Toni Collette in The Sixth Sense (1999) - Supporting Actress Sundays

M. Night Shyamalan is one of those directors whose films I want to like more than I do. And while that, in and of itself, is pretty conventional so far as critical reactions to M. Night go, I feel my longing is of a slightly different nature: I wish M. Night's movies were better because I just love his taste in supporting actressness. (Anybody who thinks to put Sigourney Weaver, Cherry Jones, Judy Greer, Jayne Atkinson, and Celia Weston in the same movie definitely has my attention.) Alas, only one of M. Night's many worthy actresses at the edges has been able to parlay M. Night's fascination into an introduction to Oscar...

...Toni Collette in The Sixth Sense (1999)
approximately 18 minutes and 29 seconds
13 scenes
roughly 17% of film's total running time

Toni Collette plays Lynn Sears, a hard-working single mom in Philadelphia who's completely devoted to her young son even as she's utterly flummoxed by his strange behavior.
The role of Lynn is ripe for cliché. She's yet another regular mom terrified by the mystery of her child's supernatural encounters. But Collette puts a distinctive stamp on the the stock character by emphasizing what is most simple and most true about the character: Collette's Lynn loves her son Cole (Haley Joel Osement in a memorably vivid performance) with an equal mix of ferocity and vulnerability.
From the first scene, there's no doubt that she will do anything within her power to keep her weird little son safe and secure, at least in the knowledge that he is loved, that they are in this life thing together.
Yet for all her devotion, Cole remains a mystery to Lynn, a mystery that frightens Collette's Lynn on a daily basis.
Lynn's character arc charts the shifts in this mother's fear -- her fears for her son,
...her fears of her son,
...and, most terrifyingly, her fears that her son is beyond her protection.
Collette's Lynn has a ritual that she enacts with her son every time he wonders aloud that she might think him a freak. "Look at my face," she commands before affirming -- to herself as much as to her young son -- that she will always love him, and stand by him. It's the way Collette's Lynn rights herself when she gets a little off course, and it's what lays the foundation for what becomes the film's most emotionally substantial scene: the revelation in the car.
In this scene between Collette and Osment (their final scene in the film), Osment's Cole decides to finally "come out" to his mother about his secrets.
Collette's Lynn has been begging Cole to open up to her for the entire time we've known her, yet, when he begins to do so, she's wary -- skeptical -- unsure.
Until little Cole drops a big bombshell, which rocks his mother to her emotional foundation, permitting the two to embrace with a renewed trust that helps assure the audience that, together at last, this mother and son will find a way to maneuver Cole's mysterious path through life.
Collette's work in the role is beyond merely effective. She layers complexity and compassion into Lynn's every gesture, providing the emotional anchor for a film that threatens in every other scene to float away into genre-study abstraction. Collette is funny, formidable and fundamental to the film's success. And while the nomination likely came because of the haunting veracity of her scene in the car (it's always good for a possible Supporting Actress nominee to have an extended heartrending scene toward the end of the picture), Collette's nomination is worthy recognition of an actress who has proven to be one of the most delightful practitioners of Supporting Actressness in her generation.

"It's a Brotherhood of Understanding..." (Homo Heritage Fridays)

from MANDATE:
The International Magazine of Entertainment and Eros.
January 1977 ~ page 69
For details, click the image; then click again to magnify

That "Chain Bracelet" certainly does declare something...

VOTE: JUNE's Supporting Actress Sundays!

It's that time again, lovely reader - time for you to determine JUNE's roster of Supporting Actresses. As you'll certainly note, I've tweaked things to direct our attention to the first decade or so of Oscar's Supporting Actresses. (This begins what will be a "March of Time" through the summer and early fall months, as we travel decade by decade through the category's history). So, lovely constituents...

What year deserves the focus
for JUNE's month of
Supporting Actress Sundays?

1937: Alice Brady in In Old Chicago, Andrea Leeds in Stage Door, Anne Shirley in Stella Dallas, Claire Trevor in Dead End, May Whitty in Night Must Fall.

1938: Fay Bainter in Jezebel, Beulah Bondi in Of Human Hearts, Billie Burke in Merrily We Live, Spring Byington in You Can't Take it With You, Miliza Korjus in The Great Waltz.

1939: Olivia de Havilland in Gone With The Wind, Geraldine Fitzgerald in Wuthering Heights, Hattie McDaniel in Gone With The Wind, Edna May Oliver in Drums Along the Mohawk, Maria Ouspenskaya in Love Affair.

