1965: Julie Christie for Darling

In this very 1960s British film, Julie Christie plays a model who sleeps her way up the social ladder in pursuit of what she believes is happiness. Unfortunately, once she finally realizes what would actually make her happy, it's too late.

There were several aspects of this performance that I liked. Most of my favorite parts involved her actions completely contradicting her narration (think "Dignity, always dignity" from Singin' in the Rain). Both the way she read the narration and the way she acted out the contradictions were very well done. The film was supposed to be satire - at least, I'm pretty sure it was - but I think sometimes the male actors took themselves too seriously so it wasn't always clear. Christie definitely gave the best satirical performance. Occasionally she was a little too over-the-top, but most of the time I thought she was just over-the-top enough to be effective. The best example of this is when she melodramatically calls one of her boyfriends melodramatic.

Overall, though, I didn't particularly like this movie. It's kind of boring and confusing, and I didn't really care about any of the characters. I kept getting her various lovers mixed up, which added to the confusion. At least I always recognized Laurence Harvey, since I've seen a lot of him lately. I don't really enjoy his acting, but at least he does a good job of making his co-stars look much better by comparison. That might be part of the reason why this is the third Best Actress winning film he's in. And while Christie's acting is fine, her character is quite annoying. She keeps making all these really bad choices and then complaining when they don't turn out well. So it's not a bad movie, but it's not a great movie. It does have its moments, and they're pretty much all Julie Christie's moments, so I guess she deserved an award. But she absolutely did not deserve to beat Julie Andrews for The Sound of Music, which is an iconic performance that is much more enjoyable to watch. Funnily enough, there are several odd similarities between the two. I was very amused when Christie's character ended up marrying a rich guy with seven children. The actresses also share the same first name, are both British, and are both still alive. But given the choice between the two, I'd rather watch The Sound of Music than Darling any day.

Julie Christie has been nominated for four Oscars so far. She hasn't made any movies in the last couple of years, but she's also the most recently nominated actress I've blogged about, which I think makes her significantly more likely to be nominated again than anybody who won before her. Darling was her first nomination, after which she was nominated for 1971's McCabe & Mrs. Miller, 1997's Afterglow, and most recently, Away from Her, which was technically from 2006 but was nominated with the 2007 movies because that's when it was released in the US. I think my favorite Julie Christie movie is Heaven Can Wait, but she wasn't nominated for that. While we were watching this, my dad reminded me that she was also in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which is arguably her finest performance, but somehow she wasn't nominated for that either.

Next up: Elizabeth Taylor's second Oscar winning performance

1964: Julie Andrews for Mary Poppins

It feels silly to summarize this role because I feel like pretty much everyone has seen this movie, or at least has a vague idea of what it's about. In case you've somehow missed it, Julie Andrews plays the title character, a magical nanny who flies down from the clouds to help the dysfunctional Banks family. She also does the whistling for the robin in "A Spoonful of Sugar" and lends her voice to one of the animated characters in "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," but I'm pretty sure most Academy voters didn't know that, so I think it's safe to say that those roles didn't contribute to her win.

There is no way for me to impartially evaluate this performance because it's held a special place in my heart for many, many years. In fact, I can't remember a time when I hadn't seen this movie. It's one of the few Best Actress winning films that is suitable for children, but what's odd is I grew to enjoy it more as I got older than I had when I was a child. I didn't become a true Julie Andrews fan until around the end of middle school and became even more of one in high school. Nearly every day of ninth grade, I would come home after school, grab a snack, turn on the Mary Poppins soundtrack, and start my homework. Even when I was watching it today, the first notes of the overture made me think of geometry. Yeah, I'm really weird. Anyway, given that I love this movie so much, and that I believe that not only the character but also Julie Andrews herself is "practically perfect in every way," it's tempting for me to just call this the best performance ever and leave it at that. But I'll try to say something a little more interesting.

