Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter - Supporting Actress Sundays

Screening The Deer Hunter for the first time caused StinkyLulu to develop an attitude problem. See, StinkyLulu finds it just creepy and annoying that "one of the most important and powerful films of all time", before it's even 1/4-way done, stages not one but two separate scenes in which a blonde in a pink bridesmaid dress gets punched in the face. As a device -- perhaps -- to demonstrate the brutality of life on the "homefront" the blonde-punching might make a certain kind of sense...a certain kind of gratuitous, hyperbolic and misogynist sense. (We won't get into how lazy it is that, even as Cimino lugubriously details the distinctive "pain" of each of his 6 or 7 male characters, the female characters are basically old bats, drunk sluts, catatonic brides or designated punching bags.) But, then again, everything about Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter is gratuitous, hyperbolic -- and, on those infrequent occasions when Cimino pauses to think about women at all -- "punched up" with misogyny. Just pisses StinkyLulu off...'specially when one of those punching bags just happens to be...

...Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter (1978).

approximately 30 minutes and 56 seconds
25 scenes
roughly 17% of film's total running time

Meryl Streep plays Linda, the girl caught between her devotion to her fiance Nick (Christopher Walken) and her attraction to his incredibly hot (nsfw) best friend Michael (Robert DeNiro), both of whom -- as the movie begins -- are readying for tours in Vietnam.

The character of Linda is barely a character at all. As scripted, she's little more than the all-purpose movie "girl" -- the good girl, the girl at home, the kind of girl a guy marries, the girl whose picture the fighting soldier holds close to his heart, the girl who writes the "dear john" letter, the girl who works at the market in the hometown that never feels like home again to the returning veteran, the girl that got away... Linda's an archetype, a symbol, a stock character drawn in bold, unoriginal strokes. That is, until an emerging actress named Meryl Streep took the role.

Meryl Streep does more than spin gold from straw in her performance; Streep retrieves a fully-inhabited characterization from a role that's not so much a character as a pathetically underconceptualized plot device. Through the forceful clarity of her performance and the (mostly wordless) chemistry she establishes with DeNiro's Michael and even a little bit of goofiness, Streep's Linda becomes one of the most vivid presences in Cimino's film.

Truly, Streep acts her butt off in this thankless prop of a part. Her Linda is beautiful, gentle, a little bit dangerous and absolutely riveting. What's more, even though I'm left with no idea “who” Linda is, Streep’s emotional intricacies make me care about Linda anyway. I may not understand "who" Linda is, but I have no doubt "that" she is a living, breathing, complicated woman. Hers is a curious accomplishment. She's in the film, but somehow not of the film.

Streep's performance as Linda proclaimed her arrival on the screen as perhaps THE film actress of her generation. Her performance is vastly greater than the role, more emotionally substantial in some ways (at least for StinkyLulu) than the film. And while StinkyLulu somehow, for some reason, stops short of loving the performance, this much is clear: Meryl Streep's admirable and memorable performance as Linda in The Deer Hunter proclaimed her arrival as an actressing force to be reckoned with.

Now, if only she had punched back...

Supporting Actress Smackdown - 1978

The Year is...

1978

And the Smackdowners for the 23rd Annual Academy Awards are...

...with old hands...
KEN of Canadian Ken On...
BRAD of Criticlasm & Fag Yer It
TIM of Mainly Movies

...some new to the smackdown joy...
GOATDOG of goatdog's movies
RBURTON of Adam Waldowski Doesn't Watch Non-Oscar Nominees

...and, of course, featuring...
Yours Truly, STINKYLULU.

1978'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.)

