1993: Holly Hunter for The Piano

Holly Hunter plays a mute Scottish unwed mother in the 1800s who is sent to New Zealand to marry a man she's never met. Her new husband makes very little effort to connect with her, even refusing to bring her cherished piano from the beach where she landed to their house. He doesn't understand that she uses the piano as an extension of herself, playing it as a substitute for speech. But another man can see how she feels about the piano, and watching her play causes him to fall in love (lust?) with her.

Okay, first of all, this movie is really weird, and also really awkward to watch with your parents. I'm still not sure if I like it or not. I do think it's pretty cool that it was nominated for 8 Oscars, and 7 of those nominees were women, since that basically never happens. Jane Campion became only the second woman to be nominated for Best Director, which she did not win, but she did win for Best Original Screenplay. Eleven-year-old Anna Paquin became the second youngest Best Supporting Actress winner, and also the second youngest winner of a competitive Oscar, for her portrayal of Holly Hunter's daughter. And of course, the film's third and final Oscar went to Hunter herself, so let's talk about that.

Before watching this movie, I knew that Hunter's character didn't speak, but that did not prepare me for the type of performance I was about to witness. Past winners that had little to no dialogue (Jane Wyman and Marlee Matlin come to mind, in addition to Janet Gaynor's performances in silent films) were always very expressive with their faces, so the audience could usually tell what they were thinking and feeling even when they weren't signing. That is not the case here. For most of the movie, Hunter's face is pretty blank, and consequently we have no idea what her character is thinking or feeling. I thought this made it a bad performance until I realized that it must have been a conscious choice, since it serves at least two purposes that I can think of. First, it helps give the impression that she's just 1000% done with her crappy life and has stopped letting herself feel much of anything. The only thing she really cares about is her piano. And that's the second thing: the only time you can really tell what she's feeling is when she's playing the piano. All her expression is in her music. She has basic communication with her daughter through signing, and with others through writing, but communicating her feelings is mostly her piano's job. Her blank face the rest of the time emphasizes her expressiveness when she's playing, thus conveying to the audience how desperately she needs the piano. Her husband refuses to let her have the instrument and then complains to everyone else that he has no connection with her, while the other man gets her and the piano into his house under the pretense of music lessons. Any guess as to which guy she falls for? Personally, I thought the other guy was kind of creepy, but at least he knew how to win her over, while her husband (who was also creepy) had absolutely no clue. If it's a choice between two creepy guys, go with the one who sort of understands you. I guess. Anyway, this was a very unusual performance, but a fascinating one, so even though I'm not sure how I feel about the movie, I'm glad she won the Oscar. I always like seeing new and different things getting recognition. It's also worth mentioning that Holly Hunter did all her own piano playing, which is both unusual and impressive.

This was the first, and so far only, year in which two actresses were each nominated for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. Hunter was one of them, receiving her supporting nomination for The Firm, but losing, of course, to Anna Paquin for this movie. The other was the previous year's Best Actress winner Emma Thompson. I'm not even going to try to speculate why this happened, but I think it's very interesting that it did. Anyway, Hunter was nominated for one Oscar before this year, for 1987's Broadcast News, and one after (so far), for her supporting role in 2003's Thirteen. She's a very talented actress, and ironically one of my favorite things about her is her speaking voice (Elastigirl might be my favorite Pixar character ever), but she clearly doesn't even need that.

Next up: Jessica Lange

1992: Emma Thompson for Howards End

Emma Thompson plays a middle class woman in early 20th century England who lives with her brother and sister. The film chronicles the development of relationships between her family and two others: one from the upper class and one from the lower class.

This was the first time I'd watched this movie, and I'm not sure that I can sufficiently convey my feelings about it in a blog post, but I'll try. First of all, I don't think it's possible to overstate Emma Thompson's fabulousness, just in general, but especially in this performance. Secondly, this movie was way more fascinating than I expected it to be. I didn't really know much about it, and I was certainly not anticipating so many plot twists. At the very beginning, I couldn't understand why Thompson won the Oscar, since it seemed to be focusing more on Helena Bonham Carter (who also gave a fabulous performance, by the way), but it didn't take too long for Thompson's character to establish herself as the protagonist. From that point forward, I was enthralled with her performance, when I wasn't too distracted by the thoroughly engaging and unpredictable story. The funny thing is, if I hadn't been watching specifically for Emma Thompson's performance, I don't think I would have appreciated what a great job she does because it's so subtle.

Unlike many of the other great Oscar winning performances I've blogged about, her character is given no detailed tragic backstory, no big emotional scenes, no calculated schemes. She's just a kind, intelligent middle class woman trying to survive in a world built for and run by wealthy men. When bad things happen to her, or to people she cares about, she does what she can to make it better, but then moves on when she feels there's nothing more she can do. This provides a sharp contrast to her sister, who holds on to everything and keeps fighting even when it becomes hopeless. However, through very subtle facial expressions and mannerisms, we can tell that Thompson's character feels things much more deeply than she's letting on. And that's my favorite thing about this performance: it initially appears simple, but is in fact extremely complex. My second favorite thing is the way Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter interact; they're such believable sisters, and I wish they had more scenes together. My least favorite thing is Thompson's "romance" with Anthony Hopkins, who is much less creepy in this than in the last movie, but no less despicable. But her scenes with Hopkins, though painful, are intentionally so, and provide ample opportunities for subtleties, so even those contribute to my appreciation of her performance.

This was Thompson's first Oscar nomination. The following year, she was nominated twice: for Best Actress in Remains of the Day and Best Supporting Actress for In the Name of the Father. Unusually, she didn't win either, possibly because she had just won this year. Two years after that, she was again nominated for two Oscars in the same year: Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay, both for Sense and Sensibility. That time she did win the screenplay Oscar, but Howards End remains her only Best Actress winning performance. I think she should have at least been nominated for Saving Mr. Banks, but what do I know?

Coming up next: Holly Hunter, who was also nominated for two acting Oscars that year...was there a sudden actress shortage?

1991: Jodie Foster for The Silence of the Lambs

In this Best Picture Winner, the third and most recent winner of all five major Academy Awards (picture, director, actor, actress, and screenplay), Jodie Foster plays an FBI agent in training sent to interview a notorious incarcerated serial killer in order to gain insight into an at-large serial killer's motives.

As I said when I blogged about it before, this movie terrifies me, but it's also really good. Since I'd watched it before, I was a little less caught up in the suspense this time, so I was able to better appreciate just how well made it is. But it was still difficult to focus solely on Jodie Foster's performance. Anthony Hopkins, though he has relatively little screen time, completely steals the entire movie. He's what people remember about this film. Even people who haven't watched it know the name Hannibal Lecter; not nearly as many remember Foster's character's name (it's Clarice Starling). I think it's difficult to recognize hers as a great performance because it's not the great performance of the movie, so it's a little surprising that she won the Oscar. But surprising in a good way.

In both this and Foster's other Oscar-winning film, The Accused, her character is in an almost constant state of emotional turmoil. But while in the other film she is very expressive with her emotions, in this one her character is desperately trying to conceal them. She doesn't want Hannibal Lecter to know that he's getting to her, and she also doesn't want to appear weak in front of other FBI agents. But given the horrors she witnesses and the mind games she's subjected to, she would seem positively inhuman if she wasn't disturbed by it all, and the audience desperately needs someone to relate to and sympathize with. She plays this so well that I didn't really notice it during my first viewing. I knew I liked her character, but I didn't realize how emotionally charged the performance was, how quickly she goes from overly confident to falsely confident to barely holding it together. I find this movie exhausting to watch because it's so suspenseful and creepy, but what I hadn't noticed before is that Clarice is right there freaking out with us the whole time. However, while we in the audience can freak out however much we want, she has to at least attempt to appear unaffected. I can only imagine how draining that must have been to portray. So while Foster doesn't define this movie the way Hopkins does, she certainly earned her Oscar just as much as he earned his, if not more so, just in a somewhat less noticeable way.