On the surface, the character of Mary Poppins is deceptively simple. She's a magical, singing nanny; how complicated can that be? What makes her complex, and what Andrews does such a tremendous job of conveying to the audience, is that while she tries to be all no-nonsense, stiff-upper-lip, and detached, she clearly cares very much about everyone she works for in spite of herself. The movie hints at her backstory, but only vaguely; there are a lot of holes, since we only see her through the context of this one family. And yet Andrews makes us feel as though we truly know her, forming a connection with the audience that's difficult to describe. She has this great twinkle in her eye, so that you never doubt that beneath her cold exterior is a warm, caring person. And the mannerisms she has for Poppins are perfect, especially the odd little things she does with her feet: flexed when she steps over things, pointed outward when she's flying or standing still. Add to all that her indescribably beautiful voice and some priceless facial expressions and you couldn't ask for a much better performance. She comes across as a seasoned screen actress, so I was rather surprised when I first learned that this was actually her first ever movie. The funny thing is, if she had been in movies before, she almost certainly would not have been in this one, since she would have been too busy making a different film at the same time.

Julie Andrews started performing in England when she was quite young, as soon as her mother and step-father discovered her ridiculously wide vocal range. She came to Broadway in 1954 to star in a musical called The Boy Friend, which was followed two years later by My Fair Lady, which became one of the most successful musicals ever. After that, she did a few things on television and starred in Camelot on Broadway, but when Warner Brothers decided to turn My Fair Lady into a movie, they chose established film star and previous Best Actress winner Audrey Hepburn for the starring role over Andrews, despite the fact that Hepburn couldn't really sing. Walt Disney, however, decided to take a chance on Andrews after seeing her in Camelot, and offered her the role of Mary Poppins, one he had been trying to bring to the screen for decades. So while I'm still very upset that I never got to see Julie Andrews play Eliza Doolittle, really I'm grateful that she wasn't cast in that movie because she's so delightful in this. It clearly occurred to her that she wouldn't have been able to do Mary Poppins if she had done My Fair Lady, since she cheekily thanked Jack Warner in her Golden Globe acceptance speech. In her Oscar acceptance speech, however, she thanked only Walt Disney by name, which seems fitting. I'd like to thank him as well, since if he hadn't launched her film career with Mary Poppins I might never have heard of her, and I can't even imagine what my life would be like if that were the case.

The year after Mary Poppins, Andrews starred in the Best Picture Winner, in what is probably an even more famous performance than this one. That earned her another Best Actress nomination, but somehow she didn't win. After that, her career hit a major slump, as she tried unsuccessfully to get audiences to see her as something other than a wholesome nanny. She did manage to snag one more nomination for 1982's Victor Victoria, in a role that she later re-created on Broadway and turned down a Tony nomination for. Unfortunately, performing on Broadway strained her vocal cords, and the surgery she had to fix it messed them up even more, so that she almost completely lost her beautiful singing voice. But she didn't let that stop her and has continued making films, in addition to writing several children's books with her daughter. That's how I ended up meeting her, on a book-signing tour. I wanted to tell her how much she's meant to me over the years, but I was so awestruck in her presence that I couldn't say much. I still find it hard to believe that I've actually spoken to her at all. Anyway, she'll be celebrating her 80th birthday in a little over a month, and she's still working. If it were up to me, she'd win an Oscar every year for just existing, but I doubt she'll actually win another one. Basically what I'm trying to say is that Julie Andrews is amazing and I love her and I hope she lives forever. That's all.

Next up: Julie Christie in a movie I've never heard of, but one that I assume is incredibly amazing given that her performance beat Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music

1963: Patricia Neal for Hud

Patricia Neal plays Alma, the housekeeper on a cattle ranch owned by an old man, his ne'er-do-well son, and his grandson (the son of his other son). She kind of has a thing for the son, who kind of has a thing for her, except he doesn't really care about anybody but himself.

This is very difficult to evaluate. I mean, yes, Neal gives a wonderful performance. She has some great one-liners that she delivers perfectly, and she provides the perfect balance between the overly-righteous old man and the overly-indulgent younger man. I also really like the way she resists Hud's attentions because he's so awful, despite the fact that she's sort of attracted to him, and the way she lets the audience see this internal struggle without overdoing it. I think she probably deserved an Oscar, but I also think she definitely did not deserve this Oscar. I find it difficult to fathom how anyone ever considered the part of Alma to be a "leading role." I wasn't timing her, but according to IMDb, she's only onscreen for 21 minutes and 51 seconds, which is not only the shortest Best Actress winning performance, but also shorter than any of the Best Actor winning performances.