1941: Sara Allgood in How Green Was My Valley, Mary Astor in The Great Lie, Patricia Collinge in The Little Foxes, Teresa Wright in The Little Foxes, Margaret Wycherly in Sergeant York.

1943: Gladys Cooper in The Song of Bernadette, Paulette Goddard in So Proudly We Hail, Katina Paxinou in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Anne Revere in The Song of Bernadette, Lucile Watson in Watch on the Rhine.

1944: Ethel Barrymore in None But the Lonely Heart, Jennifer Jones in Since You Went Away, Angela Lansbury in Gaslight, Aline MacMahon in Dragon Seed, Agnes Moorehead in Mrs. Parkington.

1945: Eve Arden in Mildred Pierce, Ann Blyth in Mildred Pierce, Angela Lansbury in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Joan Lorring in The Corn Is Green, Anne Revere in National Velvet.

1946: Ethel Barrymore in The Spiral Staircase, Anne Baxter in The Razor's Edge, Lillian Gish in Duel in the Sun, Flora Robson in Saratoga Trunk, Gale Sondergaard in Anna and the King of Siam.

1947: Ethel Barrymore in The Paradine Case, Gloria Grahame in Crossfire, Celeste Holm in Gentleman's Agreement, Marjorie Main in The Egg and I, Anne Revere in Gentleman's Agreement.

1948: Claire Trevor in Key Largo, Barbara Bel Geddes in I Remember Mama, Ellen Corby in I Remember Mama, Agnes Moorehead in Johnny Belinda, Jean Simmons in Hamlet.

The choice is yours...

Let your voice be heard by voting in the column at right or here.

To Dos Day

___ Item 1: SAY HI.
To StinkyLulu's Blogcrush #51308: Movie Dearest. See especially this post on "When Men Dance With Men" (part of the general excellence of the Invitation to the Dance Movie Blogathon 2008). Get on over there and rummage about...

___ Item 2: WHAT? MORE VOTING?
Sure enough, StinkyLulu's just a polling fool these days. The "Overlooked in 1999" candidate has been selected, and we're on the verge of finalizing the results of the "Died in 1999" options. Which means that we'll soon be on to picking the roster for June's month of Supporting Actress Sundays, when we'll be hopping into the wayback machine and considering performances from the first decade of the category's existence. So, please, do stay alert to the topic of the poll in the column at right -- the topic's rapidly changing...

___ Item 3: STINKYLULU'S STATS.
One aspect of my work on supporting actressness that I've given somewhat short shrift has been my goal to assemble Supporting Actress Statistics (according to screen time, scene count, percentage, etc) of those performances I've screened as a part of Supporting Actress Sundays. Recently I've transferred everything to online spreadsheets (open for viewing by all who are logged into their google/blogspot account). This will hopefully keep the "data" (such as it is) more accessible and easily usable (by the three of you who care about such things). Click on the following links to be routed to the designated list: alphabetically; by chronology; by scene count; by percentage of total running time; and by screentime. (Please remember that this data only reflects those performances screened as a part of Supporting Actress Sundays since late summer 2006.) And if you encounter any difficulties or inconsistencies, I'd greatly appreciate notice via email. Thanks!

___ Item 4: GO TELL MODFAB HAPPY BIRTHDAY.
The one and only Gabriel -- the generous genius behind the gift of Modern Fabulousity -- celebrates his bellybutton birthday this weekend. So go on over there and express your love, admiration, devotion... Comment madly. Link promiscuously. Send cards. Send cash. Send Cheyenne Jackson. Do whatever plings your planger. But, as you do, be sure to celebrate one of the best blogfriends in the biz!

___ Item 5: IT'S TWUE! IT'S TWUE!!!
It's barely TWO weeks until StinkyLulu's Madeline Kahn Appreciation Day on Thursday, May 29, 2008 -- a random day on which all bloggers are invited to offer their appreciations of the life and work of Madeline Kahn (1942-1999). And, please, don't feel limited to commenting on Ms. Kahn's film work -- celebrate her life on the stage, on the small screen, in the scandal sheets -- whatever gets you excited. But be certain to send me the details so's I can link up.

___ Item 6: FILM LOGS & HOME MOVIES.
If you haven't already, you really should bookmark the excellently reinvented The Oscar Completist (formerly known as "Adam Waldowski Doesn't Watch Non-Oscar Nominees"), a brilliantly minimalist piece of smartness. I like the idea so much that I'm thinking of blatantly stealing the idea and "reinventing" my livejournal account (or starting a whole 'nother blog) as a comparably straightforward summary of my screening habits, both at home and at the googaplex. This endeavor would, in effect, replace my somewhat "subterrannean" Film Log and Home Movies posts. So, I ask you, lovely reader, should I leave well enough alone (and keep things the way they are)? Or should I blatantly copy one of my favorite bloggers? You decide...