Since this win, Jodie Foster has only been nominated for one more Oscar, for 1994's Nell. She hasn't been in too many movies lately, but regardless, she will always be noteworthy as one of the few child stars who were able to maintain successful film careers as adults, and as the winner of two very deserved Oscars.

Coming up next: Emma Thompson

1990: Kathy Bates for Misery

Kathy Bates plays Annie Wilkes, the self-described #1 fan of famous author Paul Sheldon. So when his car goes off a cliff, she rescues him and nurses him back to health. Unfortunately for Paul, Annie has some psychotic tendencies, and what initially seemed like a miracle turns out to be nothing short of an absolute nightmare.

I want to say that I love this performance, but that doesn't seem quite right because it completely terrifies me. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that I'm in awe of this performance. Annie is a very complicated character, and her complexity must be revealed in a very specific way for the story to work. I think it would be easy, tempting even, to ruin her, by being either too crazy at the beginning or not crazy enough at the end. But Kathy Bates nails it. At the beginning, she seems like a kind, concerned fangirl who has just been given the chance every fangirl dreams of: to save the life of her favorite celebrity. Something might seem a little off about her, probably more because the opening credits already told you it was based on a Stephen King novel than because she reveals anything unnecessarily, but you don't start getting nervous until the first time her temper flares up. She recovers from that outburst quickly, so it seems, but then in the next scene she's having Paul burn his manuscript. From there her madness escalates steadily, so you know that something bad is most certainly going to happen when she finishes his latest book and learns that he's killed off her favorite character (which was revealed to us at the very beginning). And by the end, once her character has gone completely psychotic, Bates just goes for it 100%, with a conviction that turns what could have been a totally ridiculous climax into a horrifyingly believably intense one.

I have to give some credit to the writing, of course, but Bates drives the suspense of the well-written story with the way she plays Annie. We are terrified of her, but hesitantly so, because we never know if she's going to be rational or not. She is completely unpredictable. What's so disturbing about her is that she clearly believes that everything she does is totally justified and normal. I don't know how Kathy Bates was able to get inside Annie's head enough to portray her twisted logic with such conviction. Perhaps this is why I'm not an actress, but in my defense, there are few actresses who could have pulled off this character. Fortunately, they found quite possibly the best of those few.

This was Kathy Bates's first Oscar nomination, and her only one in this category. She has also received two nominations for supporting roles, for 1998's Primary Colors and 2002's About Schmidt, though she didn't win either. She's not a typical movie star, but she's a very talented actress, and I'm sure we'll see more fabulous performances from her in the future, though it would be very hard for her to top this one.

Next up: Jodie Foster is back, in the ninth Best Picture Winner with a Best Actress winning performance

1989: Jessica Tandy for Driving Miss Daisy

In this Best Picture Winner, Jessica Tandy plays an aging widow. When she accidentally drives her car into a ditch, her son hires her a chauffeur, much to her annoyance. She is initially very rude to this chauffeur that she wants nothing to do with, but eventually comes to respect him, and even ultimately to consider him her best friend.

Tandy is thoroughly convincing as a stubborn Southern widow, which is particularly impressive given that she was actually from London and that her husband would outlive her. With the lines she's given, it would be easy to make Miss Daisy seem too mean, but Tandy smiles or gets a slight twinkle in her eye at just the right moments so you can tell that she doesn't mean most of the sharp things she says. This makes it a fun performance to watch as well as an impressive one. She definitely deserved an Oscar, but so did Morgan Freeman, who was nominated but didn't win. I felt like a lot of the time her performance was overshadowed by his, so it seems wrong that she won when he didn't. What makes the movie for me is how well the two of them play off each other, so I think they both deserved equal recognition. Her performance would not have worked if it hadn't gone together with Freeman's so well. I guess this means her win was also a win for him, except he didn't get a statue. Life's not fair. Oh well, at least one of them won.

At 80 years old, Jessica Tandy became the oldest Best Actress winner ever, breaking the record set by 74-year-old Katharine Hepburn 8 years earlier, and she remains the oldest winner to this day. In addition, she was the oldest Oscar winner in any competitive category for 22 years, until 82-year-old Christopher Plummer won Best Supporting Actor. It's impressive that at that age she was able to give such a great performance - especially since you get the feeling that Freeman's character isn't that much younger than hers, when he's actually 28 years younger than her - but even more impressive that the Academy recognized it as a great performance, given how much value Hollywood places on youth and glamour. This movie and its awards prove that sometimes even Hollywood gets it right.

Most of Jessica Tandy's work was on the stage. Her early film roles weren't very exciting, and she's mostly remembered for films she made later in her career. This was her first Oscar nomination, and her only one in this category, but she also received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for 1991's Fried Green Tomatoes. After that she managed to make a few more films before her death in 1994, at the age of 85. She is currently the most recent Best Actress winner who is no longer alive - not very surprising for the oldest winner - so unless something happens I'm going to have so say "so far" when talking about other wins and nominations in all my future posts on this blog.

Coming up next: Kathy Bates, who was also in Fried Green Tomatoes

1988: Jodie Foster for The Accused

In her first Oscar-winning performance, former child star Jodie Foster plays a woman who is gang-raped at a bar. She is outraged when her lawyer, without consulting her, makes a deal that puts her attackers in jail without them having to admit rape, so the lawyer decides to prosecute the crowd that was cheering them on.

This is pretty much the polar opposite of the previous year's winning movie, Moonstruck. That was a romantic comedy, and the Best Actress winner didn't really get to do very much that stood out. This is a deeply disturbing drama, and the Best Actress winner has to do so much. The audience is shown so many different sides of her character: we see her before, during, immediately after, and quite a while after the rape. She acts very differently in all these scenarios, but she always seems like the same person. She powerfully conveys a wide range of raw emotions, and every reaction she gives is consistent with the last. I think it would be extremely difficult to pull off a performance that's so emotional yet so controlled, but Foster manages pretty much flawlessly. Her character is so different from me that I can't really relate to her at all, yet I still manage to feel empathy for her because Foster makes her so real. And she makes it look so effortless, like this is just the way she is, when obviously that's not actually true. She's just an insanely talented actress.

I feel like I've talked about accents a lot on this blog, and I have to do it again because that's the one criticism I have of this performance. The location is never specifically mentioned, but based on the license plates and the state flag in the courtroom, it's supposed to be the state of Washington. So why does everyone, especially Foster, sound like they're from the east coast? I found this very distracting throughout the movie, which I'm sure has nothing to do with the fact that I'm from the state of Washington and have never heard anyone talk like that here. I think the movie's based on a true story that happened in Massachusetts, so maybe their accents were in tribute to that? But then why not just set it in Massachusetts? Anyway, it doesn't really matter, and it's still a fabulous performance, but I think it's interesting that she beat Meryl Streep and her impressive Australian accent in A Cry in the Dark (although maybe I wouldn't think that if I was from Australia) by playing a Washingtonian from New England.

Jodie Foster has had an intense career, earning her first Oscar nomination for playing a 12-year-old prostitute in 1976's Taxi Driver. This was her second nomination, and her first for a leading role. She would go on to win for her next nominated performance in the Best Picture Winner 3 years later, so I'll be talking more about her soon. But first, Jessica Tandy will set a new record for oldest Best Actress Winner, in the eighth Best Picture Winner with a Best Actress winning performance.

1987: Cher for Moonstruck

 

Cher plays an Italian-American bookkeeper from Brooklyn who is burned out enough to say yes when her boring boyfriend proposes, only to almost immediately fall for his much more intriguing brother.

Moonstruck is one of those rare romantic comedies that is so well done that the Academy couldn't help but recognize it. It was even nominated for Best Picture, though as always the long epic won. But besides The Last Emperor, Moonstruck was the only movie that year to win multiple Oscars, also snagging Best Supporting Actress for Olympia Dukakis and Best Original Screenplay. The reason I'm mentioning all of this when I'm supposed to be talking about Cher's performance, besides the fact that I love it when rom coms get recognition, is because while I'm utterly convinced that this movie deserved the other two Oscars, I'm less sure about Best Actress.