I realize that the length of a performance doesn't always necessarily dictate whether it's a supporting or a leading role; for example, Anthony Hopkins won Best Actor for The Silence of the Lambs, which he was in for only 3 minutes longer than Patricia Neal was in this movie, but his character's presence is felt throughout the whole film. In Hud, at least for me, it was pretty easy to forget about Alma when she wasn't on-screen. While all 21 minutes and 51 seconds are well-acted, in the grand scheme of the movie her character isn't really that important. The story's not about her; it's about the relationship between the three men and some drama with their cattle, which may or may not have foot-and-mouth disease. It kind of feels like Alma's main purpose is to emphasize how much of a jerk Hud is. To some extent, I suppose she's also there to provide a third example for the youngest guy of the type of person he can grow up to be. In that capacity, Neal does a great job of making Alma a lot more likable than either Hud or his father, which I think helps the young man ultimately choose to become like neither of them. So she steals a few scenes and has a profound impact on the main characters, but fades to the background for most of the film. To me, this screams Best Supporting Actress. I have no idea why she was even nominated for this category, let alone won. Melvyn Douglas won Best Supporting Actor for this movie, and his is way more of a leading role than hers.

I haven't seen any of the other performances that were nominated for Best Actress that year. Maybe they were all terrible, in which case Patricia Neal deserved to win. Also, three of the five Best Supporting Actress nomination spots were taken by actresses in Best Picture Winner Tom Jones, so maybe somebody thought that since there was no room for her in that category they had to stick her somewhere. I don't know. Like I said, she deserved an Oscar, but not this Oscar. Oh, well.

Patricia Neal had a very complicated life, involving an affair with Gary Cooper; a 30-year-long, tumultuous marriage to Roald Dahl that resulted in five children, one of whom had suddenly died at the age of 7 just prior to the filming of Hud, and another of whom she was 8 months pregnant with when she won the award; and a series of major strokes in 1965 that she just barely survived. Fortunately, she recovered and was able to return to work, picking up a second Best Actress Oscar nomination for 1968's The Subject was Roses. She lived to be 84, which is kind of amazing considering that she almost died at 39.

Coming up next: Julie Andrews, the fourth Best Actress winner who's still alive, and the only one that I've actually had a face-to-face conversation with

1962: Anne Bancroft for The Miracle Worker

Reprising her Tony-winning Broadway role, Anne Bancroft plays Helen Keller's teacher Annie Sullivan, fighting with all her might to bring comprehension into the dark, silent world in which her pupil resides.

I've been sitting here for about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to start this. No words can fully do justice to the performance I just witnessed - ironic, since the whole point of the movie is to show the importance of words. Actually, I should say performances, since both Bancroft and Patty Duke, who plays Helen, embody their characters perfectly and work together tremendously well. It's like they were born to portray these people. It's no wonder the writer and director insisted on both of them recreating their Broadway roles in the film, even though Duke was too old for her part (she was supposed to be about seven but was actually 16), and the studio offered a much greater budget if they would cast a more famous star as Annie. There is no way anyone else could have played these roles nearly this well. It was nice of the Academy to consider the part of Helen Keller a "supporting" role so they could both win Oscars. And yes, I know, I'm supposed to be focusing just on Bancroft's performance, but to me the most impressive thing about it is how well it fits with Duke's performance. Given the complexity of their characters, it would have been easy for either of them to try to hog the spotlight, but they share it, playing off each other to make their characters believable. If either performance had been lacking, the other would not have worked. Fortunately, they were both darn near perfect. Someday I'll probably end up blogging about Best Supporting Actress winners, and then I'll get to talk more about Patty Duke's incredible performance. For now, let's focus on the Anne Bancroft part.