Have at it, lovelies!

Samantha Morton in Sweet and Lowdown (1999) - Supporting Actress Sundays

Woody Allen is one of the big five -- one of the five directors who directed eight or more actresses at the edges toward Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominations. Put another way, Allen -- along with Martin Scorsese, Mike Nichols and Elia Kazan -- is one of the directors in the four way tie for 2nd behind the Patron Saint of Supporting Actressness, William Wyler. And, truly, throughout the later 1980s and 1990s, one of the few certainties about Allen's erratic work was the reliable presence of a pile great actresses working at the edges of his melancholic experiments in genre. To be sure, as Allen's work careened through the later 1990s, the scripted limits of his female characters also became ever more conspicuous. Somehow, though, such limits did not stop remarkable performers from spinning their own gold from Allen's brittle straw, as is the case with...

...Samantha Morton in Sweet and Lowdown (1999)
approximately 23 minutes and 14 seconds
22 scenes
roughly 24% of film's total running time

Samantha Morton plays Hattie, the "dumb" girl who captures the heart of the ostensible hero of Woody Allen's tenderly "faux" musical biopic, Emmet Ray (Sean Penn in a fun performance that's nearly giddy in its lightness).
Morton's Hattie is definitely mute (possibly as a result of a childhood illness), allegedly a half-wit (but there's little actual evidence of that), and basically adorable (check out those hats). After a date of boating, driving and rat-shooting at the dump, Penn's Emmet invites Morton's Hattie to his room to "hear him play the guitar" (clearly the jazz guitarist's variation on the old saw "come up to see my etchings"). Once in the door, Emmet -- unsurprisingly -- begins to put the moves on Hattie, who -- more surprisingly -- responds by yanking first her own and then Emmet's clothes off with a delighted, even aggressive, abandon.
Emmet soon congratulates Hattie on her coital good fortune ("I'm told I'm a wonderful lover") as he demands that she dress and leave promptly. Hattie obliges, but not before presenting Emmet his guitar. He plays. She begins to dress. And in an instant, Morton's Hattie begins to fall in love.
As a flower seeks the sun, Emmet is drawn to to the warmth of Hattie's affection. And so begins the unlikely love story between Hattie and Emmet, a relationship that provides the central axis for Woody Allen's delicately macho romantic comedy, Sweet and Lowdown. Several other romances manifest in the telling of this stale, courtships in which Penn's Emmet captivates such formidable dames as Molly Price, Gretchen Mol, and -- most substantially -- Uma Thurman. But Morton's Hattie proves to be "the one" who forever challenges the dimensions of Emmet's big-talking, bullying heart.
Morton's performance draws upon Hattie's childlike simplicity by crafting Hattie as a startling compass for emotional truth. Where Emmet is a hustler who manipulates and cheats as effortlessly as he breathes, Morton's Hattie is utterly without guile (though not without appetite for both food and for sex).
Morton's Hattie is unswayed by Emmet's bluster and bravado. His "bullshit" bothers her none. But his actual lies? They hurt her to her core, the pain of each calculated untruth registering as if it were a physical blow.
Of course, even as Hattie's clarity and emotional integrity is precisely what attracts Emmet to her -- Hattie is ostensibly the "sweet" to Penn's "lowdown -- her tender directness is also what ultimately drives Emmet away.
For her part, Samantha Morton inhabits Hattie's silent clarity and wordless integrity with endearing wit. Indeed, while Thurman and especially Penn are adept and amusing with their more loquacious characterizations, Morton's plangent silence reverberates most memorably. Morton's shifts -- from astonishment to hunger to easy bliss -- in the "who's seducing who sequence" early in the film are masterful, and she ably calibrates Hattie's preternatural innocence in ways that illuminate the character's humanness.
Morton holds her own, to be sure, opposite the gale force of Penn's bluster, working at the edges to build a characterization that is active from a character scripted to be entirely reactive. But even Morton's savvy performance can't ameliorate the creepily misogynist tinge to Allen's construction of Hattie as idealized idealist. (In this world of Allen's and Emmet's, the perfect woman is to silently wear her transparent emotions on her adorable face...and, of course, it would help if she were incapable of talking back.) Finally, and through no fault of her own, Morton's performance, while adeptly adorable, remains somehow negligible.