I really like Cher's performance; I just don't think it stands out very much. This is very much an ensemble picture, and I find the supporting characters more interesting than the leads. She does a good job of fitting into the cast and playing off the other actors when called for; I just don't feel like she gets to do very much. Olympia Dukakis steals every scene she's in, while Cher kind of blends in, which is not something I ever thought I'd say about Cher. She does quite a bit of yelling, but so does everyone else, so even that doesn't make her stand out. It's still a very good performance; just not an outstanding one. Now that I'm thinking about it, though, that is consistent with her character. She's used to blending in and just kind of being there; hence she agrees to marry that guy because she doesn't think anything more exciting will ever happen to her. So I guess that works. And she does start to stand out a little more when she falls in love with Nicolas Cage, although I would have liked to see more of that.

I think my biggest problems with this win are that I'm more interested in the supporting characters than in her character, and that I don't believe that she and Nicolas Cage are actually in love. But the latter is mostly due to the ridiculousness of both Cage and his character. Otherwise, I do think Cher is surprisingly believable in the role, especially since she is neither Italian nor from Brooklyn, and also considering that most people don't think of her as an actress. I certainly don't begrudge her this win, and I thoroughly enjoy this movie, even though it lacks many of the qualities I've come to expect from a Best Actress Winner. It's good to have some variety, absolutely, but it's hard to agree that the performance of the leading role is Oscar-worthy when the main aspects that recommend the movie are the script and the ensemble.

Cher is mostly considered a singer, so I think many people are surprised to learn that she has an acting Oscar. This is the only leading role she's been nominated for, although she was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for 1983's Silkwood. Her career has been so unpredictable that I don't even want to attempt to guess whether she'll receive more nominations or not. I wouldn't be a bit surprised either way.

Next up: Jodie Foster's first of two (so far)

1986: Marlee Matlin for Children of a Lesser God

In her film debut, Marlee Matlin plays the graduate of a school for the Deaf who is still working there as a janitor. She becomes romantically involved with a new hearing teacher, but his belief that Deaf people need to learn to speak and her refusal to do so constantly threaten their relationship.

This win is a big deal for several reasons. So far, Matlin is the most recent of only four people to win a Best Actress Oscar for her feature film debut (the others being Shirley Booth, Julie Andrews, and Barbra Streisand). She also became the youngest person ever to win this award, breaking the record set by Janet Gaynor in the very first ceremony, and remains the youngest winner to date. And she is also the first, and so far only, Deaf actress to win this award.

I have mixed feelings about this win. I really enjoy Matlin's performance at the beginning of the movie, but by the end I'm less impressed. She starts out full of bitterness, anger, and fear, masking her vulnerability with sarcasm but allowing the audience glimpses of the pain within. It's beautiful to watch and masterfully done. But then by the last scene the performance has deteriorated so that it basically only consists of pining glances at William Hurt. Maybe it's more that I just don't like the direction the story goes at the end, because I really don't want them to end up together since he was such a jerk, but I feel like she's not the same person in those scenes as she was earlier. Yes, she is supposed to have changed a lot, so this was probably intentional, but I would have liked to have seen at least some of the woman she was at the beginning still there at the end. But again, a lot of this is probably the story's fault. For at least 80% of the movie she does a very good job, and her performance is easily the best aspect of the film, so overall I'd still say she earned this Oscar.

Relatively few Hollywood films have Deaf characters, and even fewer have cast Deaf actors to portray them. That's one of the many aspects that make this movie unique. It also means that there aren't many opportunities in movies for Deaf actors, so it's not too surprising that this has been Marlee Matlin's only Oscar nomination so far. She has appeared in other films, but most of her work has been in television, which seems to offer a much wider variety of roles than movies. Hopefully this will not always be the case, and someday Matlin might get another chance to give an Oscar-worthy performance. She's certainly talented enough to do so.

Up next: Cher

1985: Geraldine Page for The Trip to Bountiful

Page plays an old woman living in Houston with her son and extremely obnoxious daughter-in-law. All she wants is to visit her hometown of Bountiful once more before she dies, so she runs away to do just that.

I think this is one of the most frustratingly boring movies I've ever seen. I spent most of it wanting to punch the horrible daughter-in-law in the face and wondering why the son couldn't just take his mother on a trip back to her hometown. The movie isn't that long, but it could have easily been much shorter if it didn't drag so much. It didn't really seem to have much of a point, except maybe if all your aging mother talks about is wanting to see her childhood home, you should probably take her there. But as the movie shows, even if you don't it will all be okay, so don't even worry about it.

That being said, Geraldine Page's performance was pretty good. She was very convincing as an elderly woman, which is particularly impressive given that she was only about 60 at the time. I still don't really understand why she wanted to go back to Bountiful quite so badly - although I certainly get why she wanted to get away from that awful woman - but I never questioned that it was something she felt she desperately needed to do. She did a very good job of coming across as a friendly, harmless, terribly homesick old lady; in other words, she completely embodied the character. Several times she seemed on the verge of breaking down, giving the impression that the only thing keeping her sane was the thought of her childhood home. I particularly liked the way she progressively got more emotional when talking about Bountiful the closer she got to it.

Page's performance was by far the best aspect of this movie, but it still wasn't that exciting. Personally I think an Oscar-winning performance should have a lot more to it than this. I haven't seen all the other nominated performances from that year, but I definitely think Whoopi Goldberg's performance in The Color Purple deserved to beat this one. They both did a very good job, but Goldberg's role was much more complex, and therefore I found her performance much more impressive.

Part of the reason Page won has to be because she'd been nominated so many times before that people probably felt she had earned a win. Between 1953 and 1984 she was nominated for a total of 7 acting Oscars - three for leading roles and four for supporting roles - without ever winning. This was her final nomination, and she died of a heart attack a little over a year after receiving the award. Apparently many people consider her one of the best American actresses of all time, so I guess it's good that she ended up winning this Oscar, since it turned out to be basically her last chance. But this is not a movie I'll be revisiting anytime soon.

Next: Marlee Matlin finally breaks the record for youngest winner that was set in the very first ceremony

1984: Sally Field for Places in the Heart

In her second Oscar-winning performance, Sally Field plays a mother living in Texas during the Great Depression whose husband, the sheriff, is accidentally shot and killed by a black teenager. Desperate to keep her house and support her children, she hires a black vagrant to help her plant cotton.

This is one of my favorite movies for several reasons. The story is beautiful, and masterfully told. It conveys several powerful messages - forgiveness, racial reconciliation, etc - without shoving them down your throat. I could write an entire blog post analyzing the story (actually I could write an entire blog post just analyzing the last scene), but I'm here to talk about Sally Field's performance so I'll try to stay focused on that.

Field is very believable in this role. Her character initially appears simple, but is actually very complex and layered. In the beginning, you can tell that she wants to mourn her husband, and she barely manages to put on a brave face for her children. She initially appears rather weak and naive, but when she finds out she will probably lose her house and her family will be split up, she demonstrates more strength and determination than one would have thought she possessed. In some ways, this is very similar to her previous Oscar-winning performance in Norma Rae. Her characters are in very different circumstances, but they both find an inner strength that no one, including themselves, knew they possessed. Sally Field is very good at portraying this transformation realistically, and as subtly as possible, so that I didn't even notice this similarity between the characters until just now.

I also really like the way Field interacts with her co-stars, particularly Danny Glover, who plays the vagrant worker who helps her with the cotton, and John Malkovich, who plays her blind lodger. Given the racial tensions in the South, particularly at that time, and the fact that her husband had just been killed by a black kid, one would expect Field's character to be loath to work with a black man, but she recognizes that he's offering her the only viable solution to her problem. Field does a very good job of showing slight hesitation at first, but letting her determination overcome it almost instantly, and she eventually allows herself to become his friend. Similarly, she really doesn't want to take in the unpleasant blind man, but decides to make the most of it when she's basically forced to, and eventually becomes friends with him as well. The three of them bond over being societal outcasts, as a widow, a racial minority, and a handicapped person. They all had to give very believable performances and have good chemistry for this to work, and it ended up working extraordinarily well.

