Smackdown '94: Uma, Dianne, Jennifer, Helen, and Rosemary
Sunday, June 24, 2018 at 11:35AM Presenting Oscar's Chosen Supporting Actresses of the Films of 1994.
THE NOMINEES: The Academy wrapped up their love affair with a previous winner (Dianne Wiest) while starting a new one with a future winner (Helen Mirren). Two fresh-faced delights (Uma Thurman, Jennifer Tilly) and an esteemed veteran (Rosemary Harris) were along for the ride.
In a rare turn of events the shortlist leaned far away from tears and dove headfirst into stylized fun or outright belly laughs (Rosemary Harris was the only player in a traditional drama). A quick list of the roles sounds like a joke set-up or at least a wild party: A fertile queen, a pompous diva, a wealthy society matriarch, and not but one but two trouble-maker gangster molls who moonlight in acting.
Here to talk about these five nominated turns are, in alpha order: Erik Anderson (Awards Pundit), Nick Davis (Professor), Itamar Moses (Tony-winning Playwright), Alfred Soto (Editor/Critic), and your host Nathaniel R from The Film Experience. [Apologies but the sixth announced panelist Sheila O'Malley -- who previously provided brilliant insight in our 1984 discussion -- had to attend to a last minute emergency so we'll have to catch up with her again down the road.]
Readers form the collective panelist each month (though there were weirdly fewer votes this round for such a recent year!). You broke the panel tie to determine the winner this time around. Now it's time for the main event...
1994
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN
Rosemary Harris as "Rose Haigh-Wood" in Tom & Viv
Synopsis: The wealthy matriarch of a society family warns her son-in-law about her troubled daughter but eventually feels betrayed when her daughter is institutionalized
Stats: Then 67 yrs old, 10th film, 3rd billed. 1st and only nomination. 27 minutes of screen time (or 23% of running time)
Erik Anderson: Harris sips tea and even delivers a little but it’s such a staid, boring performance and is emblematic of the 90s-era Miramax films and first noms for nice old ladies. I get so little out of her there’s little to write about it. She’s merely just fine here. It could have been any number of stately British actresses in this role. ♥♥
Nick Davis:While Miranda papers her trailer in post-its saying “GO FOR IT!!” and Willem sucks vinegar to stay in character, Rosemary elects to act—immaculately, albeit in ways that gratify directors and impress colleagues more than they excite Oscar queens. She achieves synergy with her onscreen husband while differentiating their outlooks and temperaments. She emanates period and milieu. She approaches emotionally complex close-ups with nuance and simplicity: a tricky combination. She obliterates Willem at minimal volume. She recuperates the word “subtlety,” often misapplied in discussions of acting. What else does she have left to give you? ♥♥♥♥
Itamar Moses: This movie is kind of a pretentious mess but Harris is pretty great in it. She manages to craft a complete and subtle arc, from thinking she’s identified a kindred spirit in Tom, who will care for her daughter, to feeling totally betrayed by him, and she does most of it with looks and stillness. There are times when she seems to be trying to communicate telepathically and we understand everything she’s saying. Even her climactic evisceration of Tom is accomplished with quiet dignity. No wonder she was so good at letting Tobey Maguire know that she knows he’s Spiderman without actually saying it out loud. ♥♥♥♥
Alfred Soto: “You are discreet. I can sense that,” Rose Haigh-Wood confides to her daughter Vivienne’s suitor, as if she needed ESP. The suitor is Thomas Stearns Eliot, a man so buttoned-up that, according to Virginia Woolf, he wore a four-piece suit to dinner and was likely born in one. But Eliot, to use Willem Dafoe’s bizarre approximation of the accent affected by the St. Louis-born expatriate, also wants “to write POH-EH-TREE.” Rosemary Harris builds her performance out of half glances and voice modulations that let everyone in the room know that she understands her unstable daughter better than anyone. In a film that’s at least twenty minutes too long and paced as if director Brian Gilbert was teaching a line-by-line analysis of The Waste Land, Harris and the original play’s conception of a mother of impeccable propriety who isn’t a virago mesh without strain. I don’t doubt casting directors had Tom & Viv in mind when casting Harris as Aunt May in Sam Raimi’s Spider Man (2002). ♥♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: There's something about Rosemary. Is it the fact that she listens so intently, never rushed to respond? Is it the way her hands usually move in slow motion which makes their sudden forcefulness during her daughter’s episodes so impactful? Is it in the delineation of how she feels about Tom and Viv in every scene? Whatever it is it works even if the scope of the role is far too limited — more than anything I wanted the movie Rose & Viv. Too often she’s stranded in short reaction shots paired with far less interesting players. ♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "Thank you so much for doing this - the Smackdown is my favorite feature on the site!" - Suzanne [who didn't vote for Rosemary Harris but votes are weighted so no underseen performance is penalized! - Editor] (Reader average: ♥♥½)
Actress earns 19½ ❤s
Helen Mirren as "Queen Charlotte" in The Madness of King George
Synopsis: A queen frets that her husband, The King of England, has gone mad and is barred from seeing him by her opportunistic eldest.
