Supporting Actress Smackdown - 1971

The Year is...

1971

And we've got quite pile-up of Smackdowners for the 44th Annual Academy Awards, including...

AARON of Sarcasm with a Light Cream Sauce
DAMION of Queering the Apparatus
JAMES HENRY of Rants of a Diva
JJ of As Little As Possible
KEN of Canadian Ken On...
MATT
MIDDENTO of When I Look In Your Eyes
NICK of Nick's Pick Flicks

and
yours truly, STINKYLULU.

1971's Supporting Actresses are...
(Each Smackdowner's comments are arranged according to ascending levels of love. Click on the nominee's name/film to see StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Sunday review.)

Ann-Margret in Carnal Knowledge
JJ - It's all unremarkable (except for her chest, and her reading of "You're a real prick"). Blame the movie, whose screenplay must've read like something Bret Easton Ellis would've scribbled on a napkin if he time-traveled to the early '60s and chased a fistful of Qualuudes with some scotch...
JamesHenry - Written like one of those shrilly, bimbo-ish blondes in a later (and lesser) Woody Allen comedy, Bobbie isn’t much of a character to begin with, but Ann-Margret doesn’t do anything with the role besides sit there and look glum. One has to fear that it was really the "cute blonde doing heavy drama" that got her the nomination...
StinkyLulu - Stunt casting at its most adept. Who else but Ann-Margret could so efficiently play such a delicate tornado, a tropical storm capable of matching Hurricane Jack? Her Bobbie’s vulnerability is intense, to be sure, but Ann-Margret’s typical mush-mouthed line-readings and odalisque posturing dissipate the actress’s elemental force....
Damion - Ann-Margret has given better performances before and after this one, and the “reasons” Ann-Margret was nominated for this one are unfortunate and lecherous. Her Bobbie is fully developed, and this is not a bad performance… just not really award worthy....
Ken - Once, counting his chickens for some doomed get-rich-quick scheme, Ralph Kramden surveyed his few tacky sticks of furniture and said, “Alice, this stuff’ll look great on Park Avenue!” A-M peddles her usual brand of baby powder here – relocated to more intellectually upscale surroundings, but not substantially improved...
Aaron - Ann-Margret's Bobbie is a lovely creation. She perfectly matches Jack Nicholson's scenery-chewing by quietly containing every impulse. But with every passive gesture, her eyes flash fire. An excellent, sad performance that becomes the moral barometer for the rest of the film...
Matt - Usually, Ann-Margret’s at a loss when her character’s not a sex tigress, but as Nicholson’s defenseless lover – a kitten without a whip – she’s entirely credible and touching. Not a particularly challenging role, since pathos and catatonia remain its predominant elements, but an admirable performance...
Nick - Times her pauses beautifully, allowing her character to make sense within the mannered universe of the script and direction. I love how her body and voice express Bobbie’s beauty and indolence without vamping, and without abstraction. Ann-Margret believes in her character, and holds our attention fully but simply....
Middento - Mostly, I know her as the dippy teen in Elvis(-like) musicals, but here, Mike Nichols’ penchant for carefully held close-ups allows her to demonstrate some careful acting! The ballyhooed scene is the screaming match with Nicholson, but the quieter, desperate moments really sell the tale....

TOTAL: (22)