Annie Sullivan is probably one of the most difficult characters to portray. It feels weird to call her a character, since she was a real person, but she's essentially become a legend. She has to be relentless, strict, and even mean, but at the same time caring and compassionate, with a quick wit and a good sense of humor. That would be quite enough in and of itself, but then she also has to wrestle with a spoiled oversize toddler with no concept of language, trying to teach her something besides "if I throw a tantrum, I can do whatever I want." Add in the Irish accent and the almost-blindness and you get one of the most complicated roles an actress could ever hope to play. There are so many easy ways to go wrong, but as far as I could tell Bancroft falls prey to none of them. Every gesture, every facial expression, the way she says every line is perfect. You can practically feel how much she wants to get through to Helen. She breaks down this majorly complex character and makes her so accessible to the audience that I didn't completely realize how complex she was until I started writing this paragraph. Even though my life has been very different from hers, I found myself relating to her a lot more than I would have anticipated. Before watching this movie, I knew who Annie Sullivan was, and had heard the story of her teaching Helen Keller to finally understand that the word "water" represented the thing itself, but it's one thing to hear the story. It's another to see it brought to life in front of you. Bancroft makes Annie Sullivan seem less of a legend and more of a person, which makes for an incredibly moving film.

This was Anne Bancroft's first of five Best Actress nominations, and her only win. She was also nominated for 1964's The Pumpkin Eater, 1967's The Graduate (which became her most famous performance), 1977's The Turning Point (which was nominated for 11 Oscars and won zero), and 1985's Agnes of God. She was also married to Mel Brooks for 40 years until she died of cancer in 2005.

Funny story about the Best Actress Oscar this year (at least I think it's funny). This was the year of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, which starred two previous Best Actress Winners who famously hated each other: Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Davis was nominated but Crawford was not. Anne Bancroft couldn't make it to the Academy Awards, so Crawford offered to accept the Oscar on her behalf if she won. So basically Joan Crawford used Anne Bancroft's fabulous performance to beat Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Classic Joan Crawford.

Next up: Patricia Neal

1961: Sophia Loren for Two Women, aka La ciciara

In the first non-English language performance to win a Best Actress Oscar, Sophia Loren plays the widowed mother of a 12-year-old girl living in Rome during WWII. When allied troops begin bombing Rome, they flee to the mountains with a lot of other refugees, where her strength and resilience are put to the test by poverty, tragedy, and other hardships.

I was hoping to watch this movie in its original Italian with English subtitles, but the only copy I could find was dubbed in English, which was a little disappointing. I am virtually positive that Sophia Loren dubbed her own lines, since it certainly sounded like her, which helped, but it was still rather distracting that their lips didn't match up with the sound. Add that to the immensely disturbing plot and this becomes a movie that I will certainly not be revisiting frequently. That being said, I think Loren's performance was superb. Though she was only 25, and therefore far too young to have a 12-year-old daughter, she did an excellent job of interacting with the younger actress in such a way that the audience never doubts that she's her mother. She's also very good at putting on a brave face for her daughter, but then letting the audience see how upset she is when her daughter isn't looking.

Though this is a well-made, well-acted movie, it may seem rather surprising to find it on this list. Most Academy Award winning performances are from Hollywood films, not European films, and certainly not non-English European films. Though Loren's performance was magnificent throughout the film, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have won if it hadn't been for the rape scene. It certainly changes the film from vaguely depressing to profoundly disturbing when the woman and her young daughter are attacked and gang-raped by a bunch of allied soldiers. It also gives Loren a chance to show how devoted her character is to her daughter; she doesn't even care what happened to herself and is only concerned for her daughter's welfare. So when her daughter immediately pushes her away, she is devastated, which Loren shows us in such a way that we are devastated for her. I think the performance still would have been Oscar-worthy without this part, but the movie would have been much less memorable and I don't think as many people would have voted for it.

Apparently, originally previous Best Actress winner Anna Magnani was supposed to play Sophia Loren's role, and Loren was supposed to play her daughter. There are several different stories out there about why Magnani dropped out, but whatever the reason I'm very glad it happened because the film would not have worked at all with a 25-year-old playing the 12-year-old role, especially given that the 25-year-old was the voluptuous, sexy Sophia Loren. I can't even imagine how badly the film would have turned out if they had made it that way. Fortunately, it all worked out.

Sophia Loren grew up with a poor, single mother in Italy during WWII, which probably worked to her advantage when making this film. This was her first of two Best Actress nominations, the second being for 1964's Marriage Italian Style (aka Matrimonio all'italiana), which she did not win, although she was awarded an Honorary Oscar in 1991. She's an immensely talented, gorgeous actress who is still alive and is turning 81 next month. She has done occasional work in the last few years, but it seems unlikely that she will win another Oscar, though it is possible.