Stats: Then 49 yrs old, 27th film, 2nd billed. Her 1st of 4 eventual nominations. 26 minutes of screentime (or 23% of the running time)
Erik Anderson: A ferocious performance full of humor, empathy and fire. She has a tough job going up against Hawthorne’s mad king, but Mirren is such a secure actress it doesn’t faze her or hold her back. It’s one of my favorite performances of hers and her best up to that point (I like her here more than in Prime Suspect). ♥♥♥♥♥
Nick Davis: “Mrs. Nominee,” says Nigel, sliding into the limo. “Mr. Nominee!” Helen effuses, still savoring their matrimonial fondness. She suspects those bedroom valedictions secured her nomination: welcome glimpses at a marriage that works. A fun queen to play, this Charlotte. Not a bitch or joke or mere accessory. Perhaps not fully autonomous, though. So many reaction shots. Did she do enough with them? Helen worries. Look how much—yet how little!—Rosemary did with hers. Did I overstress the accent? Did I supply inner lives for Charlotte separate from George? Maybe not, but I’ll enjoy the ceremony. ♥♥
Itamar Moses: This, to me, is the weakest of the nominated performances by far. This isn’t Mirren’s fault: with the exception of an early scene where she takes the King to the roof and calms him, implying that their intimacy might be the cure to his condition (a thread the movie then drops) she doesn’t get a lot to do other than hit one note over and over. But it doesn’t help that the note she’s asked to hit — barely-concealed ineffectual panic — is kind of the opposite of her wheelhouse (authority and warmth). She’s also saddled with a French accent that seems to make it harder for her to get emotion into the language. ♥♥
Alfred Soto: Rehearsing for the regal parts she’d accept a decade later, the British actress known primarily to American audiences in 1994 for Prime Suspect brings tartness to an otherwise frustrating role that’s too cute by half on paper, starting with the way Queen Charlotte and George III call each other “Mrs. King” and “Mr. King,” respectively. ♥♥
Nathaniel R: Mirren is one of those performers who is so technically skilled and big-screen charismatic that her professionalism is oft mistaken for greatness. She plays this far too simply, hitting every seen straight on for drama when the tone of the movie invites much more flexible tragicomic or even camp interpretations (see Everett & Holm & Hawthorne). “Mrs King” is a cute nickname but it unfortunately sums up her limited take on the role. And that accent! I couldn’t place it — had to look up Queen Charlotte’s history online afterwards — but, then, neither could Dame Helen. ♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "The amalgam of British phlegm and non-British sentiment seems about right, but that unrefined accent comes and goes." - Jacob (Reader average: ♥♥½)
Actress earns 15½ ❤s
Uma Thurman as "Mia Wallace" in Pulp Fiction
Synopsis: A mobster's wife demands that her bodyguard take her out on the town for a night of dancing and $5 milkshakes. She overindulges in 'nose-powdering' to disastrous results.
Stats: Then 24 yrs old, 13th film, 3rd billed. First and only nomination. 28.5 minutes of screen time (or 19% of running time).