Ellen Burstyn in The Last Picture Show
Aaron - Bogdanovich's film is about the depth of this small town, but Burstyn only seems to be interested in her character's surfaces. Late in the movie, when Sonny says he could see why Sam liked her so much, I couldn't have agreed less...
StinkyLulu - As Criticlasm observed, “Burstyn earns the nomination with that entrance.” But the rest of the performance doesn’t sustain the heart-stopping spirit of the role so well. Burstyn clearly really really understands Lois, and she stages some great beats for Bogdanovich’s adoring camera, but...Burstyn’s Lois is more like an acting exercise than an embodied characterization...
Nick - Pushes a little hard for Saucy and Sly, and this is hardly the movie to break her self-conscious, actorly habits. Still, she’s sexy and funny, and her big scene about a long-ago swim blows Ben Johnson’s scene of reminiscence out of the water. The film could use more of her...
JJ - Burstyn's Lois Farrow ferments bitterness into a sweet-n-sour acquiescence that passes for wisdom. Lois lacks Ruth Popper's showy arc, but Burstyn, Bogdanovich and Robert Surtees create visual poetry: watch the camera move in the car scene with Sonny; see Burstyn meet motion with emotion...
Ken - Doesn’t compare with the brilliance Burstyn displayed in so many later roles. She still seems to be finding her way here. And occasional dollops of Polly Holliday “kiss my grits” exaggeration are unwelcome. Still, pretty solid...
Damion - Burstyn is not afraid to go there and be cold and calculating and risk the audience’s dislike. She gives it to them with both barrels, and then… returns with a hook so strong, and so human, that the audience can’t help but forgive her. Wonderful work… as always...
JamesHenry - What makes Burstyn the stand out in the actressexual’s dream The Last Picture Show? Mostly, it’s the fact that thirty years before the term “desperate housewife” became commonplace, she practically defined it with this rich, deliciously immoral and all around memorable performance...
Middento - The brassier role, played beautifully. My favorite moment is when she seriously contemplates Sonny’s flirting in the car before turning him away. The loudness of the role in an otherwise quiet film masks the stunning (and sustained) subtlety of the acting here...
Matt - Burstyn endows Lois with appropriate proportions of jadedness and sass. But her genius here lies in her quicksilver transitions. She packs an entire range of emotions within even expository scenes. Her facial expressions and line readings in her final scene reveal fresh and surprising thought. A colorful, imaginative, heartfelt performance...

TOTAL: (31)

Barbara Harris in Who Is Harry Kellerman...?
Middento - The performance is out of this world – if the film were a short with only her scenes. She transfixes: you can’t help to sit up and take notice for the short block of time she is onscreen. Yet this otherwise magnetic performance seems jammed inorganically into this god-awful mess of a film...
JJ - Yawn. Until she walks onto that stage. It's not a factor of the writing or the role -- neither makes sense -- but of the essence of the actress. Harris takes a shotgun loaded with charisma and holds the movie hostage for two engaging scenes. Too bad she can't pull the trigger....
StinkyLulu - With a whole character arc to accomplish in the space of a few concentrated scenes, Harris makes the smartest, most electrifying choice – she simplifies. As Allison's fluttery crust of mannerisms dissolve to reveal the very real woman underneath, Harris's clarity and humanity provide this grandiose film its only true emotional mooring...
Nick - A vapid film and a wobbly entrance can’t stop Barbara Harris, who pours a movie’s worth of sad, darting, vaguely manipulative life into ten minutes of work. She deepens the unbearable lightness of the film without disrupting it, and assembles a whole interior life where her Crayola script never imagined one...
Ken - A petunia in an onion patch. Deliriously endearing; definitely a contender in the “very good performances in very bad movies” sweepstakes. It’s a testament to her talent that she briefly transforms this stink-bomb into a Fourth of July sparkler...
Damion - Wow. In the middle of this terrible film, Harris is a revelation as Allison. Her audition scene, in lesser hands, would have been a disaster of actory ticks and wacky shtick. Instead, her Allison is just trying to hold it together… and let go of the lamp. Beautiful...
JamesHenry - In a stupefying, unfocused mess like Harry Kellerman, it’s a miracle equal to the Immaculate Conception that Harris is able to give the performance that she does- as focused and precise as a laser beam while retaining a level of humanity that makes her heartbreakingly real...
Matt - Harris weaves her magic, spinning elements of world-weariness and wryness out of Herb Gardner’s overwritten dialogue to make Allison something other than a kooky loser. Her thank-you speech is beautiful, luminous and touching. The movie’s impossibly synthetic, but Barbara Harris is the real thing...
Aaron - Injecting life into an otherwise bewilderingly boring film, Harris's Allison emerges as the perfect counterpoint to Hoffman's Georgie, crafting a character who is lost but determined to live. Her scenes are easily this movie's most compelling...

