Presenting the Supporting Actress Nominees of '77. A mother with extraterrestrial problems, a highly neurotic swinger, a wealthy political activist, a precocious daughter, and a timid ballerina.
THE NOMINEES
John Travolta opening the envelope
If the characters weren't quite typical this time, the shortlist formation was a familiar mix of career glories. Consider the slotting: Oh look, there's the child actor slot that the Supporting Actress category is famous for going to Quinn Cummings; Tuesday Weld wins the underappreciated enduring talent nod; No typical shortlist is complete without a newish critical darling with momentum which in 1977 was Melinda Dillon (she had created the "Honey" role in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf on stage but didn't get to do the movie and was finally making film inroads via her role in the previous year's Best Picture nominee Bound for Glory ); Finally, you have to have a current Oscar darling with considerable prestige and fame (Vanessa Redgrave) on hand in any given year. Oops, that's only four. The last type is more rare but not unprecented. The final player fell under what you might call the "novelty" slot (Leslie Browne). When the latter happens it's usually either foreign-born non-actors or famous musicians but in this case it was a soon to be principal dancer with the American Ballet Company.
THIS MONTH'S PANELISTS
Here to talk about these five turns are our panelists: Mark Harris (Author of "Pictures at a Revolution," and "Five Came Back"), Guy Lodge (Variety, The Observer), Nick Davis (Associate Professor of English and Gender & Sexuality Studies at Northwestern), Sara Black McCulloch (Rearcher, Translator, Writer) and your host Nathaniel R (Editor, The Film Experience).
And now it's time for the main event...
1977
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN
LESLIE BROWNE as "Emilia" in The Turning Point
Synopsis: A young ballerina becomes the new star of a struggling but esteemed company, just as her godmother once did and her mother longed to before having her.
Stats: Then 20 yrs old, debut film but she only made two more. (51 minutes of screen time or 43% of running time).
Nick Davis: Because this nomination gets so much flak, I feel oddly protective of Browne, even though I’m not bowled over, either. Admittedly, when I focus on the performance as such, I see how tentative and inexperienced she is. Her Emilia is not as personally or artistically formidable as the script suggests. But when I sit back and enjoy the movie, I buy her doe-eyed adolescence and nascent ambition completely. Inexpert as she is, she plausibly serves the film. ♥♥
Mark Harris: Judging this coattail nomination seems unfair to the earnest Browne, an accomplished dancer and non-thespian cast by her godmother’s husband, Herbert Ross. The film brims with actresses—Bancroft, MacLaine, Martha Scott—who know how to seize their moment (and the haute-soapy, punitive material is basically a two-hour excuse for moment-seizing). It’s not Browne’s fault that she’s too diffident and vocally untrained to do it, especially since Ross gives her little help, the camera doesn’t want her the way it wants Baryshnikov, and the script treats her as a repository of other people’s ambitions. Nice moment when she’s dancing drunk, though. ♥
Guy Lodge: People blithely refer to “just playing yourself” as if it were easy; it's not, which comes across in both the most and least persuasive gestures of ballerina Browne's alternately nervy and serene self-portrait. She's best, in fact, when acting outside herself: there's a foggy-regal diva's presence, a genuine commitment to character, in her divisive drunk scenes. Elsewhere, Emilia's nervousness within her own skin is hard to tell apart from Browne's: an effective outcome of casting, but perhaps not prize-level acting. ♥♥
Sara Black McCulloch: Browne’s is the only role out of the list whose character has her own storyline. She’s a young woman who, as Emma puts it, “wants both,” but can’t yet grasp that the world -- especially that of the New York dance world -- is harsh and wants her to choose. Browne’s depiction of a young girl borders heavily on the naive and wide-eyed, but its her interactions with her mother or Emma that really deepen our understanding of her. ♥
Nathaniel R: What a meta moment in film, this casting/performance was. Much of the film works precisely because of her limitations, especially that supremely bitchy ‘you’re here to dance, not to emote all over the place’ scene. Emilia is less of a real person than an obvious vessel and catalyst for her two warring moms, anyway. This non-actor has real spots of trouble with line readings but she occasionally surprises as with her fine drunk Russian play-acting bit. ♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "Baryshnikov, when asked, called Leslie Browne’s dancing “nice” in the film. I wish I could say more for Browne’s presence..." - Joel M. (Reader average: ♥½)
Actress earns 9½ ❤s
QUINN CUMMINGS as "Lucy McFadden" in The Goodbye Girl
Synopsis: A precocious child gets a crush on her mom's new actor roommate but worries that he'll leave, just like the other surrogate dads did.