Erik Anderson: Still the defining role of Thurman’s career and she’s perfect in it. The right balance of bravado and vulnerability, it’s a supremely complicated character. Unafraid, like a wildling she attacks this role and never hits a wrong note. ♥♥♥♥♥
Nick Davis: Uma beholds herself, smirking like the cat who ate the canary who snorted the cocaine. She’ll reprise this exquisite smize in the bathroom at Jack Rabbit Slim’s. In fact, she’ll flourish throughout that sequence: luring self-conscious John into genuine conversation, signaling ebbs and surges of junk in her system, twisting like a charismatic party girl bored with being bored, but also like a cokehead. “So why isn’t this enough?” Uma asks, moonishly. “Why do I still feel upstaged by my wig? Why not one more meaty scene? Why am I good, but not great?” ♥♥♥
Itamar Moses: I was ready to be let down by this performance, watching it again after so many years, but Thurman really is terrific in this. The key is her vulnerability. Mia Wallace is a cool chick — that’s sort of her thing — but she’s also genuinely embarrassed to tell her Fox Force Five joke and seems to be using cocaine not just to party but to take risks she’d otherwise be afraid to. There are so many colors here: groundedness, intelligence, innocent, danger, goofiness and — when she ODs — near-death ugliness. I also love the one beat in which she appears outside her own story, in the bowels of the theatre where the boxing match takes place. “I never thanked you for dinner,” she says to Vincent, conveying her commitment to keeping their secret. ♥♥♥♥
Alfred Soto “Don’t you hate that? Long uncomfortable silences,” Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) asks Vincent Vega (John Travolta) sitting opposite each other at Jack Rabbit Slim’s. Thurman’s Mia relies on those silences: a woman who has willed herself into being sure of herself. She plays an impression of vividness, an assemblage of attitudes, not a character, assembled by Thurman from a miscellany of props in the British acting tradition: cigarettes, Lulu wig, black nail polish, white blouse. During Mia and Vince’s famous dance number, she shimmies as if it were a solo performance; despite Vince’s bathroom monologue in which he tells himself to keep his hands off her, they have no sexual chemistry at all, which might be the point. Thurman’s loose-limbed gaiety also works when a hypodermic needle protrudes from her chest. She’s fun. ♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: Bless Tarantino and his greatly missed editor Sally Menke for their fantastic range — tight closeups, tracking shots, unrushed medium shots in service of that inimitable dialogue. This cinematic toolbox maximizes all of Thurman’s usually misunderstood or underutilized actressing gifts— her lanky singular physicality, that unforgettable face, her often stylized line readings. Uma gets that Mia Wallace is trying to entertain herself more than she’s trying to read or charm Vincent Vega in this iconic duet. Thurman can be uneven on screen but with the right scene partners and directors she’s just dynamite. “Warm. Warmer. Disco.” ♥♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "Forgive me, for I've adored Thurman in other projects. Sure, she looks cool and sexy and iconic here but she doesn't really lift the proceedings in any meaningful way. " -Andrew (Reader average: ♥♥♥½)
Actress earns 22½ ❤s
Jennifer Tilly as "Olive Neal" in Bullets Over Broadway
Synopsis: A chorus girl and terrible actress fights with her bodyguard, her director, and her lines in a Broadway play she doesn't understand. Bankrolled by her boyfriend, natch.
Stats: Then 36 yrs old, 16th film. (All principles billed simultaneously as is Woody Allen's habit). 1st and only nomination. 25 minutes of screentime (or 27% of running time.)