I think it's kind of unfair that Field was the only one who won an Oscar (although John Malkovich and Lindsay Crouse, who played Field's sister, were both nominated for supporting Oscars) because the whole cast is spectacular, and it's the ensemble, rather than Field's performance alone, that really makes this movie, at least for me. Don't get me wrong, it's still a remarkably good performance, and I think she deserved the Oscar; it's just that I feel like there is so much more to the movie than Field's performance. This is all a very good thing, but I think it makes this performance stand out less than some of the others that have won this award. At the same time, it reflects well on Field that she's able to let other actors share her spotlight when appropriate instead of insisting on dominating the whole movie.

Sally Field has only been nominated for two Best Actress Oscars and won both of them, although she was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for 2012's Lincoln. As she pointed out in her acceptance speech for Places in the Heart, she hasn't had an orthodox career, but personally that's one of the main reasons why I like her. And by the way, in her acceptance speech she never actually said, "You really like me," she just said, "You like me" twice.

Coming up next: Geraldine Page

1983: Shirley MacLaine for Terms of Endearment

In this Best Picture winner, MacLaine plays an overbearing mother who can't seem to stop criticizing her daughter's life choices until some very dramatic events force her to re-evaluate her world view.

Wow, I just re-read my post from when I watched this nearly 5 years ago, and I guess I really did not like this movie the first time I watched it. I think I liked it better this time, although I still found the beginning rather obnoxious, particularly Shirley MacLaine's character. But just because I could hardly stand her character doesn't mean I didn't thoroughly enjoy her performance. MacLaine truly, completely embraces her character, with all her flaws, and makes everything she does totally believable. Very often she's completely unreasonable, but she's so self-assured that you can't help believing that she actually thinks she's acting for the best. She and Debra Winger have remarkable chemistry, and you never doubt that they're actually mother and daughter. She has really weird chemistry with Jack Nicholson, making their relationship rather uncomfortable, but that's kind of the way it's supposed to be, so even that works.

During the course of the movie, MacLaine's character has a couple of major turning points that completely change her life, so the audience's view of her changes a lot by the end. Yet the way she reacts to everything is always consistent with our first impressions of her. Throughout the whole film, we know that she loves her daughter more than anything, but has essentially no idea how to express that love in a way that doesn't drive her daughter totally crazy. Their relationship does evolve somewhat, but that aspect remains constant, and MacLaine does a tremendous job of conveying that. I can't imagine anyone playing this role as well as she does. Her character is one of my least favorites that an actress won this award for, and this movie is certainly not one of my favorite movies, but this is definitely one of the better Best Actress winning performances. Not anywhere near as incredible as the previous year's winner, but that isn't saying much.

Interestingly, Debra Winger was also nominated for Best Actress for this movie. It seems like Winger is in more of the movie than MacLaine is, but I understand why MacLaine's was still considered a leading role, since she's certainly a driving force throughout the story. Winger also does a very good job, but I think MacLaine deserved to win over her. This was not the first time two actresses from the same film were both nominated for this award (it was actually the fourth of five times so far), but it was the first, and so far only, time that one of them actually won when that happened. Usually it seems like two actresses nominated in the leading category for the same film split the vote for that film, and they end up both losing to someone else. I think there were two main reasons why that didn't happen this year. First, Shirley MacLaine did a remarkably good job, and second, I think a lot of people felt that it was about darn time that she won an Oscar.

Legendary Shirley MacLaine has had a very long film career, beginning in the mid-1950s and continuing to this day and beyond. She's been nominated for Best Actress five times, and for Best Documentary once. Terms of Endearment is her most recent nomination, and her only win. Her first nomination was for 1958's Some Came Running, and two years later she was nominated for the Best Picture winner, The Apartment, which, let's face it, she should have won. While I'm still glad I was introduced to the amusingly awful BUtterfield 8, Elizabeth Taylor did not deserve to beat Shirley MacLaine that year by any means. But I digress. After being robbed that year, MacLaine was nominated again for 1963's Irma La Douce, then for Best Documentary for 1975's The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir, and then for Best Actress again for 1977's The Turning Point, alongside previous Best Actress winner Anne Bancroft. So when two people from the same film have been nominated for Best Actress, Shirley MacLaine has been one of them 40% of the time. Interesting.

Next up: Sally Field is back, because we really like her

1982: Meryl Streep for Sophie's Choice

Meryl Streep plays Sophie, a Polish Holocaust survivor living in Brooklyn in 1947, trying desperately to forget the unforgettable horrors she experienced at Auschwitz, and to escape the guilt she feels for surviving when so many did not.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is one of the most incredible, powerful, moving performances ever captured on screen. No performance that I've blogged about thus far so thoroughly deserved the Oscar as this one. Streep's flawless Polish accent alone would be Oscar-worthy, not to mention the fact that she actually learned to speak German and Polish for the role. Add to that the way she expertly handles the incredible complexity of her character, revealing emotions exactly when they need to be expressed, and her performance almost defies description. She's simply amazing.

When people talk about this movie they mainly focus on the heart-wrenching climax. This is completely understandable; it's an extraordinarily powerful, horrendous scene, and Streep was able to emotionally insert herself into that horror so completely that she was only able to film it once and never voluntarily watched it afterwards. But it's not just that scene that makes her performance one of the best. Sophie's coping mechanism consists of lying and concealing her past. The way it's ultimately revealed to the audience is by peeling away one layer at a time. When we first meet her, we have no idea of the depth of terror in her past, but she does. At all times, Streep has to keep track of what the audience is allowed to know, still allowing what we don't yet know to inform her character's actions and emotions without revealing anything too soon. Considering that movies are filmed out of sequence, this must have been ridiculously difficult to keep straight in her mind, and a few minor slip-ups in consistency would have been very forgivable. Granted, I've only seen this movie twice, so it's possible I might have missed something, but as far as I can tell her performance is completely consistent, and as close to perfection as possible throughout. I would be curious to hear from a native German speaker how convincing her German was. Could you tell she was American, or did she sound like a native German speaker, or did she go all the way and speak German with a Polish accent? Regardless, I'm still impressed that she could convincingly pull off so many raw, emotional scenes in a language that she doesn't even really speak.

Meryl Streep is such a talented actress that it feels like she gets nominated for an Oscar every year, but she makes acting look so effortless that she hardly ever wins. To date, she has been nominated for a record 19 acting Academy Awards - 4 Best Supporting Actress and 15 Best Actress - and I will be extremely surprised if she doesn't receive several more, but she's only actually won three times. Before winning for Sophie's Choice, she had received two of her supporting nominations, winning for 1979's Best Picture Winner, Kramer vs. Kramer, and one leading role nomination for 1981's The French Lieutenant's Woman. She was then nominated 12 more times - 1 for supporting, 11 for leading roles - without winning, until she finally won one more Best Actress Oscar for 2011's The Iron Lady. I haven't seen that yet, and I've heard it's not one of her best, but regardless I think that by then it was high time she won again. I'll let you know more when I get there. But first, I'm going to talk about Shirley MacLaine, in the seventh Best Picture winner to feature a Best Actress winning role.

1981: Katharine Hepburn for On Golden Pond

In her fourth (!) and final Best Actress winning role, Hepburn plays the female half of an old married couple who plan to spend a quiet season at their summer home as usual, when they receive a letter from their essentially estranged daughter that she's coming to visit them with her latest boyfriend. Hepburn's character is delighted at another chance to improve her relationship with her daughter; her husband, much less so.

Hepburn's not quite as fabulous in this as she was in her previous win for The Lion in Winter, and she's kind of secondary in importance to her co-star Henry Fonda, who won Best Actor, but I'd still call her performance Oscar-worthy. Her unrelenting cheerfulness in the face of Fonda's grouchiness could have easily been overplayed and annoying, but she makes it delightful. In fact, delightful pretty much sums up her entire performance. My very favorite scene is when she's gathering wood while dancing and singing an old camp song. She really gets into it, and I could not stop laughing. What's so wonderful about it, though, is that it seems like exactly the kind of thing her character would do, as evidenced by her daughter's reaction when she sees it. You can tell that Hepburn had a lot of fun with this role, and that's exactly the way it needed to be approached.

