The Final Conclusion - Best Actress 1969

About the field: This was a great year with four brilliant performances and one forgettable one. If we count the number of Meryls, this was the strongest year so far and yet I preferred 1989 a bit. Another great thing is that now I was able to write a profile of marvelous Maggie and that was one of my greatest pleasures. However, when you have such a strong year, the ranking is so damn difficult and you just cannot decide. I was so perplexed and I couldn't make up my mind. I had to wait and think. I mean #1, #2 and #3 are all worthy of the award (I would say even #4), they are all brilliant, unforgettable performances. I am biased in the cases of all of them. I love all three of them. I'm going to feel guilty (Oh #3 please forgive me, you're the greatest!) because I ignored two of them despite the fact they ALL deserve my vote. Still, it's #1 who gave the best performance and I had to choose her in the end.

So the much anticipated ranking:

5. Geneviève Bujold in Anne of the Thousand Days

Geneviève Bujold suffers from a bad movie, an overacting lead actor and a boring screenplay. I give her some credit for the excellence of her last monologue, but I could live without watching the rest. A very mixed performance

4. Jean Simmons in The Happy Ending

I saw a fantastic performance, one that was a really pleasant surprise. It impressed me, had a big effect on me and most importantly I felt connection to the character. Simmons understood the character extremely well and handled her emotions perfectly.

3. Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

I can safely say that Maggie gives one of her best performances as Miss Jean Brodie, a woman who has to face with the fact that her cherished prime is over. Dame Maggie created an exciting, beautiful character on the screen and you just cannot take your eyes off her.

2. Liza Minnelli in The Sterile Cuckoo

This is one of those cases when I got way more than I expected. Liza Minnelli's performance is not a surprise, it's fulfillment. I was moved, I laughed, I was heartbroken and went through the emotional states of Pookie. You will just never forget this unbelievable performance.

1. Jane Fonda in The Shoot Horses, Don't They?

I can say that Jane Fonda gives a gritty, tough and incredible performance as Gloria, who's full of layers and secrets and Fonda slowly, but firmly reveals the mind of this desperate woman. It's really no wonder that she became the #1 actress of the seventies after this one. Terrific job.

So I can proudly announce

that my winner is...

Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

One of the best performances ever.

Omissions:

• Ingrid Bergman in Cactus Flower

About the next year: I guess it's not difficult for you to find out that 1973 won. So it's your decision. 2011's first reviewed year is 1973!

Gosh, this was a bit traumatic. You know how I feel about Maggie, right? I feel as if I harmed her. :-(

So what do you think? What's on your mind? Any thoughts, observations?

Geneviève Bujold in Anne Of The Thousand Days

Geneviève Bujold received her only Oscar nomination to date for playing Anne Boleyn in Anne Of The Thousand Days. It's interesting to think about the chances of Bujold that year: she won the Golden Globe previously, but I don't think that she was the front-runner to win as she was neither much of a great star, nor a popular young starlet, who would become a world-famous star. I guess she was fourth or fifth after all, but the Best Actress race of 1969 is one of the most perplexing ones ever.

Actually, so far I said nothing. The movie is quite simply one of the most boring films I have ever seen in my entire life. Sometimes I really had to force myself to go on with it and not finish it. Gee, it is so corny, theatrical, uninteresting and it says nothing new about these characters unfortunately. However, I must say that I enjoyed the first 20 minutes or so, and I thought that it would be just fine. Well, it wasn't in the end. Richard Burton starts well, but he is unbearably overacting later on. He really had a tendency towards overacting, and if I'm really honest to myself, I don't consider him one of the greatest actors.

Geneviève Bujold is an interesting case here, and I can feel right now that this will be one of the hardest reviews to write. It's not a very complex performance, but it's extremely difficult to rate. On the one hand, she has some boring, useless, weak and pale moments, which really left me unimpressed and disappointed. On the other hand, she has some extremely strong scenes, and she's so damn beautiful and seductive that you just cannot take your eyes off her.

When we first see her in the movie, nothing interesting happens there, she's just dancing, though I realized that this wasn't going to be the best performance ever. I just saw the king's reaction, but I never understood the reason for it. She wasn't different of anybody else in that crowd and I never got it, why the king was so attrected to her quite suddenly. I think that this early scenes are probably the weak links in her performance since they don't have any effect on the viewer and I felt that Bujold wasn't trying hard enough to be special.

However, I also felt that sometimes she was trying too hard to make Anne a very complex personality. She wants to make her sexy, mysterious, seductive, manipulative, (silently) aggressive and stubborn. There are a lot of adjectives in this sentence which describe Anne's personality quite well and yet Bujold is not able to show them together. She shows bits and pieces of all of them and I think that she should have concentrated on less of them, because she would have been able to make her complex that way. Instead, she becomes totally one-note and uninteresting (and not only in the beginning unfortunately).

I have to admit, though, that sometimes she was able to impress me with the manipulative side of Anne. She has whatever she wants and nobody could step in her way. Henry thinks that he's much stronger and has power on Anne, but it's Anne in fact who controls her husband, the king of a great nation. Bujold was able to show this part of Anne quite well and gained some strength in these scenes.

Her scenes of childbirth are very good and memorable too: she's unwilling to accept that she had a girl and her son died. Bujold perfectly captured the feelings and emotions of Anne and she impressed me once again. While watching them I thought "this might not turn out to be a mediocre performance after all". I was wrong in a way.

Although the scenes of the trial were supposed to be extremely showy and the look as if it had Oscar written all over them , they are really ruined by the bad directing and writing choices. Bujold does not have much to do, except for standing there, being strong and proud. Anne's stubborn personality is also there, but it's always used in a wrong way. However, after that Bujold delivers her thousand days monologue excellently and it was extremely moving. There was so much bitterness and disappointment and it was extremely touching. And yet Richard Burton was able to totally ruin it after he appeared.

After all, I can say that despite some very strong and memorable scenes, Geneviève Bujold put on an extremely mixed performance, which strong and weak at the same time. She suffers from a bad movie, an overacting lead actor and a boring screenplay. I give her some credit for the excellence of her last monologue, but I could live without watching the rest.

And I'm extremely lenient with this 3.5.

What do you think? It's time to give your final predictions! :)

Maggie's profile comes tomorrow or Wednesday depending on how much strength I will have.

The Next Year

I really did not expect to do this year, but finally I found The Sterile Cuckoo, so I thought that this should be the next one that's it. It's not very often talked about, but I only heard good things, so I just cannot wait. Plus this is going to be the first profile for marvellous Maggie. Gosh, it's great.

1969

So the nominees were:

• Geneviève Bujold in Anne of the Thousand Days
• Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
• Liza Minnelli in The Sterile Cuckoo
• Jean Simmons in The Happy Ending
• Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

So what do you think about this year? Who's your pick, what's your ranking? The predicting contest is on. Oh, I really can't wait, I might start reviewing tomorrow. I'm sick again, so I have time.

NOTE: This is going to be the last year I am going to do in 2010. Probably.