TOTAL: (33)

Cloris Leachman in The Last Picture Show
Nick - Her cloudy expression is an instant emblem of the movie. Her final, spiteful eruption gratifies the audience. She’s a smart, unpredictable performer. BUT she remains an idea about a woman, rather than a woman. Direction is the real culprit here—Leachman is clearly in sync with Bogdanovich, probably improving on his suggestions—but I’m less persuaded by Ruth Popper and less interested in her that I thought I was...
Ken - A great part – and quite effective in spots. But as a dramatic actress – even at her best – Leachman’s just good, not great. Too early for them, I guess, but think what Betty Buckley or Dianne Wiest could’ve done...
Middento - An exceptional performance, to be sure. Her long-suffering wife is so delicately bruised that by the last scene in the film, her explosion is powerful, inevitable. A meaty role, but one I wish was more evenly nuanced throughout the film...
JamesHenry - I have a special place in my heart for this type of shy wallflower, no matter how good or bad, and, fortunately, Leachman is one of the best because she rises above easy clichés and cheap sympathy and makes us feel genuine emotion towards her...
Aaron - Any actress would demand attention in the part, but Leachman's performance seems totally unique. She disappears for the film's last third, but her final aria is beautiful: traveling from terrified to seething to boundless generosity in a matter of minutes...
Matt - Handles her role with restraint and simplicity. I found Burstyn’s performance more interesting and varied, but Leachman is never monochromatic, and she provides a beautiful coda to Picture Show, her raging scorn melting into tearful compassion. Masterful work...
JJ - Ruth feels out loud what the town feels silently. Leachman's triumph is the final scene: an eruptive monologue, then the sweetest slice of silent acting. Without a word, she slips from rancor to puzzlement to gratitude to remorse to despair to surrender...
StinkyLulu - Leachman's light touch and comedienne's instinct for precision help her performance to dodge the maudlin, overwrought pitfalls of a role like Ruth Popper. Instead, Leachman shows us a nearly extinguished woman flicker and flame back to life; it's subtly brilliant, and quietly joyous, work...
Damion - It is easy to see why Leachman won. She creates a portrait of a very real woman, living a very real, and painful life. Her hopes and dreams are so fleeting, you can watch them wash across her face… in silence...

TOTAL: (34)

Margaret Leighton in The Go-Between
Damion - More out of a V.C. Andrews novel than an Edwardian period piece, Leighton is positively monstrous and rather flat here as she channels her best Wicked Witch. She does not even build to the terror… just charges in with no delicacy or class...
Matt - Losey relegates Leighton to the background, and there’s nothing memorable about her Mrs. Maudsley – not a nuance, inflection, gesture, line reading, facial expression, acting choice, or bit of business. The rationale behind nominating this non-performance is as bewilderingly oblique as most Losey films themselves...
JJ - From the opening credits, I wanted this movie to end. So I'm grateful to Leighton for using her lethal aristocratic prowess to insist upon some kind of conflict and climax. She's way at the edge of actressing here. We could've used her more toward the center...
Nick - Leighton knows everything before the audience does. Her tasks throughout are to express shame, anger, and denial—high breeding under siege—which she does with boldness and color, but she’s much too theatrical. A clichéd arc, played memorably but too fussily for the camera...
Middento - Solid, fiery and sure in what would otherwise be an undercooked performance, Leighton seems to be the only grown-up in a movie where everyone seems stunted. The best scenes are when the camera catches her face communicating what she dares not say. Yet even she can’t anchor this film, which seems wispier than it’s meant to be...
JamesHenry - Her early scenes are merely perfunctory, but those final two or three- wowza. Leighton rips through them with a scary intensity only matched by Dame Judi Dench and Glenn Close...
Aaron - Mrs. Maudsley is a sideline character until the film's final minutes, at which point Leighton takes focus and knocks the movie out of the park. Transforming from the contained lady of the manor to a fearsome, terrible force of nature, she's this film's real black magic...
StinkyLulu - Leighton smartly imbues Mrs. Maudsley with a mercenary determination, calibrating a refined tension that veils her stealthy construction of the scaffolding necessary for the film’s climactic, revelatory confrontation...
Ken - Leighton’s Lady Maudsley conveys a multitude of impressions – gracious, inflexible, penetrating, tense, tender, cruel, hysterical – with an expertise that keeps them all mutually compatible. Gradually – and powerfully - reveals her presence at the edge of the proceedings to be, in fact, dead center...

TOTAL: (23)

Oscar chose...
Cloris Leachman in
The Last Picture Show!
And, despite a wide divergence of articulate opinions
(check out how many performances rated the full span of hearts),
the SMACKDOWNing boys have agreed:
Cloris, it's you, baby, it's you!

So, lovely reader, this Smackdown proved to be quite a tight race, inspiring both great disagreement and what seems to be a clear consensus (the Smackdown's "winner" is the single performance to receive only 3-heart rankings and above). But what's your take? Toss your thoughts onto the pile & tell the Smackdowners what YOU think!