Stats: Then 10 yrs old, debut film (she only made one more but worked a lot in television for a decade afterwards). 34½ minutes of screen time or 31% of the running time).
Nick Davis: My runner-up. I’ve rewatched several Neil Simon adaptations recently, thus refreshing my memory of how difficult it can be to sell his quippy, frequently overworked dialogue or to hold onto your own personality and sense of humor without bending to his. Maybe I’m over-crediting a child performer, but she seems like a total natural with language that decidedly isn’t. Sometimes just being herself, sometimes deliberately goading two adults, I buy her wise-assery and her softening toward Elliot. ♥♥♥
Mark Harris: Cummings owned wise-beyond-her-years roles like this in the late ‘70s largely because, as Marsha Mason tells her, “You were never 4½, you were born 26.” Too often, Neil Simon writes her as a precocious quip machine. But even with not-fully-human material, she’s genuinely good. I love her muttered “Jesus” the first time she encounters Dreyfuss, and her teary resistance to him in their carriage-ride scene feels truly kidlike. Her crisp professionalism is in sync with the adults, and her line readings are naturally funny, not over-coached. Plus, she never pushes too hard; in this film that’s something of a miracle. ♥♥♥
Guy Lodge: “You were born 26,” says Cummings' onscreen mom; that appears to have been her lone performance note. Why, soon after honoring Tatum O'Neal's sly, subtle interleaving of adult and juvenile impulses, would voters give this kind of declamatory cuteness a pass? Cummings has pluck; she's no Hollywood kidbot. But she projects no clear idea of who Lucy is, because Neil Simon doesn't either: she reels off one poised putdown after another, yet needs basic adjectives continually defined for her. ♥
Sara Black McCulloch: I especially enjoyed Cummings' performance because, especially for a child actor, she had a good amount of screen time, her performance never felt too forced and she eased into different emotional ranges. I was either laughing at her quips about her mother's ex-boyfriend, or really feeling for her when Elliot was leaving them. There's a quiet confidence to her that really enlivens her performance on screen. ♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: Despite my allergies to child actors, I confess I only absently sniffled a few times. She’s slightly more natural than the leads. Cummings ably handles that most sitcomy of roles, the wise child with an old spirit. But this is not exactly a challenge and she can’t sell the faulty product that is her character’s about-face toward film’s end when The Goodbye Girl needs a conflict. Perhaps I'm too stingy with the hearts? Good but... ♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "I can’t possibly overstate my awe that a child performer in a script this relentlessly “quirky” is able to so effectively play against the grain as everyone else around her succumbs to it, in front and behind the camera." - Nicholas T. (Reader average: ♥♥½)
Actress earns 14½❤s
MELINDA DILLON as "Jillian Guiler" in Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Synopsis: A single mother whose child is abducted by aliens, joins with other believers to chase extraterrestrial sightings and explanations.