She also had great chemistry with Henry Fonda. I had no trouble believing that they were actually an old married couple. Hepburn and Fonda were both legendary actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood, but this was the only film they were in together, and they reportedly hadn't even met before. Yet watching her with him is almost like watching her with Spencer Tracy in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Emphasis on almost. Still, the fact that she could even approach the same level of emotion for a man she had never worked with before and had just met as she did for a man she'd made 8 other movies with and had been madly in love with for decades demonstrates that she's a better actress than I gave her credit for when I talked about that movie. Would Guess Who's Coming to Dinner  have been as good with Fonda instead of Tracy? Probably not. Would Hepburn have still won an Oscar? Quite possibly.

It is kind of interesting that this was her second Best Actress winning performance in a movie that ended up being her co-star's final theatrically released film. Tracy died only a few weeks after Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was finished filming. Fonda was in a TV movie that aired after On Golden Pond was released, but he passed away the following year. So this was both the only time he worked with Hepburn and the only time he worked with his daughter, previous two-time Best Actress winner Jane Fonda, who played their daughter in the film. While it probably wasn't much of a stretch for Henry Fonda to play her father, it reflects well on Hepburn that she was so convincing as her mother, given that she had no children of her own and reportedly despised Jane Fonda. So while this still isn't my all-time favorite Katharine Hepburn performance, I think she deserved this Oscar.

Katharine Hepburn lived much longer than Henry Fonda did, and she continued working for over a decade after this, mostly in TV movies. This was her 12th and final Oscar nomination. She died in 2003 at the age of 96, which at the time was the longest a Best Actress winner had ever lived. She's since been passed up by Luise Rainer (104), Olivia de Havilland (still alive at 99), and Joan Fontaine (96, just a few days older than Hepburn was), but that's still an impressive lifespan.

Speaking of records, this was a pretty historic win for several reasons. At 74, Hepburn shattered the previous record for oldest Best Actress Oscar winner that had been set by 63-year-old Marie Dressler exactly 50 ceremonies earlier. Hepburn would not hold this record nearly as long as Dressler did, since it was broken merely 8 ceremonies later, but to date she remains the second oldest winner of this award. Hepburn also became not only the first person to win 4 Best Actress Oscars, but also the first person to win 4 acting Oscars period, a record that has still not even been tied 33 ceremonies later. Even if she hadn't won this year, she would still be the only actress with 3 Oscars for leading roles. She was also the first person to be nominated for this award 12 times, but that record was broken when Meryl Streep received her 13th Best Actress nomination for 2009's Julie & Julia.

Appropriately enough, Streep won her first Best Actress Oscar the year after Hepburn won her last, so I'll be talking about her next. I'm not really looking forward to re-watching that movie because it's very sad, even though Streep is beyond amazing in it, but the movie after that one is overdue at the library so I'll probably try to watch them both today (I watched On Golden Pond last night). I have a feeling I'm about to have an emotional breakdown, but it will be worth it because overall I'm loving this project. I lost some momentum last month, and it's hard to keep it going during Noirvember, but I'm going to keep it going the best I can.

1980: Sissy Spacek for Coal Miner's Daughter

In this biopic, Sissy Spacek plays Loretta Lynn, from her humble beginnings in a small coal mining town through several obstacles to her eventual success as The First Lady of Country Music.

Spacek was the perfect choice to play Loretta Lynn, which makes sense given that she was handpicked by Lynn herself. She does a tremendous job of capturing her speaking voice and character, and her singing is spot-on. Equally impressive is her ability to realistically portray a naive 13-year-old growing into an overworked middle-aged singing star. Spacek was in reality about 30 at the time, and yes, she does look older than 13 at the beginning, but it doesn't take too much imagination to believe she's that young because she does such a good job of acting like it. Her transformation is gradual, as she gains a little more self-confidence with each success, which must have been difficult to pull off, but she manages brilliantly. She also has good, albeit kind of weird, chemistry with her co-star, Tommy Lee Jones, which works perfectly because their relationship is kind of weird, particularly at the beginning. In short, every aspect of her performance is utterly believable, which is crucial to the film's success. Without a sympathetic, realistic portrayal of Loretta, the movie would not have worked. As it is, the film has become one of Hollywood's most beloved biopics. Of course it helps that it's an engaging story with a well-written script, but it's Spacek's performance that brings it to life. It's unquestionably one of the better Best Actress winning performances, and certainly well worth watching.

This was Spacek's second of six (so far) Best Actress nominations, and her only win. She had previously been nominated for 1976's Carrie. Since Coal Miner's Daughter she has been nominated for 1982's Missing, 1984's The River, 1986's Crimes of the Heart, and 2001's In the Bedroom. She's mostly been working in television lately, which seems to happen to most screen actresses over 60, but she still works in the occasional movie, so it's possible that she'll receive another nomination, or even another win. But she is almost 66, and up to this point only two actresses have ever won this award when they were older than that.

One such actress is the following year's winner, Katharine freaking Hepburn who, at 74, not only finally beat the record for oldest winner that had been set by 63-year-old Marie Dressler 50 ceremonies earlier, but also beat her own record for most Best Actress Oscar wins. So stay tuned for that.

1979: Sally Field for Norma Rae

Sally Field plays the title character, a poor textile worker who helps fight to unionize her mill, despite fierce opposition from the people in charge and apathy from her fellow workers.

In my mind, this is exactly what a Best Actress Oscar winning film should be. It's a powerful story with a woman at its center, and the way the story comes across depends mostly on the way the leading actress plays her role. When you see her at the beginning of the movie, she has to be very non-threatening, to make it easy to understand why the people in charge aren't too concerned when she starts working with the union guy. Sally Field is short, pretty, and unassuming, but she can also be very intense when she wants to be, and she uses those traits at exactly the right moments in this film. Norma Rae starts out accepting that her life is always going to suck, but her journey begins when she realizes that it doesn't have to, and that there's something she can actually do about it. Field lets us see her character's frustration and anger simmer closer and closer to the surface as her temper gets shorter and shorter, until she finally snaps at the climax. This progression is executed perfectly, and I'm convinced that no one could have done it better than Field. She absolutely deserved this Oscar.

Considering that at the time Sally Field was best known for her television roles as quirky, fun characters in "Gidget" and "The Flying Nun," it's a testament to her incredible talent that she could play such a completely different type of role convincingly enough that audiences accepted her. The studio wanted a big name in the title role, but personally I think that would have been a mistake. The movie's message is that you can do anything if you fight hard enough, which Sally Field demonstrates not only in the movie itself, but also by even playing the role in the first place, thus breaking out of her stereotype and immediately changing the direction of her career. This message would have been less strong had an established star played the role. And I don't think any of the established stars who were offered the role could have played it as well as Field anyway.

This was Field's first Oscar nomination. She also won her second, for 1984's Places in the Heart, when she gave perhaps the most infamous Best Actress acceptance speech in Oscar history. Part of it was actually quoting something her character said in this movie, but very few people seemed to catch that. Anyway, I'll talk more about her soon, but in the immediate future I'll be blogging about Sissy Spacek.

1978: Jane Fonda for Coming Home

In her second Oscar winning performance, Fonda plays the wife of a marine. When her husband goes to fight in Vietnam, she volunteers at a veteran hospital and becomes involved with a paraplegic.

This was one of the first movies about the Vietnam War, another being The Deer Hunter, which beat Coming Home for Best Picture of 1978. It's interesting that Jane Fonda won an Oscar for this movie, since she was very vocally against the war. Her actions during the war, including some that turned out to be mere rumors, led many people to see her as anti-American. I wonder if that had something to do with why she made this anti-war, pro-veteran movie. Maybe this was her way of communicating that the reason she was against the war was because she thought it was a pointless waste of lives, and not because she was a Communist democracy-hater as she had been portrayed. Or maybe she really was a Communist democracy-hater and it took tremendous acting skills to convince audiences that she wasn't. I don't know, and honestly I don't really care. I know a lot of people still hate Jane Fonda, while other people strongly defend her, because of what she did and said back then. Maybe it's just because I wasn't alive, but I find it hard to get worked up about her politics 40 years ago. So let's talk about her performance.