Up next: Anne Bancroft

1960: Elizabeth Taylor for BUtterfield 8

Elizabeth Taylor plays Gloria, a call girl/model who picks up men when she wants them and drops them when she's tired of them, and loves it. Then she actually falls in love with one of them, which she didn't think was possible, but is it too late for her to turn her life around?

One thing that I found very interesting about this movie is how similar it is to the previous year's winner, Room at the Top, even down to the same leading man. Both Taylor and Signoret play promiscuous women who fall in love with Laurence Harvey, and they have a few wonderful days together until he treats them badly and breaks up with them, and then they die in a car crash. But while I think Room at the Top is probably a better movie, and Harvey's performance is certainly much better, I enjoyed BUtterfield 8 a lot more, partly because there were way fewer bedroom scenes, but mostly because it's so hilariously bad.

There are generally two kinds of bad movies: those that were trying to be good and failed, and those that know they're bad and embrace it. Usually the former are painful to watch, but the latter can be hugely entertaining, as is the case here. In any other movie Elizabeth Taylor's performance would have been terrible, but it's perfect for such an awful film. She's very melodramatic, which is usually a bad thing, but her character's a total drama queen, and she has such cheesy lines that it works. I mean, there's no way to say something like, "Mama face it: I was the slut of all time!" that's not melodramatic. She's even able to make some of her ridiculous lines passable by delivering them with conviction. Harvey, on the other hand, makes a lot of his lines worse by adding wholly unnecessary dramatic pauses and gestures. His performance is so bad that it makes Taylor's look spectacular by comparison, which probably helped her win the Oscar. What doesn't help is that they have essentially no chemistry, so their love scenes are just painful. Taylor does have very good chemistry with Eddie Fisher, who plays Gloria's platonic friend, which makes a lot of sense given that at the time they were married in real life.

If internet rumors are to be believed, Elizabeth Taylor was forced to make this movie as a kind of punishment. She had one more film in her MGM contract, but she wanted to leave to make a bunch more money in Cleopatra with 20th Century Fox. She had also recently caused a huge scandal by running off with Eddie Fisher, who had been married to Debbie Reynolds. So MGM refused to let her out of her contract, forced her to star in this horrible movie before she could make Cleopatra, and cast Fisher in a supporting role. Understandably, this made her furious. Miraculously, this was exactly the state of mind she needed to be in to effectively portray Gloria. Her over-the-top, melodramatic, spiteful, angry performance was just what this movie required to take it from painfully awful to delightfully awful, and she got the Oscar to prove it. I think the picture at the top of this post sums up how she felt about that pretty well.

While now mostly remembered for her many failed marriages and her support of AIDS research, Elizabeth Taylor was also one of the few child stars in Hollywood to make it as an adult. She was nominated for five Best Actress Oscars and won the last two. Before this she was nominated for 1957's Raintree County, 1958's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and 1959's Suddenly, Last Summer. I'll talk about her again when I watch her other winning performance, in 1966's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a much more highly acclaimed movie than BUtterfield 8 but one that I have never seen. So stay tuned for that. But first comes Sophia Loren, the third Best Actress winner who's still alive, and the first person to win a Best Actress Oscar for a non-English language role.

1959: Simone Signoret for Room at the Top

In the first non-American film to win Best Actress (it's British), Simone Signoret plays a woman who is married to a brutish jerk, so she starts having an affair with the main character, who is also a pretty big jerk. He's only with her to kill time until he finds a way to end up with the beautiful young daughter of the richest man in town, and when he finally realizes he's in love with Signoret's character, it's too late.

This is by far the most explicit Best Actress winning movie up to this point. There were some very risque love scenes, and while technically the camera showed no actual nudity, by 1959 standards it was borderline pornography. There really wasn't much in the way of plot: it was mostly just people sleeping together and trying to see who could be the most awful person. Consequently I didn't particularly enjoy watching this movie. I guess Simone Signoret's performance was probably my favorite part, mostly because she was one of the few characters I could stand. She actually seemed like a decent human being who just had really bad taste in men. And to be fair, she fell in love with the main character because she saw the potential in him to be a good person; he just always insisted on listening to his bad side. If he'd listened to her from the beginning, I think I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more.