Stats: Then 38 yrs old, first of two nominations, her fifth film. (28 minutes of screen time or 21% of the running time)
Nick Davis: There’s something differently but comparably ethereal about Dillon and Redgrave. Gazing into their eyes, remarkably blue and emotionally transparent, you feel you’re touching some Other Place where both actresses live. They are pleasures to observe. But once Redgrave has you, she starts sculpting, specifying, challenging your impressions. Dillon, by contrast, can seem vague. She captures Jillian’s basic arc without adding much. And in Barry’s big abduction sequence, she looks like she’s hitting marks on a complicated set. ♥♥
Mark Harris: What a joy to revisit; Dillon has a wistful, abstracted/depressed manner that I’ve always loved (it’s more distilled in Absence of Malice). That said, this remains a surprising nomination, one that could as easily have gone to costar Teri Garr. Dillon’s work as a quietly frazzled, apparently newly single mom (a warmup for Dee Wallace’s E.T. character) doesn’t have a showcase scene; maybe she got in because smart voters granted her co-credit for the sweet “performance” of 3½ year-old Cary Guffey, and because of her slightly otherworldly quality, which suggests that maybe the aliens didn’t pick her kid by accident. ♥♥♥
Guy Lodge: Dillon's is not the best performance in this lineup by a long chalk, but it is, perhaps, the most resourceful. Handed a character little defined beyond her maternity — frequently a hindrance, dare I say, for the women of Spielberg's cinema — she quietly, watchfully turns Jillian's oddly scripted combination of single-minded devotion and hazy, semi-hypnotised instinct into a compelling paradox of character: she's at once driven and drawn by the gaps in her knowledge. ♥♥♥
Sara Black McCulloch: Dillon’s character Jillian is there mainly to confirm everything that Roy has seen. Like the other maternal figures in this film, she seems disconnected from the greater arc, despite having her own encounter with the extraterrestrials (and especially after they’ve taken her son). Still, while Roy’s obsession with aliens is likened to a fascination, hers is framed as pathetic and hysterical; she doesn’t want to understand UFOs, she just wants her son back. ♥
Nathaniel R: Spielberg’s infamous “wonderment” closeups rarely get better than Melinda’s. Then again they’re not usually performed with such a mix of primal feeling and relatable opacity, Dillon empties her face out so we’re not quite sure — Gillian also isn’t — what she’s feeling. Fear and wonder and confusion and curiosity are all projectable possibilities. She’s quite good but I’d argue we lose any initial richness in the final third as Spielberg’s own awe starts hogging all the close ups. ♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "Dillon does a lot emotionally with this role that is a little underdeveloped...." - Eoin (Reader average: ♥♥¾)
Actress earns 14¾❤s
VANESSA REDGRAVE as "Julia" in Julia
Synopsis: A wealthy socialite becomes an anti-fascist activist during World War II, enlisting her famous playwright friend to undertake a dangerous mission on her behalf.
Stats: Then 40 yrs old, her 20th film, 4th of 6th nominations, only win. (20 minutes of screen time or 17% of running time).
Nick Davis: Let’s acknowledge how unplayable this part is, with Lillian and Zinnemann in total thrall to Julia as radiant paragon. Camera and costar just gawp at her, while she assumes ever more mythic proportions. But Redgrave adds so much texture: glinting self-satisfaction in early scenes; humiliation in the hospital, with facial, bodily, and vocal expressivity severely constrained; and delight but also sobriety, pragmatism, even some gritty impatience in the pub sequence. That exquisite passage elevates the whole film. ♥♥♥♥♥
Mark Harris: Avid, eerily calm, romantic, formidable, kind, fervent, charismatic, a head taller than everyone else, and a head taller than this often too decorous movie, Redgrave remains indelible—a Supporting Actress gold standard. That restaurant scene—her great moment—is an acting class. There’s generosity and intelligence in how Zinnemann and Fonda make room for her, almost physically, as if her evangelical ideals need room to radiate. Rewatching, I was shocked at how little she’s in the film; I remembered her as filling it. That’s just what a performance in a movie about being haunted by memory has to accomplish. ♥♥♥♥♥
Guy Lodge: Being handily the best actor — irrespective of role — in a nominee field isn't always a case for the gold. But Redgrave trounces her competition here, in an assignment that is far the trickiest of the five. As the title character and overseeing conscience of this dusty drama of moral duty, she's an elusive pentimento-concealed object of fascination, yet sensually and intellectually vivid enough to power audiences through a quest that unfolds mostly in her name rather than in her presence. ♥♥♥♥
Sara Black McCulloch: The film’s namesake, played by Redgrave, features her for just a few minutes out of the two-hour running time. The dynamic between her and Fonda feels so out of place, mainly because their relationship has failed to flourish on screen. It’s hard to even call this a supporting performance -- let alone one worthy of award-winning recognition -- because Redgrave’s Julia is mostly fuel for flashbacks -- making her less of an active player in this film.. ♥♥
Nathaniel R: How to even describe what she’s accomplished, running such rings around the image-making and the text that she’s both anti-centrifugal and centrifugal force; drawing the movie into her center but still pushing us enigmatically away. She’s an especially riveting mass of contradictions, that violent wild-eyed idealism holding hands with girlish affection, in the film’s centerpiece sequence. In Vanessa’s fierce and bracingly anti-sentimental star turn, she complicates Julia’s love for Lillian with a little condescension and naked impatience. ♥♥♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "Perfect; it would have been nice for her to have some actual competition in this category." - Craig (Reader average: ♥♥♥♥)
Actress earns 25 ❤s
TUESDAY WELD as "Katherine" in Looking for Mr Goodbar
Synopsis: The swinging sister of a an equally promiscuous schoolteacher moves from one addiction to another: new men, pills and booze, group therapy
Stats: Then 34 yrs old, 19th film, first and only nomination. (13½ minutes of screen time or 10% of the running time).
