Wendy Hiller in A Man for All Seasons (1966)

There's a bit of danger in posting my regular profile of a performance after the Smackdown's already happened. Indeed, sometimes, investing just that little bit more attention to the performance in question (while timing, screencapping, etc) reveals subtly hidden depth and dimension, all too easily missed on a first pass. And then, it's all, "Mayyybe I should have given another heart to this performance, after all. Mayyyyyybe I could even still..." But, by then -- or by now, as the case may be -- it's too late. The moment has passed. The hearts must stand. Another lesson learned on Supporting Actress Sundays. And this Sunday, my able teacher has been...

...Wendy Hiller in A Man for All Seasons (1966)
approximately 15 minutes and 48 seconds
11 scenes
roughly 13% of film's total running time

Wendy Hiller plays Lady Alice, the devoted wife of Sir Thomas More, the English statesman whose steadfast devotion to religious and legal principle, in an era of political treachery and expedience, occasions his doom.
It might be easy to dismiss Hiller's portrayal of Lady Alice More (as I think I may have initially) as a blowsy earth mother, grimacing and growling her way through the role solely to underscore the tension between the character's humble, laboring origins and her more courtly, present social station. (Indeed, I first suspected Hiller's work in the role was mostly interesting as a cleverish take on the Mores as a Tudor version of "nouveau riche.)
As the actress snorts her way through Lady Alice's early dashes of domestic comedy -- ostensibly included to humanize the impossibly ideal Sir Thomas (Paul Scofield, in a deservedly revered performance) -- Hiller's broad facial and vocal flourishes might seem at times ill-fitting to the gravitas of both the role and the film, especially in the film's middle scenes when Lady Alice's impatient, irascible practicality provide the focus of the character.
Yet, amidst all Lady Alice's apparent shortsightedness, Hiller's performance amplifies the essential truth at the core of this garrulous Lady: Alice loves her husband, Thomas. True, she doesn't feel entirely appreciated by him. And, yes, his formidable intelligence -- as well as that of her daughter, groomed by her husband to be his intellectual peer -- does intimidate her.
But Hiller's Lady Alice knows that she knows her husband Sir Thomas better than any human. So, when even she finds herself at her limit in comprehending why her husband would take such a stand against the king, Alice's inner conflict animates the emotional core of the film: the palpably human risk of taking a principled stand against power.
Hiller clearly marks the complex emotional contours of this conflict when she visits her husband, for what is to be the last time, within his damp prison cell. In this bravura scene, Hiller illuminates not only that she is "a lion" (as per Thomas's apt description) but also that she's the sole person capable of instigating an emotional break in her husband's apparently serene, intellectually sanguine edifice of noble self-sacrifice. As Hiller's strength in this sequence amplifies, it becomes devastatingly clear that Lady Alice's unflinching witness -- not the entreaties of his beloved daughter -- holds the potential to cause Thomas to break his conscientious resolve.
When Hiller's Alice bellows to the top of the Tower of London -- declaiming her doubt in both the British crown and in God -- hers is such an elemental shriek that it's almost a surprise that the stone roof doesn't cleave open to permit God's own reprieve. And when the heavens don't open, the moment becomes a devastating confirmation of the human certainty of Thomas impending execution. In this turn, Hiller scores a moment of genuine feeling, an emotionally tectonic shift in the foundation of this intellectual passion play.
With deft clarity (and more than a little bit of actorly stealth), Wendy Hiller thus ably animates the heart of this all-too "heady" a picture. (And in my heart of hearts, she's retroactively earned one, or even two, more Smackdown hearts than she already had...)

Ingrid Bergman in Murder on the Orient Express (1974) - Supporting Actress Sundays

Director Sidney Lumet's glittering 1974 adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express becomes almost an exemplar of a genre that StinkyLulu likes to call "A Gourmet Cheese Platter": a film so overstuffed with Oscar winners/nominees that it very nearly obscures the rank silliness of the dramatic scenario for which they are assembled. In 1974's Orient Express, for example, around the garish centerpiece of Albert Finney (just awful as a constipated pug of a Poirot), director Lumet arranges gloopy servings of a twitterpated Anthony Perkins, a braying Lauren Bacall, a radiantly lovely Michael York (who nearly outshines his featherstrewn sweetheart Jacqueline Bisset), an almost too plummy John Gielgud, a bitter but crunchy Richard Widmark, a hard and crusty Rachel Roberts, and an alarmingly pungent Wendy Hiller. (Not to mention Sean Connery and Vanessa Redgrave who are as crisp garnishes off to the side.) Indeed, Murder on the Orient Express is a veritable smorgasboard of scenery chewing superstars in expensive outfits -- like an episode of the The Love Boat with sophisticated editing -- but, somehow within all the Murder She Wrote madness, Oscar found his favorite chunk of gourmet cheese in the form of...

...Ingrid Bergman in Murder on the Orient Express (1974).
approximately 14 minutes and 18 seconds on-screen
8 scenes (counting Poirot's extended revelation sequence as one scene)
roughly 11% of film's total screen time

Director Lumet initially approached Ingrid Bergman -- one of cinema's most legendary beauties -- to play Orient Express' more glamorous part Princess Dragomiroff. Bergman, however, surprised Lumet by insisting that she take the dowdier role of Greta Ohlsson, a stumpy missionary prone to fits of religious apoplexy. For his part, Lumet just wanted Bergman and, as he says in the dvd-special features, he would've given her Poirot had she wanted it. (Oh, don't tease, Sidney -- StinkyLulu'd take Ingrid's Poirot over the froggy Albert Finney's anyday.) And Lumet locked Bergman into the decidedly unglamorous role of Greta for which La Bergman took home her 3rd Oscar.