Dyan Cannon in Heaven Can Wait
goatdog - Ugh. She's a big-haired, high-energy bundle of Not Funny. I can appreciate what she's going for enough to wish someone else had tried it. I spent her scenes feeling sorry that Grodin had to share them with her...
Tim - Hyperventilates her way through the potentially plum part of a gold-digging murderess, to no great avail. She's drably cast (I want Lesley Ann Warren) and seems constantly in cahoots with the surrounding mediocrity. I tried to like her, but it was simply no use...
StinkyLulu - Cannon’s flailing here. She’s working her gifts – distinctive looks, loud voice, zesty screen presence, formidable hair – but her characterization stays stuck in stock comedy shrewishness, rendering her Julia bereft of both humor and charm...
Brad - I kept waiting for the scene that would make this nomination make sense. Maybe it was for the hair, or for the variety of screams and shrieks she managed, but I can't really figure out what this nomination was for. Servicable, even funny, but nomination worthy?...
RBurton - In the hands of a better actress, this would be a funnier role. Cannon can't even rise above Charles Grodin, who's much more amusing. The most comical thing about her whole performance is that really, really tall hair...
Ken - An unnecessary retread of Here Comes Mr. Jordan, elephantine whimsy intact. But Cannon – with her distinctive lion ‘s mane – is a scream. Punctuating her freak-outs with hilarious mile-a-minute barrages of polite murmur. She and the buttoned-down Grodin interact with the the high-style precision of a handcrafted cuckoo clock...

TOTAL: (11)

Penelope Milford in Coming Home
RBurton - This is a do-nothing nomination if ever I saw one. I'd call Milford an uninteresting sidekick, but she doesn't have enough screen time for the title. With Fonda, Voight, and Dern, it's peculiar that anyone remembered her...
Brad - Not a very interesting characterization, especially considering the powerful perfs surrounding her (Jane redeemed herself from Plaza Suite). I was aware of her acting "the tough girl", but it never felt true or went deeper. I imagine the nomination was on the tide of the film or on the breakdown scene, but weirdly thought I would've preferred to see Didi Conn...
Tim - As the least tidily idealised character in a peaceniks' love-in, Milford's pluck and vitality come in handy. But she's chucked away as the drama proceeds, and that hotel-room striptease isn't the wrenching sequence it should be. It's a good perf that just doesn't quite count for enough...
goatdog - What was supposed to be world-weary cynicism concealing a tender heart registers instead as vacancy. She seemed at a loss for what to do in the moments when the film needed her the most. She's likeable, but that wasn't nearly enough...
Ken - Looking and sounding like Shelley Duvall’s normal sister, Milford fulfills the obligations of the role but never goes that extra mile. Of course, the part’s merely an accessory to Fonda’s – and next to that fully realized star turn, the best Milford can muster is a minor matter of fact twinkle...
StinkyLulu - Though she contributes an essential tenderness to the film, Milford’s wan performance – all vapid listening and shallow reactions – doesn’t meet the tricksy balance essential to the role of Vi. A remarkable role; an appealing actress; a negligible performance...

TOTAL: (11)

Maggie Smith in California Suite
Tim - When she's not caught turning her nose up at the ghastly furnishings, Smith sails through these brittle marital tirades and gets round to Simon's required notes of bedside pathos. But she could do this crap in her sleep, and the contemptuous efficiency of the perf makes for a strangely grim spectacle. The punchline? She actually won!....
Ken - I don’t generally like it when Maggie Smith goes to her “funny” place. Noel Coward attitudinizing, lips (and everything else) permanently pursed. That’s where her dial’s mostly set in this flavorless buffet. Duelling with Michael Caine, she comes in second – more talkative but less interesting....
StinkyLulu - From this mere piffle of a part, Smith somehow avoids bathetic cruelty to retrieve a performance that – in both a comedic and a melancholic register – adeptly conveys the quiet anxiety of a woman who, for perhaps the first time, is beginning to ask: is that all there is?...
RBurton - If Neil Simon's dialogue ever falls flat, you can't tell in Smith's scenes. Her comic timing and delivery make whatever she says a riot. Her chemistry with Michael Caine is incredible and their section is the funniest. Still, the Fonda/Alda plot has all the heart...
Brad - Manages to make the stagy dialogue sound natural, even giving it a depth that is missing from any other performance in the film (save Michael Caine). Truly rises above and elevates the material, providing a nuanced, compelling performance in a forgettable relic of a film...
goatdog - Her lovely, hilarious, heartstring-tugging portrayal of a woman forced to reevaluate her entire life in the face of critical acclaim revitalizes, however briefly, Simon's stinker of a script. Her comic timing is superb, the heartache fueling her sarcasm palpable...