Erik Anderson: Tilly had the tougher part in Bullets Over Broadway and it sits alongside Judy Holliday and Jean Hagen as one of the best comedic performances of all-time. “Who’s ever heard of black pearls? They probably come from defective oysters” is one of best line readings ever. ♥♥♥♥♥
Nick Davis: “Hey, Venus! Let’s go with that hootch!” The Governor’s Ball bartender looks stone-faced, horrified. “That was one of my lines,” Jennifer giggles. “I was nominated.” Everybody remembers Dianne’s lines, bless. But why has Jennifer felt all winter like an also-ran? She knows she’s dynamic fun in the film, fueling comic momentum throughout, stitched into the ensemble, whereas Bullets often halts for Dianne. Woody didn’t showcase Jennifer equally, but her cadences, energies, postures, mispronunciations—maybe not everything’s perfect, but so much is! Bullets dips once Olive’s gone. Jennifer, proud, sips her hootch and calls Teri Garr. ♥♥♥♥
Itamar Moses: Tilly and Wiest. These two performances are both great and make an interesting pair. Tilly pulls off the deceptively tricky task of giving a great performance as a terrible actor while Wiest is effortlessly commanding as a great actor who is performing 100% of the time. Between the two of them I feel like we get a masterclass in the different uses of degrees of vanity. Tilly’s character has so little it’s almost shocking. Her character has no idea how she appears to others and it’s riveting. Wiest’s character is entirely made up of vanity: she only responds to, is fueled entirely by, total, unquestioning adoration. Both characters are types but both performances are so detailed and specific that type is transcended. ♥♥♥♥
Alfred Soto: For audiences unfamiliar with Jean Hagen’s immortal work in Singin’ in the Rain or Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday, Jennifer Tilly’s ‘90s variant on the voice-like-a-drill-press routine to signify she’s playing a bad/non-actress may prove delightful. Enjoying Tilly rests to a large degree on whether you think Woody Allen thinks these characters are lousy people but hardworking artists or lousy people and lousy artists whom he’s mildly rebuking. Like Bullets Over Broadway, a little of her goes a long away; she’s too pleased with herself, too insistent on telegraphing her distance from the Dumb Broad she imitates. ♥♥
Nathaniel R: I’ve been struggling to zero in on a moment that best showcases her brilliance; They all do. If pressed I'd go with any of her dizzying mood-swings from demands to complaints to confusion to curiosity in split seconds, especially when surprised by big words or small gifts. I blame “charmed charmed charmed,” which isn’t quite the equal of “Don’t speak!” as catch-phrases go, for the fact that Tilly’s stratospherically funny performance isn’t held in as high regard as Weist’s ingenious flamboyance. Tilly’s charms as this charmless childwoman are miraculous. “Ha!” ♥♥♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "Tilly is able to find a lot of shading to her portrayal wherein every word that leaves her mouth is brilliantly comedic. When her character departs the film she's missed greatly because line after line Tilly is a rocket blasting off into space." - Eoin (Reader average: ♥♥♥¾)
Actress earns 23¾ ❤s
Dianne Wiest as "Helen Sinclair" in Bullets Over Broadway
Synopsis: A theatrical legend sees a golden opportunity to reignite her career by becoming the muse of a young playwright she doesn't much like in a role she thinks beneath her.
Stats: Then 46 yrs old, 17th film. (All principles billed simultaneously as is Woody Allen's habit). 3rd and final nomination (all in the supporting category). 1 previous win. 24 minutes of screentime (or 26% of running time).