Even ignoring the political aspect, I'm still not sure how I feel about Fonda's win. She's good, but not outstanding. Her character kind of fades from importance halfway through; the movie's more about the Vietnam vets than about her. She's mostly overshadowed by Jon Voight, who plays her paraplegic lover to perfection. I think his Oscar was more well-deserved than hers. I did like seeing her interact with the other veterans at the hospital and showing them compassion, but there aren't very many scenes like that. When we see her at the hospital, she's mostly interacting with Jon Voight's character, and once he checks out we don't really get to see her there anymore. I thought she did a better job at the hospital than in her love scenes with Voight, which were rather awkward and uncomfortable. On the other hand, I think that was kind of the point, because I'm not sure that they were actually supposed to be in love; they were both just really lonely and sad. That's what came across anyway. Overall it's a fine performance, but it could have been much better if her character had been given more to do. I think her other Oscar-winning performance, in Klute, does a much better job of demonstrating her incredible acting talents than this movie does.

This was Fonda's fourth Best Actress nomination, and her final win (at least so far). She was nominated again the following year for The China Syndrome, then two years after that for Best Supporting Actress in On Golden Pond (for which Katharine Hepburn won her fourth Best Actress Oscar, so I'll be watching that soon), and once more for Best Actress in 1986's The Morning After. She's still acting, most recently starring in the Netflix series "Grace and Frankie" (Season 1 streaming now, Season 2 streaming...soon? Please?), while also working on movies, so maybe she'll get another nomination someday.

Coming up next: Sally Field

1977: Diane Keaton for Annie Hall

In this Best Picture winner, Diane Keaton plays the title character, a nightclub singer in an on-and-off relationship with Woody Allen, I mean Alvy Singer.

I have mixed feelings about this movie. On the one hand, it's kind of fun and interesting, especially when it breaks the fourth wall, but I really don't understand why it's so often cited as Allen's greatest work. I definitely would enjoy it more if Woody Allen wasn't such a creep, but I know that's not the only reason because I like some of his other films better than this one. That being said, Annie Hall has some great moments, and I appreciate that it's artistically different from most films, so I don't have that much of a problem with it winning Best Picture (I was certainly okay with it back when I was doing that project, since I needed a break from long, epic war films). What I really don't understand is why Diane Keaton won Best Actress.

It's not that she gives a bad performance or anything; it's just that she doesn't get to do much. Even though the film is named after her character, it mostly centers around Alvy. There are many scenes focused on Alvy's relationships with other women, whereas we only really get to see Annie through Alvy's perspective. They have a few interesting scenes together, and she has one memorable catch phrase, but I feel like when someone wins the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, her performance should consist of more than that. The only leading role in this film is Woody Allen's; everyone else is merely a supporting player in his fantasy. He gets all the interesting lines, and for much of the film she's basically reduced to his straight man. She has some good moments, but they're few and far between. All in all, Keaton gives a decent performance - she's convincing in the role, and even has relatively good chemistry with Allen (although I have a hard time figuring out what anyone sees in him) - but not really an Oscar-worthy one.

This was Diane Keaton's first Oscar nomination, and her only win so far. After this, she was nominated once in each of the next three decades: for 1981's Reds, 1996's Marvin's Room, and 2003's Something's Gotta Give. Will she continue the trend and receive a nomination this decade? Or even another win? We'll see.

Next up: Jane Fonda returns for a second win

1976: Faye Dunaway for Network

In this brilliant satire, Dunaway plays Diana Christensen, who is in charge of programming for a TV network. When an old news anchor announces he's going to kill himself on live television because he's being forced to retire, most of the big shots want to get rid of him, but Diana has the idea to give him his own segment where he's allowed to rant and rave about whatever he wants, which turns out to be mostly about how everyone is spending too much time focused on TV rather than real life. Diana is included in this, as evidenced by her failed attempt at a relationship with an older man.

I had seen this once before several years ago, but I mostly just remembered Peter Finch yelling, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" The main thing I could recall about Faye Dunaway from watching it before was that she very noticeably never wore a bra. So I'm glad I watched it again focusing on her performance because there are many more noteworthy aspects than what she was - or wasn't - wearing.

To make satire work in film, the writing has to be kind of ridiculous, but the actors have to sell it. Early in the film, I felt like Dunaway was kind of overselling it, just a bit, but after the first couple of scenes she started nailing it every time. Probably the best example is her sex scene with William Holden. Throughout their entire encounter she rambles on and on about her job and the network, barely even noticing that Holden is there. It's an unusual scene, and she pulls it off brilliantly. It doesn't seem forced; this is just the way her character interacts with people. She has several other scenes like this, where she has to casually show that watching and working for TV has made her extremely callous, that she also does very well. I'd think it would be hard to keep from laughing in some scenes, given how witty the writing is, but her character is never allowed to notice any of the irony or ridiculousness of her situations, so she has to keep a straight face. She does that very well, too. Again, a couple of her scenes early in the movie are a little over-done, but other than that it's a solid performance, in a film full of solid performances.

This movie was nominated for five acting Oscars, and won a record-tying three. Peter Finch became the first actor to win an Oscar posthumously for playing the old, exploited news anchor, and Beatrice Straight gave the shortest ever Oscar winning performance, thoroughly earning Best Supporting Actress with only 5 minutes and 40 seconds of screen time. The film also very deservedly won Best Original Screenplay. I definitely did not fully appreciate the satire the first time I watched this movie, so I'm very glad I had an excuse to watch it again.

This was Faye Dunaway's third and final Oscar nomination, at least so far. She was previously nominated for 1967's Bonnie and Clyde and 1974's Chinatown. She hasn't been in too many movies lately, but as far as I know she hasn't officially retired, so she could still be nominated again.

Coming up next: Diane Keaton, in the sixth Best Picture winner to feature a Best Actress winning performance

1975: Louise Fletcher for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

In this Best Picture winner, the second of three films to win all five major Academy Awards, Louise Fletcher plays the infamous Nurse Ratched, the cold, unfeeling head of the ward in the mental institution where Randle P. McMurphy is sent instead of prison. Though McMurphy does everything he can to bring mayhem to the ward, Nurse Ratched refuses to relinquish her control.

Unless I'm remembering wrong, this is the first time anyone received the Best Actress Oscar for playing the antagonist. There were portrayals of unlikable characters before, but the story was always told from their perspective, or occasionally from their love interest's perspective. I've seen this movie a couple times before, but because I was specifically watching for her this viewing, it was the first time that I noticed that Nurse Ratched actually doesn't appear in very much of the movie. We mostly see McMurphy and the inmates without her around. Yet her presence permeates the entire film. She is the most disturbing character in a profoundly disturbing story. I don't really like McMurphy, but he's infinitely preferable to Ratched.

The fact that Nurse Ratched is often cited as one of the greatest movie villains of all time proves that Fletcher did an amazing job of portraying her. Usually acting requires a lot of different facial expressions; her character requires two. She's always either firmly emotionless or angry, and the only time she's angry is towards the end. The vast majority of her performance is made up of a blank face and a calm voice. I can't even imagine the amount of focus and willpower it must have taken to maintain that demeanor, especially when the rest of the characters were literally going crazy around her. But she managed it, and while it's usually not very complimentary to say a performance has no expression, it was perfect for this character. Because she is in so little of the film, there isn't much time to develop her character, yet she has to be seen as the villain for the story to work. Thus the audience has to strongly dislike her throughout the film without having much time to get to know her, and it's Fletcher's chilling, almost inhuman performance that makes this possible. Jack Nicholson's incredible and all, but without Louise Fletcher, I don't think this film would be nearly so highly acclaimed.