"The New Look for Men" (Homo Heritage Fridays)

from MANDATE:
The International Magazine of Entertainment and Eros.
November 1977 ~ page 12
For details, click the image; then click again to magnify

Seems to double as a personal massager...

To Dos Day

___ Item 1: 1999's UNDERWAY.
Which means several things: First, it means that I hope you'll be sure to vote in the "Overlooked" poll that's currently live (and will be for a few more days). Second, it means that you should be on the lookout for upcoming polls to determine June's Smackdown roster (in which we'll dig way back to the first decade or so of the category's existence), as well as (hopefully) a really interesting list of "Died in 1999" performers/performances. Third, it means that I've got a batch of profiles in the works considering the work of some of the most seriously interesting contemporary actresses at the edges. But, perhaps most importantly, the fact that 1999's underway also means that, with only 18 days until the Smackdown on May 25, I desperately need to round out my crew of Smackdowners! Several spots remain, so please send me an email if you're interested and available to join in on the fun for 1999. (No prior experience necessary, just a blog and some serious actressexual tendencies...)

___ Item 2: DANCING WITH THE STARS.
Don't miss the graceful moves of everyone contributing to the Invitation to the Dance Movie Blogathon 2008 over at Ferdy on Films. I missed the call myself, which is both too bad and a great relief. I would have loved to tap out (ha!) a post but I'm so busy and behind it's probably all for the best. But be sure to check it out!

___ Item 3: STINKYLULU'S BEHIND.
Speaking of my being behind in my writing tasks (what did you think I'd be talking about) I did finally get the delinquent 1953 posts up: don't miss my possibly controversial comments about Thelma Ritter in Pickup on South Street as well as my surprised appreciation of Geraldine Page in Hondo. The 1953 Supporting Actress Smackdown proved to be somewhat contentiously divided, with my votes tipping things in a way I normally dodge. So, now, all my cards are on the table. (Though I'm still not done with 1953 as Isabelle Huppert in 8 Women yet awaits to redeem her "Born in 1953" chit.)

___ Item 4: NOBODY DOES IT LIKE MODFAB.
Our beloved den mother's list of The 20 Best Moments On Broadway Right Now makes me just giddy -- if this list doesn't make you pine for the opportunity to spend way too much money for 150 minutes of thrilled anticipation, you just are NOT. ONE. OF. US... But whatever your susceptibility to the drama bug, I ask you to ponder ModFab's evocative description of the Xanadu curtain call... Is he just not brilliantly correct?

___ Item 5: OH SWEET MYSTERY OF LIFE!
Some of you may have wondered about my avatar this month. Consider it a daily reminder to save the date for the upcoming Madeline Kahn Appreciation Day on Thursday, May 29, 2008 -- a random day on which all bloggers are invited to offer their appreciations of the life and work of Madeline Kahn (1942-1999). And, please, don't feel limited to commenting on Ms. Kahn's film work -- celebrate her life on the stage, on the small screen, in the scandal sheets -- whatever gets you excited. But be certain to send me the details so's I can link up.

___ Item 6: TALK EVEN MORE GAY TO ME.
For reasons that I'll reveal sometime in the coming weeks, I'm interested in building on last week's discussion of the whys, whats and wherefores of contemporary independent gay cinema. So, I'll toss up two questions and see which one floats. One: what's the most tedious trend in gay film? Two: what work does independent queer cinema have left to do? In short, what do you hate and what do you most yet hope to see?

Have at it, lovelies!

Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted (1999) - Supporting Actress Sundays

As attentive readers will easily recall, one of my least favorite journalistic boilerplates is what is sometimes called the "Supporting Actress Curse" -- the spurious notion that a Supporting Actress nomination (or, heavens forbid, win) for an unknown or emerging actress threatens to doom a career. I won't dispute Oscar's notoriously mixed blessings (so stop sending those hate emails, Cuba!), but I do think tacking any "Oscar curse" onto supporting actressness smacks of a (possibly misogynist) disregard for the realities of the relative lack of decent roles for formidable women on screen. As such I remain stalwart in my resistance any attempts to "marry" my beloved Supporting Actresses with this specious claim, and I am pleased to enlist as support for my counterargument this week's "Best Supporting Actress" winner...

...Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted (1999)
approximately 36 minutes and 18 seconds
35 scenes
roughly 29% of film's total running time

Angelina Jolie plays Lisa Rowe, the most popular sociopath at Claymoore Hospital, a private psychiatric facility in the suburbs of Boston in the later 1960s.
Jolie's Lisa first makes her formidable presence felt when she returns to Claymoore after a couple weeks "out." (We come to learn that such forays are not uncommon for Lisa, who has been hospitalized at Claymoore for much of the previous decade.) Everyone at the facility - staff and residents like - turns out to welcome Lisa "home," everyone except Susanna (Winona Ryder in what is certainly one of her most effective performances) who's both new to Claymoore and occupying the bed previously occupied by Lisa's best friend.
So begins the courtship of Lisa and Susanna, a mildly eroticized friendship that provides the core emotional dynamic for the film.
Jolie's Lisa serves as the "alpha psycho" for a motley crew of young woman who share little beyond "girlhoods interrupted" (by childhood trauma, sexual abuse, eating disorders, compulsive behavior, pathologized queerness and the like). Performed with intelligence, humor and humanity by an excellent female ensemble, most of the young female characters are their diagnosis: the lesbian (Jillian Armenante), the anorexic (the f'n amazing Angela Bettis), the compulsive fabulist (Clea Duvall), the childlike burn victim (Elisabeth Moss). In the aggregate, these young women pose what is perhaps the film's most direct -- and not at all original -- challenge: in a society gone mad, is being crazy the only "sane" response? In contradistinction to the rest of their cohort, however, Jolie's Lisa and Ryder's Susanna are not "legibly" ill. Sure, Lisa's a little wild, and Susanna's a touch depressed but...are they really sick? This is the mystery that Girl, Interrupted undertakes to ostensibly resolve, with Jolie's Lisa as the prime specimen put up for dissection.
Is Lisa a righteous rebel?
An irreverent truth-teller?
A thrillseeking rabblerouser?
Or is she an unrepentant sociopath, as she has been diagnosed?
Ryder's Susanna is utterly captivated by the mystery of Jolie's Lisa, falling a little bit in love with this seemingly fearless young woman apparently capable of anything.
The two hit the road, late one night, on their way to become living Disney princesses at the newly constructed theme park in Florida, when they pause for a pitstop at a recently "recovered" friend from Claymoore who now has her own apartment. Once outside the relative security of Claymoore, Ryder's Susanna begins to doubt the trustworthiness of her friend, especially when Jolie's Lisa taunts and torments the pathetically vulnerable Daisy (Brittany Murphy in a decent but unsubtle performance), long one of Lisa's favorite targets.
Lisa's torment bears disastrous consequences and the episode abruptly ends both the anticipated roadtrip as well as, possibly, the friendship between Lisa and Susanna.
For her part, Angelina Jolie crafts a characterization of Lisa that is appropriately entrancing and terrifying. Jolie is smart, here, to not worry too much about why Lisa does what she does but to instead emphasize the intensity of feelings that she instigates for herself an in others.
In a numbed out psych ward, Jolie's Lisa provides a vivid breath of energy and life and the film and actress are both adept at capturing how everything that's so exciting about Lisa inside the institutional haven of Claymoore transforms into something toxic and scary outside of it. Likewise, the role and the film require Jolie's Lisa to hit a particular range of captivating attitudes. As such, it can be difficult to not see in every one of them the makings of what have, in the near decade since this film's original release, become a repertoire of Angelina Jolie clichés. She's never bad, but she's not always subtle or deep -- and, with familiarity, some of these affects bear the impression of affectation.
That said, Jolie's characteristically palpable emotional clarity provides propels this film in memorable ways and it's to her credit that Ryder -- an actress who's lapsed from favor as quickly as Jolie has gained it -- is able to steer the film so ably with her lucid, solid performance as Susanna.
Angelina Jolie's trophy snagging turn as Lisa probably does not represent 1999's best actressing at the edges. Nor is this performance on a par with Jolie's more excellent recent work. But Jolie's work in Girl, Interrupted remains fascinating, elemental and adept -- and stands as an exemplary exception to any supposed "rule" that attention from Oscar early in one's career is simply a curse.

"To Be Worn Under Today's Snug-Fitting Fashions" (Homo Heritage Fridays)

from MANDATE:
The International Magazine of Entertainment and Eros.
May 1978 ~ page 63
For details, click the image; then click again to magnify

Cheeks & The T? Isn't Raquel Welch in that?

