assume.

The Story of Adèle H. is a really great movie and I'm quite surprised that it wasn't nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. Dersu Uzala (the one that won) was better, I think but a nod would have been deserved for this one, in my opinion. Truffaut was a brilliant-brilliant director and he shows his talents in this movie, too. There's so much tension in this movie and I really felt as if I was reading a romantic French novel. It's full of passion and excitement and it most certainly impressed me. French movies are so great and this piece is just another proof of my theory.

The story is about Adèle Hugo, the daughter of Victor Hugo who falls for a handsome soldier who rejects her all the time and treats her like an animal. This is a really tragic, sad story and once you read it, you immediately think about Isabelle Adjani. In my humble opinion, Adjani was born to do this part. Adèle is a mentally unstable, fragile woman and Adjani's just brilliant at playing this kind of characters. I'm just thinking about her work as Camille Claudel. That's a really weird character (in a weird movie) and yet Adjani injected so much passion into her and the result was something immense. Adjani represents what I love about French cinema in general. She's so unique and she doesn't fall into any categories. She has an own category.

Very much like her performance as Adèle as Adjani is just fantastic as Adèle Hugo. This work is very hard to write about and mostly because of its really unique nature. It's neither subtle nor over-the-top and it's so full of hidden layers. I guess my only complaint could be that it started out a little bit slow but that could have been due to the fact that Adjani wanted to show all the layers of Adèle very carefully and in detail.

Adjani's performance is just like music. The emotions are flowing and you cannot really interpret those feelings because there are so many of them. She's so thrilling and she's never out of tune. There's perfect harmony in her performance even when we see Adèle falling apart. Watching that process is not very easy or pleasant but it is indeed a thrill. The development of Adèle is so fantastic. Adjani went from point A to at least point Z (she covered the whole alphabet and went beyond that). It was a really mindblowing journey for me to see her.

Adjani goes beyond that and she's so haunting in some of the scenes. Adèle's dead sister, Leopoldine haunts her in nightmares. We can see a girl drowning and those are really scary images and Adjani makes them even more terrifying. I guess these must have worsened Adèle's mental state and Adjani shows all this beautifully.

There are scenes where Adèle is begging her love not to leave her and marry her. Interesting enough, what I felt for her was not exactly pity, I was actually quite fascinated by her passion and love. She may have only been in love with the love for the guy but it doesn't really matter as Adèle's emotions seem to be so pure and true. It was really beautiful and it never became a cheap romance. It was as romantic as the renowned French novels themselves. I certainly had the same feeling while watching her that I felt while I was reading the French classics. It was just brilliant.

All in all, Isabelle Adjani is just amazing as Adèle Hugo, giving one of the most interesting and unique performances that I've ever seen. She's so full of passion, drama and romance that it's a real emotional joy to see her. Her beauty and talent shines through the movie and makes it even better than it already is. It's really wonderful, haunting and unforgettable work by a great actress.

What do you think? Watch the movie HERE.

The Next Year

1975

So the nominees were:

• Isabelle Adjani in The Story of Adèle H.
• Ann-Margret in Tommy
• Louise Fletcher in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
• Glenda Jackson in Hedda
• Carol Kane in Hester Street

Since I still don't have In America, I'll do this year that's said to be really weak but I haven't seen four of them yeat so it will be very interesting for me, at least.

What do you think? What's your ranking? What do you predict for my ranking?