1946: Margaret Rutherford in "Blithe Spirit"

Each month before the Supporting Actress Smackdown, Nick Taylor suggests alternatives to the actual Oscar nomination ballot.

by Nick Taylor

For me, Dame Margaret Rutherford sits alongside the likes of Judi Dench and Edith Evans and (insert your favorite British actress/Mark Rylance here) as quintessential examples of British thespians transitioning to remarkably rewarding screen careers later in life, long after establishing their bonafides onstage. What’s recognizable about their screen presences is seemingly integral to every role, though they’re rangier in affect and character-building than one might give them credit for. They almost always deliver, and even when they don't, there's still enough happening in their work for a desperate viewer to latch onto. It takes talent for Rutherford to be compelling enough in The VIPs that you wonder if her performance deserves to be in a better film instead of scraped with the rest of the heap.

It’s also worth noting for the context of Blithe Spirit that Noël Coward wrote the role of Madame Arcati specifically with Rutherford in mind...

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The heartbreaking beauty of "Brief Encounter"

by Cláudio Alves

Ever since I listened to Robert Altman's commentary track on the Gosford Park DVD, I've bristled at the idea that someone needs to be a certain age to enjoy a film. In that bonus feature, Altman mentions that Gosford Park has nothing to offer to fourteen-year-old boys, and they shouldn't get to watch it. As a fourteen-year-old boy for whom Gosford Park was a favorite, I felt personally attacked. A bit more than a decade later, I've grown less annoyed at such blanket statements about age and movie appreciation. As it turns out, there are films that can gain something when the audience seeing them is more mature. You may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with Brief Encounter or our 1946 celebration? Apologies for my long-windedness.

I'm trying to introduce a personal realization I had. While I might have loved Brief Encounter when I was a teen, I knew not of its power. Now, I think it's one of the best and most devastating films ever made…

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7 days until Oscar. 7-time Best Director nominees

It's seven sleeps until Oscar night so today's magic discussion number is SEVEN! Exactly seven directors in history have received seven (or more) nominations for Best Director in the Academy's 93 year history. For fun we've listed that magic seventh nomination below, though coincidentally none of these directors won their seventh time in the race (all had already won). They are, in alpha order:

 

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How had I never seen... "Doctor Zhivago"?

Every once in a while we ask Team Experience members to finally get around to a famous film they've been meaning to watch forever. Here's Christopher James...

I hate to say it, but when does one put on a three hour epic? The time never quite seems right, especially in a pre-quarantine world. That’s why David Lean’s epic extravaganzas had long been blind spots in my filmography. Both The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia become instant personal favorites after finally watching them for the first time in the past five years. Yet, somehow Doctor Zhivago (1965) always seemed just a bridge, or perilous train ride, too far. When I would think of it, I would picture the sets and costumes from stills. But was it worth sitting through over three hours of a movie just for, in the words of Aretha Franklin, “gowns, beautiful gowns”? Luckily, the epic is way more than just its trappings. As Team Experience gushed a few years back, there are so many memorable scenes and subplots in this involving romantic quartet.

To compliment Doctor Zhivago appropriately, one must go down each Oscar craft category one by one. It’s a technically stunning achievement that is beautiful, towering and simultaneously warm and cold all in the same breath...

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Alec Guinness: Performing obsession

by Cláudio Alves

David Lean's film career is a rather peculiar thing. Before he ever sat on the director's chair, Lean was an editor whose resumé included collaborations with such lofty names of British cinema as Powell and Pressburger. It was during World War II that he started working as a director, adapting several Noël Coward plays and Charles Dickens novels. His early work was a cinema of über-Britishness, one that both celebrated, ravaged, and autopsied the idea of what it was to be British, taking an especially hard look at the effects of the war on society. 

It's strange to consider that this master of the chamber drama, a director of modest style, would go on to become synonymous with the sprawling epics of the 1960s. Apart from some missteps, he'd be as wonderful doing these monstrously big movies as he was doing the small ones, but there's a clear dissonance of approach fragmenting the man's filmography. If there's a transitional piece to be found, a stylistic and thematic bridge, that explains how the humble adapter of prestige literature became the epic maker, it's 1957's The Bridge on the River Kwai… 

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