Which is a total WTF. Yes, StinkyLulu admits to not being a particular fan of La Bergman. But. In the context of her pretty amazing film career, this performance as Greta Ohlsson in Murder on the Orient Express is almost completely unremarkable. Sure, it's a solid, professional and distinctive enough performance of a quirky but basically uninteresting character; yes, it's nearly pitch-perfect to what the Agatha Christie formula requires; and, certainly, there's no other better supporting actressness in the film to pluck for Oscar attention. But sheesh. Talk about boring.

And even Bergman seems grasping for things to do in the extended group scenes. It's face in hands here, halting-steps-about-to-faint there. To her credit, Bergman's Greta is perhaps the only one to convey even a whiff of character in the film's legendary "blue light" sequence, but even there she's squeezing that rock for barely a drop. (pause) And then there's the... (longer pause) But the... (silence) Yes, lovely reader, it's hard even to know what else to say about Bergman's utterly adequate performance. (anxious stillness) Lulu did try to develop a riff about Greta's "backwards brown babies" but... gave up. (pause) Anybody out there got anything to about Ingrid Bergman's trophy-snagging performance as Greta Ohlsson in Murder on the Orient Express? (pause) Lulu's got nothing...

Wendy Hiller in SEPARATE TABLES (1958) - Supporting Actress Sundays

Before undertaking Supporting Actress Sundays for 1958, StinkyLulu really had no inkling as to who Wendy Hiller might be. A quick glance at her credits suggested that Hiller was just another of "those" British stage actresses, the sort who occasionally slum in American movies & whose perfect yet turgid performances are as magnets to American acting trophies. And while, to a certain extent, Dame Wendy's expert turn in this film does mark her as such, Hiller's performance here is also one of "those" Supporting Actress performances: genius work introducing Lulu to a previously unnoticed/forgotten actress inhabiting a character at the story's edges. Such performances are the sort that will forever make this category StinkyLulu's very favorite, performances like that delivered by...

...Wendy Hiller in Separate Tables (1958).
approximately 21 minutes and 49 seconds
12 scenes
roughly 22% of film's total running time
(data courtesy of Raybee)

This is a film nearly lousy with beautiful leading ladies turning in reels of emphatically "serious" actressing. Deborah Kerr's aquiline elegance is frumped -- nay, gooched nearly beyond repair. (Plus Kerr's character's smitten with a strange man who molests matrons in movie houses.) Rita Hayworth's torrid curves are girdled and gilded into a proper porcelain shell. (O'course Hayworth's character's also a man-eating sex-addict. Good times.) All of which makes for much scenery-chewing mayhem amidst this painfully English scenario of quiet lives lived quietly at a residential hotel on the southern coast of post-war Britain.

Through it all, Wendy Hiller's Miss Pat Cooper -- the establishment's proprietor & the kind of hotel manager that makes one deathly frightened of mussing the towels -- just glides...elegant, serene, implacable. Nonethe, as this curious story unfolds it's clear that Hiller's Miss Cooper provides the emotional center for the narrative's odd assortment of misfits. Most of Hiller's lines are the banal patter of service work -- obligatory politenesses, scraping niceties, humble directives -- and it's something of a marvel to watch Hiller both conceal/reveal Pat Cooper through Miss Cooper's professional façade. Within this apparatus of hospitality, Hiller's performance calibrates Miss Cooper's affect and expression to -- at every moment -- provide just the slightest glimpse of what Pat might be thinking or feeling.

But it's really an early scene that anchored StinkyLulu's admiration for Wendy Hiller's work in this sublimely supporting role. In this scene, Hiller grabs a private moment with Burt Lancaster's character, who has stumbled into the hotel drunk and with whom she is having a secret but clearly thrilling affair. Hiller's plainness disappears when she looks at Lancaster and an extraordinary beauty emerges: Miss Pat Cooper is clearly randy for Burt. Possibly this scene alone reveals Wendy Hiller to be truly gorgeous. (Indeed, it may be that Lulu kept looking to see that Miss Pat again for the remainder of the film.) In this early scene, Wendy Hiller reveals herself to be the kind of actress that StinkyLulu loves best of all: a woman with a great, distinctive face who can be astonishingly gorgeous or downright homely depending on the requirements of the scene. Just a handful of actresses can truly do this without the aid of a costume/makeup (think Collette, Close, Spacek) and Wendy Hiller's clearly among this rare breed.

StinkyLulu didn't expect to admire this performance so. Indeed, Lu thought Hiller's win in 1958 may have been a case of the Academy taking the British (aka "easy") way out. But Hiller seems a remarkable bird. 3 nominations out of 15 films (2 Best Actress noms, for Pygmalion/1938 and A Man For All Seasons/1966) with at least 2 potential Coulda/Shoulda/Wouldas (for Voyage of the Damned/1976 and The Elephant Man/1980) in there to mix things up even more. But, hey, that's why StinkyLulu loves Supporting Actress Sunday: these ladies are just full of surprises.

BTW -- StinkyLulu has no idea how David Niven snagged the Best Actor trophy for this. Any ideas?