This was Fletcher's only Academy Award nomination, which makes sense because I feel like it's pretty much the only thing she's known for, especially as far as movies are concerned. She has appeared on a lot of TV shows, but they've mostly been single-episode guest appearances. I think she's still working, though, so there's still a chance that she'll give another Oscar-winning performance someday. But even if she doesn't, her iconic performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has already ensured that her name will be remembered for a very long time.

Up next: Faye Dunaway, in the second, and so far last, movie to win three acting Academy Awards

1974: Ellen Burstyn for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

As the title character, Burstyn plays a housewife living in Socorro, New Mexico. When her husband dies, she decides to take her 11-year-old son to her hometown of Monterey, California so she can start a new life there as a singer. The only problem is, she doesn't have enough money to get there, but she is determined to overcome that and any other obstacles she may face.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this movie because I had a lot of trouble finding a way to watch it. The library didn't have it, I couldn't find a way to buy a copy for a reasonable price, and it wasn't on any of the usual streaming websites. Ultimately I ended up renting it on demand, which I really didn't want to do, but I am just as determined to watch all the Best Actress winners in order as Alice was to get to Monterey, so I had to cave in and pay the $3.99. After watching it, I'm sad this movie isn't more readily available because it's actually quite good, and I think other people would like it if they had an easier way to watch it.

Burstyn's performance overall is wonderful. My main criticism would be that her singing isn't really that great for someone who's only ever made her living as a singer, but I think that enhances the character. It makes her situation seem more desperate and hopeless that her only job experience is at something she's not even very good at to begin with. By far the best aspect of her performance is her interaction with the kid who played her son. They have one of the most believable mother-son dynamics I've ever seen portrayed on screen, although maybe I just think that because pieces of it reminded me of the way my mom and my brother interact. The way they jokingly tease each other and share fun moments that no one else would really understand: I've seen that in real life a lot, but I hardly ever see it on the screen. So that was my favorite part.

In addition to her relationship with her son, I found most other aspects of her character very believable because she embodies them so well: the frustrated but still devoted wife, the wannabe singer, the disappointed waitress. The only thing I didn't find believable was her relationship with Kris Kristofferson's character. They keep saying they're in love, but they don't really act like it. It's not even that they have a dysfunctional relationship that they've mistaken for love; it's more like they have no relationship. He just kind of appears out of nowhere and suddenly they're sort of involved, but we don't really see them interact that much, and they don't have very good chemistry. I don't think he should be billed as her co-star; the story's mostly about Alice and her son, not Alice and random sort-of-lover-boy. But other than that, it's a moving performance in an engaging story, and I'm very glad I found a way to watch it.

Ellen Burstyn has been nominated for six Academy Awards: five Best Actress and one Best Supporting Actress. She was first nominated for her supporting role in 1971's The Last Picture Show. She was then nominated for 1973's The Exorcist before winning for this movie. After this she was nominated for 1978's Same Time, Next Year, 1980's Resurrection, and 2000's Requiem for a Dream. Burstyn is now in her 80s, but she's still working, so it's possible she'll receive another nomination, or even another win, at some point. We'll have to wait and see.

Next up: Louise Fletcher, in the fifth Best Picture Winner to feature a Best Actress winning performance, and the first in 33 years.

1973: Glenda Jackson for A Touch of Class

In her second Oscar winning performance, Jackson plays a recent divorcee who runs into a married man and decides to have a brief affair with him. The affair gets off to a very rocky start, but eventually they start to care for each other and try to keep it going longer than they originally intended. But he's still devoted to his wife and kids, which makes things complicated.

There's a little bit of a kick to it, but mostly this is a fairly typical romantic comedy, which is not at all typical Oscar fare. So I was very surprised to learn that it was actually nominated for Best Picture. It lost to The Sting, which was definitely the right choice. But I actually enjoyed this movie a lot more than I thought I was going to, and certainly way more than Glenda Jackson's previous Oscar-winning movie, Women in Love. At least A Touch of Class is entertaining, and Jackson actually gets more of a chance to demonstrate her talent. She has such a fabulous speaking voice, and her delivery of sassy comebacks is simply marvelous. Particularly in the first half of the movie, that's most of what her role consists of, so it works out perfectly. She and George Segal play off each other remarkably well, although they are one of the weirdest couples ever and I'm not sure why someone would think to put them in a movie starring opposite each other. But it actually works. I wouldn't call this one of the best movies ever, or even one of the best rom coms ever, but it's surprisingly entertaining. Jackson's performance isn't mind-blowing or anything, but it's still good. Most of the movie's flaws - like she's a single mom and we never see her kids after the first scene - have to do with the writing and the story itself, rather than her performance. Her character's a little on the ridiculous side, but she clearly had fun with the role, which is what was required. Was it an Oscar-worthy performance? Probably not. I haven't seen any of the other performances she was nominated against (yes, I'm admitting that I haven't seen The Exorcist) so I'm not sure if hers was the best, but I would be very surprised if it was. That being said, far worse performances have won this award, and I'm not at all sorry I had to watch this movie.

This was Jackson's second of two Oscars, and third of four nominations. Her final nomination was for 1975's Hedda. I haven't seen her in much else, but I'm pretty sure that she, like many actresses, didn't win Oscars for her best performances. She did win an Emmy for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in the 1971 mini-series "Elizabeth R," which I remember being a fantastic performance, although it's been a while since I watched it. Jackson continued acting until 1992, when she was elected to Parliament, making her the first, and so far only, Oscar-winning British MP. She decided to stand down this year, but whether she will return to the screen or simply retire (she is 79 years old, after all) only time will tell.

Next up: Ellen Burstyn

1972: Liza Minnelli for Cabaret

In this disturbing, thought-provoking musical, Liza Minnelli plays Sally Bowles, an American performer working at a cabaret in 1931 Berlin. Sally's too busy having a good time and trying to become an actress to worry about politics, but 1931 Berlin is a time and place when everyone should worry about politics.

Every time I watch this movie, I am in awe of how well done it is. The way the silly, dramatic cabaret numbers are set up to mirror the very serious, devastating events that are happening outside conveys a powerful message without belaboring it. And it's impossible to talk about this movie without mentioning Joel Grey's incredible, eerie portrayal of the Master of Ceremonies, which very deservedly earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. But despite the fact that Grey kind of steals the movie, Minnelli's performance is also quite stunning, and certainly Oscar-worthy.

For one thing, she has a killer voice, so her songs are fabulous. The way she belts out the title number still gives me chills, and it's one of my most-played songs. She also does some great dancing, especially in "Mein Herr." Her performance would be worth watching for the musical aspect alone, but it's not just the singing and dancing; her acting is spot-on as well. She perfectly embodies every aspect of this character. She delivers her lines, some of which are very bizarre, as though it's exactly the way she always talks. Maybe it is, but I kind of doubt it. Sally is utterly ridiculous, and I've never met anyone remotely like her, but I still find her believable. It would have been very easy, especially with that makeup, to ruin the character by going way over-the-top with this performance, but Minnelli refrains from doing so. Not to say that she's never over-the-top, but it's only when it makes sense for the character to be over-the-top. Basically, Liza Minnelli is perfect for this role, and her performance is incredible to watch. If you haven't seen it, you're missing out.

Given that she's the daughter of Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli, Liza surprised exactly no one by ending up in the entertainment field. She made her first appearance in a movie when she was a toddler. However, most of her career has been spent on the stage, so this is her only Academy Award. She was nominated for Best Actress once before, for 1969's The Sterile Cuckoo. She's still around, but she hasn't made any movies for a while so I'm pretty sure this will remain her only Oscar. It's also her most famous, and quite possibly best, performance, which is unusual.

Coming up next: Glenda Jackson's second win

1971: Jane Fonda for Klute

In her first Oscar winning performance, Jane Fonda plays Bree Daniels, a call girl with a homicidal stalker. Private Detective John Klute thinks that her stalker might be connected with his missing friend, and the two of them develop an interesting relationship as they try to track him down.