Erik Anderson: A legend, to be sure. I hate to begrudge her win. Wiest’s stage diva is hilarious; it’s just a bit one-note. Sometimes repetition is the key to comedy (“Don’t speak” is an all-time classic now and deservedly so), but sometimes it’s just repetitive. I feel like a monster now. ♥♥♥♥
Nick Davis: Dianne voted for Rosemary, an actual Broadway legend. Quiet acting is hard and under-rewarded. Although big acting is hard, too! Dianne sees in some of the first takes she filmed that she was still getting comfortable but loves how the character and her catchphrases have caught on. She’s even prouder of her hammy fun with throwaway lines (“Would you LOOK!”), her way of manipulating John’s character in ways both subtle and not, the way she wields costumes and props, that train scene. She wonders if she deserves a second statue, but she’ll take it. ♥♥♥♥
Itamar Moses: [See the Jennifer Tilly write-up, as they're paired - editor]. ♥♥♥♥
Alfred Soto: The performance wasn’t working—it looked like a disaster. Then director Woody Allen realized the trouble: Dianne Wiest was using her natural, thin pressed-flower of a voice. Lower it a couple octaves, he suggested. Thus did Wiest unlock the secret to playing the overripe Helen Sinclair, doyenne of the American stage. Thanks to the drag-queen-playing-Tallulah Bankhead rumble, Wiest wrung all manner of camp variants on her semi-classic “Don’t speak!” line. She’s even better when playing fake-coy for the sake of John Cusack’s hack playwright. But is Helen a hack too? Bullets Over Broadway hedges. ♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: It’s true. I have a weakness for flamboyant grande-dames. But still. Every line reading, and gesture, and emotion in this justly iconic turn is a Performance. Sometimes Helen is acting for herself, sometimes for a man she’s manipulating, sometimes it’s even for Dianne; Weist’s three Oscar roles have incredible range and this is her ballsiest most crazily sustained risk. I worship Helen’s reaction to the question about whether we fall in love with artists or their art. Of course she thinks it a strange question. What’s the difference? She’s never not been ACTING. ♥♥♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "One of the best winners ever - need we say more?" - Darren (Reader average: ♥♥♥♥½)
Actress earns 24½ ❤s
Dianne Wiest took the Oscar in what appeared to be a landslide at the time
but in the Smackdown she just barely ekes out a win with a 3/4th of a heart victory over her Bullets Over Broadway cast-mate Jennifer Tilly.
Two GREAT comic performances in one movie!
We hope you enjoyed the Smackdown!
Want more? The Podcast companion conversation is here (part one / part two) in which we discuss 1994 in more detail.
Previous Smackdowns: 1941, 1944, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1963, 1964, 1968, 1970, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1985, 1989, 1995, 2003, 2016, and 2017 (prior to those 30+ Smackdowns were hosted @ StinkyLulu's old site)
NEXT UP? 1943 in July.
Reader Comments (58)
djdeeday -- that might require its own post.
djdeeday -- that might require its own post.
No competition here....Dianne West is the one that stands out for me. And may I add the BA category is one of the worst ever. Susan Saradon in The Client? Jodie in Nell? Please, give me a break!
What a great discussion. The panelists crushed it. Loved Alfred's take on Tilly--just wonderful!
Thanks, everyone!
Shadeeee for Wiest? That's bullshit. She is one of the best Oscar winners the Academy has ever thought to stumble on and award in supporting actress. Probably would have dropped Mirren for being overblown here and Harris for being slight. Replace them with Field and Wright. Sacrilege, I know. "Forrest Gump" is the most awful film everrrr, but those two are the beating hearts of that film. Hanks wouldn't have won without Mama Gump and Jenny. Adore Thurman to this day in her signature role. Tilly was indeed comic brilliance, but she had the double whammy of internal competition with Wiest and middling career choices/poor reputation. That can cost you in these races. It's just all about Wiest, really. This shouldn't have been such a close smackdown, but at least the readers course-corrected this ship as they usually do. Living for Nick's Tilly impression! We've missed your brilliance dearly, good sir!
I think that this year offers a solid lineup in the category. The highlights, I agree, are Dianne, Uma and Jennifer. Rosemary is a pleasant surprise, she's so good in her part, she quietly steals the film. My nominees would have been these four actresses plus Kristin Scott Thomas in 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' or Claire Danes in 'Little Women'.
I'd like to see the smackdown of 1998. An interesting year with Kathy Bates, Brenda Blethyn, Judi Dench, Rachel Griffiths and Lynn Redgrave.
I would have replaced Rosemary Harris and Uma Thurman with Sandra Bullock for Speed and Kristen Scott Thomas for 4 weddings and a funeral. Sandra was almost the lead - but given the way the academy nominates leads as supporting it could have happened. And as for Kristen - it was a tiny part but her gut wrenching scene when she tells Hugh Grant that she has loved him for so long was great. And I would even think Andie McDowell could have been nominated but again she was the lead ....or was she? Speed and 4 weddings are two wonderful films that are enjoyable on repeat viewings.
Sandra Bullock is clear LEAD in Speed and although its a Star ia in a making Role, it ist never ever be Oscar material performance wise. Please be realistic.