I don't really know what else to say about this performance. She's really good at being sexy and sassy and likable, which is basically what the role requires. But she's not in nearly enough of the movie; way too much of it is devoted to the other, really obnoxious characters. There was enough of her in it to show that she was a good actress, but not enough for her to save the rest of the movie. This is not a very well-known film in the US because I don't think it was ever released on DVD here, but the people who have seen it and rated it seem to really like it, so I must be missing something. I'm just not a big fan of movies in which nothing happens besides people having sex and being mean to each other, no matter how good the actors are. So I guess she deserved the Oscar, but I will not be re-visiting this movie any time soon.

Simone Signoret was the first French person to win a Best Actress Oscar (although she was born in Germany). This was her first of two nominations, the second being for 1965's Ship of Fools. I don't think I've seen her in anything else, probably because she was mostly in French films. She was clearly a good actress, and it was nice of the Academy to recognize a non-American film for once. This must have been kind of a turning point, since two years later a non-English speaking role won Best Actress. Before that, though, was Elizabeth Taylor.

1958: Susan Hayward for I Want to Live!

As the exclamation point in its title suggests, this film is intense! Hayward plays Barbara Graham, a woman who has lived a life of crime: fraud, getaway car driving, prostitution, perjury, etc. But she would never do anything really serious like commit murder. Unfortunately, no one believes that when some of her so-called "friends" implicate her in the brutal slaying of a harmless old woman, and Barbara is sentenced to death.

This movie is based on a true story, except apparently in the real story there was actual evidence to suggest that Barbara did commit the murder she was convicted of. In the Hollywood version, she is portrayed as categorically innocent, at least of that crime, and it seems horrible to execute her, since her conviction was based on only her lack of a solid alibi, the eyewitness testimony of someone who admitted to being involved in the crime, and a coerced confession. I'm pretty sure the film left out a few pieces of evidence in order to be more convincing in its anti-death penalty message. Regardless of how accurate it was, the film is very powerful, and at its heart is Hayward's realistic, consistent portrayal of a woman who has had a very hard life.

Barbara's circumstances change drastically throughout the movie, but she is always, unquestionably the same person. She definitely starts to go crazy towards the end, as her execution looms nearer but then keeps getting postponed, but it's in a way that is completely consistent with the way she acts at the beginning of the film. Her life is pretty awful even before she's accused of murder, and she survives by laughing things off and making sassy comebacks, which she uses even when she's on death row. But there's always a tiny bit of vulnerability lurking below the surface, and though Barbara is careful to hide it, Hayward lets the audience see it occasionally throughout. Though most of us would probably be quick to condemn her with the rest of society in the film, given the many questionable decisions she's made in life, Hayward makes her relatable even to people who would never do any of the things she does. Yes, she made a lot of mistakes, but no, she did not deserve to die. The script makes that very clear, but if they'd messed up on the casting of the main character, watching the movie would have felt like slogging through a heap of propaganda. As it turned out, however, it feels like watching a friend suffer, which is a highly unpleasant experience, but a much more effective one. It certainly helps that she was written well, but Hayward's delivery of the lines and her facial expressions greatly enhance the script. I thought she did a particularly good job of freaking out - which she has to do a lot, being convicted of a murder she didn't commit and all - without going over-the-top about it, which seems to be difficult for a lot of actresses.

This was Susan Hayward's fifth and final Best Actress nomination. Previously she was nominated for 1947's Smash Up: The Story of a Woman, 1949's My Foolish Heart, 1952's With a Song in My Heart, and 1955's I'll Cry Tomorrow. I haven't seen any of those performances, but it's hard to imagine one topping this. It's definitely not a movie I'd want to watch over and over again, but her performance made me enjoy it a lot more than I thought I would. I felt so bad for her and so invested in her fate that I did a lot of yelling at the screen, which only the best performances make me do, particularly on the first viewing. Usually I save my yelling until I know what's going to happen.

Next up: Simone Signoret

1957: Joanne Woodward for The Three Faces of Eve

Joanne Woodward plays a woman - or should I say, three women - suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder. The film chronicles a psychiatrist's attempts to help her figure out what caused this and how to cure it.