Nick Davis: Weld is so singular—ebullient but acidic, sunny yet corrupt—that her movies were usually built around her. She’s hard to assimilate into someone else’s vision or story. Moreover, her role in Goodbar is stranded between a showcase part and an underwritten distraction. Within those limitations, her work is odd but intriguing. While Keaton’s Theresa favors a deadpan attitude toward high-risk behaviors, Weld’s Katherine performs her feather-ruffling but fundamentally safe role in the family with maximum histrionics. ♥♥♥
Mark Harris: Weld’s function in this rather hateful cultural artifact is to serve as a cautionary tale. “I’m in trouble, I’m in real trouble,” she quavers, drinking, popping pills, planning her abortion, weeping, and skating into hysteria—all within two minutes after we meet her. “I’m sorry to lay all this on you,” she tells Diane Keaton. You don’t say! Gosh, do you think things will turn out well for her? This is big, showy, leave-it-all-on-the-field acting; maybe Weld does too much, but she’s resourceful and idiosyncratic enough to make you wish the censorious script had been more interested in her character. ♥♥
Guy Lodge: Weld is in less of this restless, jangly film than I remembered: she certainly makes her scenes count, in ways some viewers might occasionally find overbearing. Even at her most shrill, however, I sense she attributes a canny note of performance to Katherine's hysteria and self-pity, in pointed contrast to our heroine's attempt at incremental, near-invisible inner collapse. And I love the blitheness — still an act, but a more elegant one — with which she eventually wears her debauchery. ♥♥♥
Sara Black McCulloch: One quick blink of the eye, and there is Weld. Blink again, and she’s gone -- this is the best way to qualify her time on screen. When she is there, she’s either warning her sister of her lifestyle choices; suffering the consequences of her own actions; or she’s simply there to pacify the audience in between scenes of Theresa’s slow self-destruction. She could have been more than this had the screenplay made more room for her. ♥
Nathaniel R: Weld and Keaton capture that unique distant intimacy you can sometimes find in siblings who enjoy their compartmentalized supporting role-playing to the leading other. The way Katherine deploys “Rock of Gilbatrar” as mantra to describe her equally messy sister feels like another delusional addiction. Is the performance too manic for a movie that already has so many tics? Maybe. But Weld smartly modulates it down whenever Katherine has temporarily found a new fix (man, therapy, other). ♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "I admit to a slight bias in favor of the film itself, which has unjustly faded into oblivion thanks to Annie Hall. But Weld nails this role and is as compelling as Keaton." - Paul (Reader average: ♥♥♥)
Actress earns 15 ❤s
The Oscar Went To... Vanessa Redgrave
who delivered that infamous "Zionist hoodlums" acceptance speech that did not keep her in Oscar's good graces. But there is no denying the win in a landslide decision here so...
THE SMACKDOWN AGREES.
Congratulations Vanessa! Again.
Would you have chosen similarly, dear reader? Want more? The companion podcast is available (two 40 minute parts) in which we flesh out some of these thoughts and discuss 1977 in more depth. So listen in!
Thank you for attending!
Previous Smackdowns ICYMI: 1941, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1964, 1968, 1973, 1979, 1980, 1989, 1995 and 2003. (Before that 30+ Smackdowns were hosted @ StinkyLulu's old site.)
NEXT UP: 1984 is our 'year of the month' so the next Smackdown is on August 28th, 2016 looking back at that film year as well as its Supporting Actress nominees (Glenn Close, Lindsay Crouse, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Geraldine Page, and Christine Lahti)