TOTAL: (22)

Maureen Stapleton in Interiors
Ken - Stapleton invades the hermetically sealed world of Interiors like Ethel Merman barging into a monastic retreat. But instead of belting out showtunes, she steps on the brakes. The script oversells the Pearl-as-lifeforce thing. But Stapleton’s playing balances that nicely. Restrained. Homey. Eloquent...
Tim - We breathe a sign of relief on Stapleton's arrival – the whole movie does. She's a trouper in a vaguely demeaning stock role, adding some memorable notes of honest confusion, warmth, vulgarity and social embarrassment to an otherwise hermetic chamber piece. It would be a mausoleum without her...
Brad - Literally a breath of fresh air in a stifling film. So good that I found myself agreeing with Pearl if only to side against the self-involved snobs surrounding her. The costuming helps her natural magnetism, but Stapleton is always the real person in the film you'd like to know...
StinkyLulu - Stapleton's performance as the loose, sloppy Pearl is a marvel of precision, infusing this clomping film with something just exhilarating and scary and wonderful...
RBurton - Stapleton makes a huge impression when she explodes onscreen in her red dress. Eager to please and not too bright, she's still the film's sole source of energy and passion. Commanding every second she's on screen, she's simply unforgettable...
goatdog - She's a hypodermic of day-glow adrenaline stabbed into the film's dead, beige heart. If that were all, she'd be good, or just welcome. But there was something extraordinary in those close-ups on the beach that I just can't get out of my head...

TOTAL: (24)

Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter
Ken - The subject matter has enough power and relevance to resonate despite the film’s self-indulgent pacing. Streep’s very much the serious young actress laboring mightily to look spontaneous. A performance requires planning, yes, but it shouldn’t look quite so studiously concocted. Hardly award-worthy. (Wasn’t Melinda Dillon available?)...
goatdog - She's glass-fragile, wearing all of her thoughts and emotions on the surface in a performance that's sometimes so brutally honest it's hard to watch. But sometimes she overdoes it, not content with one mannerism when there's time for five...
StinkyLulu - Jeepers but Streep acts her bony little ass off in this thankless prop of a part. Her Linda is beautiful, gentle, a little bit dangerous and absolutely riveting. True, even with all those behaviors, I have no idea “who” Linda is, but Streep’s characteristic emotional intricacies make me care about her anyway...
Tim - Prime early Streep – her best work pre-Sophie's Choice. Projects a nervous strength and a tremulous vulnerability as this Odyssey's knitting Penelope; her chemistry with De Niro is palpable. The role's not much, but she's unforgettably luminous in it, and gets a fourth heart because she should have won...
RBurton - With all that hunting and Russian roulette, this is as butch as movies get. Streep's the feminine balance. She subtly plays the vulnerable, lonely woman left behind. Armed with a flat rural accent and giddy laugh, she blows the small role out of the water and breaks your heart...
Brad - What is there to say? Luminous, fascinating, unexpected – she takes a simple small town girl emotionally out of her depths and finds richness of feeling that many would have missed. Every feeling washes across her face. It's what we've come to expect from Streep – when she's on screen, you can't watch anyone else...

TOTAL: (22)

Oscar chose...
Maggie Smith in California Suite!
But the SMACKDOWN gives it to:
Maureen Stapleton in Interiors!

So, lovely reader, tell the Smackdowners what YOU think!