This was my first time watching this movie, and I really need to watch it again at some point because I was kind of confused for a lot of it. But it was very different from the confusion I felt when watching the previous year's winner, Women in Love. I still haven't figured out why that won Best Actress. With Klute, however, that was the thing I was least confused about. The movie kind of dragged and I wasn't sure I always understood what was going on, but Fonda's acting was superb.

The way the story works depends largely on the audience's perception of Fonda's character. She does a remarkable job of making Bree sympathetic enough for us to be completely on her side while still portraying her as a deeply flawed human being - which in a way makes her even more sympathetic. Though the movie is named after Donald Sutherland's character, and I guess you'd call him the protagonist, Bree is really the central focus of most of the film. There isn't a lot of dialogue; most of the talking comes from tape recordings and sessions with her psychiatrist. This allows us to see her from different perspectives: in the actions of her daily life and in the recordings, she is generally manipulative and self-controlled, but with her psychiatrist she is vulnerable and honest. As her relationship with Klute develops, and as it becomes more and more clear that someone is indeed trying to kill her, that vulnerability begins to appear more and more outside the psychiatrist's office. Fonda makes the audience feel not only that Bree is a real person, but also that we know her inside and out. We understand her fears and insecurities, even as she tries so desperately to hide them from the rest of the world. Without such a deep connection between the audience and Bree, the movie could not have worked. Thanks to Fonda, it does. It's really as simple as that. Sutherland and the other actors do a good job, too - although I swear the creepy guy seems like a different person every time we see him - but it's her performance that brings it all together.

Being the daughter of legendary screen star Henry Fonda, it's not too surprising that Jane turned out to be an incredible actress. She has been nominated for seven Oscars - six Best Actress and one Best Supporting Actress - and won two. This was her second nomination, the first being for 1969's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Her third nomination was for 1977's Julia, and then she won for her fourth nomination for 1978's Coming Home. So I'll be talking about that before too long. But next up is Liza Minnelli, another daughter of a legendary screen star.

1970: Glenda Jackson for Women in Love

Glenda Jackson plays one of two schoolteacher sisters in early-1920s England who enter into relationships with two men who are very close friends - perhaps even more than friends. The four of them wander around trying to figure out what love truly means, or if it even exists at all.

I'm so confused right now. Part of it is that I didn't really understand the point of this film. It was very artistically shot, but there wasn't really much of a story. Every time a promising plot line came up - the transformation of the coal mine, the deranged mother, etc - it was abandoned in favor of more nudity, dancing through nature, and philosophical discussions that tried, and usually failed, to be profound. It's definitely not my kind of movie. There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself; I don't have to like every movie. I wasn't watching it for the film as a whole; I watched it for Glenda Jackson's performance. Unfortunately that's the part that really confuses me.

I don't understand why she won Best Actress for this performance. She didn't really do anything. Of the four main characters, hers is the least intriguing, and probably the least important. Everything she does, the other three do more of in a more interesting manner, except perhaps dance. She does have some very bizarre dance scenes. Maybe that's why she won. I just don't understand how anyone could come away from that movie thinking, Wow, what a great performance by Glenda Jackson. I didn't really think anything about this movie was Oscar-worthy, except maybe cinematography, but I would have nominated the other three main actors for Oscars before Jackson. How she won when none of the others were even nominated I simply cannot fathom. I'm not saying it's a bad performance; I just found it wholly unremarkable. It does have the distinction of being the first Best Actress winning performance to feature nudity, but even that is unremarkable in the context of this movie. Jackson has way fewer nude scenes than co-stars Alan Bates and Oliver Reed, which was one of the few interesting things about this movie, since generally female nudity is far more prevalent in movies than male nudity. Not only did Jackson have less nudity, she also had fewer scenes than the other main characters (although her sister kind of faded toward the end, but at the beginning she was more important), and her character's objectives were the least clearly defined, in a movie where no character had very clearly defined objectives. So what made her performance stand out above the others? I've tried to come up with something for the sake of this blog, but I still have no idea.

I haven't seen any of the other Best Actress nominated performances from this year, but I do know that it was the only year so far since the 2nd Academy Awards that all five were first-time nominees. Jackson would go on to be nominated three more times, winning again for her third nomination, in 1973's A Touch of Class. I hope that's a more interesting performance than this. I remember being extremely impressed by her performance as Queen Elizabeth I in that mini-series, although I think I was 12 when I watched it. Anyway, I'll talk about her more soon, and I really hope I'll have something more interesting to say than, "I don't get it." But in the immediate future, I'll talk about Jane Fonda.

1969: Maggie Smith for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Maggie Smith plays the title character, a private school teacher who refuses to follow the curriculum, preferring to express her rather odd and extremely controversial views to her impressionable young students, particularly a small group of chosen girls whom she deems special. She spends her spare time trifling with the male members of the faculty.

This movie was nothing like I expected it to be. I thought it was going to be one of those uplifting stories about an unconventional teacher that the more traditional faculty members hate but the students really benefit from. Instead it's a disturbing story about an unconventional teacher who thinks she's doing good but actually has a terrible influence on her students and ends up totally ruining their lives. Yes, the headmistress seems to have a personal vendetta against her, but she is also an awful teacher who deserves to be fired. The movie sort of sets you up to be on her side and then switches it so you can't be. I'm sure this is on purpose, but it makes for an uncomfortable viewing experience, which didn't make me like the movie very much.

So this definitely hasn't been my favorite Best Actress winner so far. I'm not saying it was a bad performance. I mean, it's Maggie Smith; I'm pretty sure she's incapable of giving a bad performance (unless she's trying to do a Louisiana accent, but let's just pretend that never happened). It just seemed like she wasn't sure whether to be likable or not. Her character was very confusing, and I never really understood her motives or objectives. I think she was intentionally ambiguous, especially at the beginning, but I would have liked to get a better feel for who she was, or at least what she was trying to do. As it was, she didn't seem like a real person, or even like a fully formed character. I didn't find her believable, and I can't tell if that's more the fault of the story or the performance, but either way I didn't particularly like it. Honestly, I thought that if anyone deserved an Oscar for this movie it was Pamela Franklin, who played the one special student who ultimately saw through Miss Brodie. She was only 19 at the time and still managed to hold her own against intimidating veteran adult actors, including Maggie Smith. She should have at least been nominated for Best Supporting Actress, but she wasn't, although she was nominated for a BAFTA and won a National Board of Review award. I think Franklin outshines Smith in this movie, which in my mind makes Smith's Oscar less deserved.

I think another part of my problem is that I'm watching this 46 years after it was made, so my view of Smith is much different from that of people who saw the movie back then. When I think of Maggie Smith, I usually think of "Downton Abbey," Sister Act, or the Harry Potter movies. The earliest of those was made in 1992, 23 years after this movie. So it was very funny to me when she kept talking about being in her prime, especially when she was finally forced to conclude that she was past it. While that was certainly true for Jean Brodie, it was far from true for Maggie Smith. I don't even think she had hit her prime when she made this movie. I've seen so many spectacular performances from her that I found this one rather disappointing. But they pretty much all came later, so Academy voters couldn't know what they had to look forward to during the prime of Dame Maggie Smith.

Smith tends to get nominated more for supporting roles than leading roles. That seems to be more her skill set, since she's brilliant at delivering one-liners and sweeping in to steal scenes from the leading characters who think they're so important, taking them down a notch or two. That was another reason it was weird to see her in this movie, since she was playing a conceited leading character who had scenes stolen from her, only it seemed to take her down more than a couple of notches. She isn't nearly as good at recovering from stolen scenes as she is at stealing them. Anyway, this was her first of only two Best Actress nominations, the second being for 1972's Travels with My Aunt, but she's been nominated for four Best Supporting Actress Oscars, winning for 1978's California Suite. She's now 80 years old, and as far as I can tell she hasn't passed her prime yet. Now that she's finished filming the final season of "Downton Abbey" - for which she's been nominated for four Emmys (winning two) and two Golden Globes (winning one) - she might have time to make more movies than she has been. Will she perhaps someday win another Oscar? I doubt it will be for Best Actress in a Leading Role, but maybe Best Supporting Actress? Only time will tell.

Next up: Glenda Jackson