All these 4 films I'm going to talk about today involved nominated performances (for Oscars, Baftas and Césars) and three of the four complete best actress lineups for me (the only one which doesn't being Stanwyck, who's the 4th nominee I've seen in her year). Now while awards and nominations are no indication of quality at all (just think how much politics go into any award and it becomes clear off the bat artistic merit is rarely the primary consideration) they do provide films with something to highlight their potential worth.
Firstly, I'll continue from the last post and complete the oscars' 1937 best actress lineup. The Good Earth won Luise Rainer her second (and consecutive) best actress oscar and it has to be one of the Academy's worst decisions. Not that it is a bad performance (Paul Muni opposite her provides that), she's very good but clearly the weakest of the nominees that year. The film is ... well, I don't really mind white actors playing chinese, it doesn't offend me (although the code that *enforced* this does) but the film is just so dull. Muni is so inauthentic, not as a Chinese man, rather it's just an actor acting for every single frame, none of it is believable for a second and that's his mannerisms, not his look. Rainer gives a very soulful, but extremely mannered performance and at times she just looks tired, good for its kind but not my type of performance. Not worth digging out for her, this one deserves the obscurity it has rightly found for itself.
Now while Barbara Stanwyck may be my preference in 1937, she had a banner year in 1941. I flat out adore her in The Lady Eve that year and she was very good opposite Gary Cooper in the Frank Capra film Meet John Doe too. However, it was her final film in 1941 (also co-starring Cooper) which she got oscar nominated for (studio politics more than played a role in that), namely Ball of Fire. Here she has everything she has to do in The Lady Eve, but not quite as much, she's the same combination of seduction, fun and beautifully captured remorse - it's vintage stuff. The plot of this is Babs is a nightclub singer who camps out in Gary Cooper's house (where he and 7 elderly gentlemen are 8 years into writing an encyclopedia) in order to avoid capture from the police who want to nail Babs's gangster boyfriend. Of course Cooper and every guy watching falls for her. Sharp Billy Wilder-penned screenplay, it's neither Stanwyck or Cooper's best work that year but it's well worth a look if you can find it.
Right, so back on the completion trail, this time french style, with the one nominated actress I was yet to see from 2006 at France's industry awards, Charlotte Gainsbourg in I Do. Now this is what Dr. Mark Kermode would call a "high-concept film", in that you can pitch it in one sentence so here it is : a guy whose family are pressuring him to get married hires a woman to dump him at the altar so they'll all stop talking to him about marriage. Best thing about this is the casting, Alain Chabat is just a really funny bastard (stood out in The Science of Sleep) and he delivers here too getting most of the laughs. Gainsbourg has been growing on me recently and she's very good here, lovely and natural. At times it does get a bit too silly and on occasion the script gets too cute in its plotting, but a very funny film with consistent laughs that will entertain. I got it from lovefilm on dvd, it's not too difficult to pick up.
So the last was my completion of the 1963 Best Actress lineup at the oscars (even though this was a BAFTA winning turn the year before from its star) - Leslie Caron in The L-Shaped Room. Now this is a film I'd heard about for years anyway and I'm very glad I finally got to see it. It's a British kitchen sink film and I'm never disappointed by them, this one about a young, pregnant French girl who moves into the top floor of a dingy house. Caron excels, she reminds me of Isabelle Adjani in being able to pull back to natural after "big" scenes. This is a very watchable film and like all the others I've talked about today wouldn't be my preference in the lineups that year, but unlike Luise Rainer this is definitely worth getting hold of and the film is good in its own right.