Thelma Ritter in Pickup on South Street (1953) - Supporting Actress Sundays

I am not much of a contrarian by nature. Truly. But given my spoilerish track record on some of the most beloved Supporting Actress performances (exhibit 1, 2), I'm not sure y'all will believe me. As I compose these profiles, I try to tune into my clearest instincts, to not endeavor to sway or convince anyone else but to convey what I honestly think I think about this or that performance. And occasionally that means I end up going against the grain of conventional wisdom about an especially revered performance by a particularly beloved performer, which is precisely what happened this week with...

...Thelma Ritter in Pickup on South Street (1953)
approximately 15 minutes and 43 seconds
6 scenes
roughly 20% of film's total running time

Thelma Ritter plays Moe, a woman who hustles her living at the far edges of New York's underground economy, peddling -- alternately -- cheap men's neckwear and, more lucratively, what she calls "information."
Although she makes her living "selling secrets" in Cold War America, Ritter's Moe balks when called a "stool pigeon," emphasizing her status an enterprising entrepreneur, finding her own way toward success within American capitalism.
The symbol of Moe's success is her "kitty" -- a wad of bills she's saving toward the purchase of a legitimate funeral plot, a proud gesture in defense of the feared ignominy of her anonymous burial as a pauper in New York City's "Potter's Field."
Ritter's Moe is pivotal to Samuel Fuller's elegantly efficient noir narrative - when Skip (the charismatically opaque Richard Widmark) picks a particular pocket and lands in the sights of both the cops and the communists, Ritter's Moe is the one to whom they turn for the "information" she peddles, and so becomes essential to both the narrative and emotional architecture of this enthralling film.
Ritter begins her characterization as the narrative does, with a glib simplicity: Moe's a hustler and she's looking to get on. As the narrative complicates, so does Ritter's work as Moe. When the "muffin" Candy (an appropriately delicious Jean Peters) begins to demonstrate more than a simply mercenary interest in Skip, Ritter's Moe too begins to doubt the economics of her own self-interest. Perhaps the information on Skip's whereabouts is more valuable than she might have originally assessed?
Yet, as Moe privately determines that Skips means more to her than money, Ritter allows Moe's zesty bravado deflate just a little. It's as though, absent the thrill of the dollar chase, Moe's not certain what she's living for...
These first two beats -- Moe's (1) the happy hustler who (2) encounters something of an identity crisis -- sets the stage for a final death scene that might just be Thelma Ritter's most glorious five minutes of the actress's deservedly esteemed career.
When Ritter's Moe finds herself not at the shadowy invisible edges of New York's underworld but instead within its glaring spotlight, Thelma Ritter delivers on of the greater death arias I can think of in American cinema. Captured with adoring reverence by director Fuller, Ritter uses a simple monologue to the depth of Moe's sacrifice as she chooses to surrender to death rather than peddle the data of Skip's whereabouts. In this scene, Ritter shows us both "Moe the human calculator" (ever tallying the relative value of the commodities she has to peddle) as well as "Moe the human being" (who operates according to a different, less precise arithmetic). It's a beautiful scene -- warm and moving and memorable -- conveying an unforeseen depth to both the character and the actress.
And right there is the rub. For the first 2/3 of her performance, Ritter only shows us the mercenary Moe, with only a glimmer (in the coffee shop scene) of the human soul beneath the hustler's patter. Then, in the last 1/3 of the performance, Ritter reveals a whole 'nother Moe -- the patter suddenly textured and nuanced with revelatory depth. And, normally, I love watching the surface peel back to reveal the unanticipated depth. So believe me when I say I was surprised to discover, after re-viewing the performance for timing and screencapping, what I felt to be a disconnected break between the first 2/3 of Ritter's performance and the last scene. It's as though Ritter trouped through the first few scenes drawing from her standard bag of character actor tricks only to discover, much later, that Moe was not merely a type but a richly reasoned characterization. The problem? This is what the audience should see, but the actor might be expected to see more, to lay the foundation for the culminating reveal with a little more sophistication. Indeed, Moe's first scene in the station provides nearly the entire subtextual foundation for the final scene, yet Ritter opts for a superficial patter and banter that emphasizes the Moe's short term motives at the expense of the character's actual motivations. Put another way, it's as though Ritter skimped on the house and then, at the last minute, splurged on the furniture. Admittedly, this is a fine line I'm parsing here, and one that I acknowledge will get me in trouble with impassioned fans of this performance. But, as I mentioned just recently, one must remain true to one's self, especially in matters of faith, politics and actressexuality. So, in sum: love Ritter, love that death scene, but remain ambivalent about the performance.