I want to like this movie, but it's hard. I do mostly enjoy Woodward's performance, especially watching her transform between personalities, but the film portrays such an over-simplified explanation of mental illness that it's extremely difficult to take seriously today. One really has to keep in mind that when it was made nearly 60 years ago, it was revolutionary for even broaching the subject of mental illness at all. But now it does seem kind of lame. My biggest objection is that she usually can't control which personality comes out when, but for some reason when the doctor asks to speak to a different one she just says, "Of course," and switches on command. If she could do that all the time, there wouldn't be as much of a problem. I also object to the idea that this disorder was solely caused by one single semi-traumatic incident in her early childhood, and that by recalling this incident she could suddenly make two of the personalities disappear. Basically, this movie did not age well, and if I could transport my brain back to a 1957 way of thinking just long enough to watch it I would, but as far as I know that's not possible. Since my mother was born in 1957, I was certainly not alive then, so my brain has never experienced that way of thinking. Thus I have to watch it through the lens of the time period in which I live, and from that perspective, this movie doesn't really work.

But I'm not here to evaluate the movie as a whole; I'm here to evaluate Joanne Woodward's performance, which is a little easier. While certainly not the most spectacular I've seen, her performance is far and away the best aspect of this movie. She does a good job of switching between personalities and playing three different characters. She's very good at looking and acting confused when she comes back from a blackout, and I especially like the way she uses a different voice for each personality. The personalities could have been more consistent - I mean, I assume it was "Eve Black" who tried to strangle her child, but once we get to know her she seems relatively harmless, so I have no idea where that came from - but I'm pretty sure that's mostly the script's fault. Except at the very beginning, when no one's really sure what's going on, you can always tell which personality she's portraying by looking at her face and listening to her voice, without even paying attention to what she's saying or doing. The script is lacking, the story is rather pitiful, and the description of mental illness sounds terribly naive today, but Woodward does the absolute best that she possibly can with the limited material she has to work with. To summarize: by today's standards, the movie isn't great, but the performance still is, so it was therefore Oscar-worthy.

This was Woodward's first of four Best Actress nominations. She was nominated again for 1968's Rachel, Rachel, 1973's Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, and 1990's Mr. & Mrs. Bridge, but she didn't win for any of them. At 85 years old, she's the second oldest living Best Actress winner. I guess that means it's theoretically possible for her to win another Oscar, but she hasn't been doing much acting lately apart for some voice work, so that seems unlikely. Besides this performance, she's probably best known for her remarkably long marriage - especially by Hollywood standards - to actor Paul Newman, which lasted from 1958 until his death in 2008, and all the films she made starring opposite him or directed by him. This movie didn't have anything to do with Newman, although I'm pretty sure she was having an affair with him while it was being made, and they got married less than a month before she received the award.

Coming up next: Susan Hayward

1956: Ingrid Bergman for Anastasia

In her second and final Best Actress winning performance, Bergman plays a woman suffering from amnesia who just might be the lost Grand Duchess of Russia.

This isn't exactly the most exciting movie ever made. Personally, I prefer the 1997 animated version. This film could have really used some musical numbers and a creepy, undead villain to spice it up. That being said, I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I was going to. It was a pretty typical Ingrid Bergman performance, which means that by most actresses' standards it was a great performance. It didn't come close to her other Best Actress winning performance in Gaslight, but overall I thought she did a remarkable job of capturing this confused but determined character. While previous Best Actress winner Helen Hayes, who played the Dowager Empress, steals pretty much every scene she's in, Bergman manages to hold her own when they finally meet, quite late in the movie. I would call this film worth watching just to see these two fabulous actresses playing against each other as Bergman tries to convince the hardened Hayes that she could be her granddaughter.

Ingrid Bergman may seem a bit of an odd choice to play a Russian princess, since she was Swedish, and though she was fluent in five languages, Russian was not one of them. It's even more of an interesting choice to have her play opposite Yul Brynner, who was actually Russian. But Bergman was often cast in Hollywood films as "generic European with a vague accent," so after seeing her play characters from a wide variety of countries, it's not quite as strange to imagine her as Russian as one might think. And it's not like the 1997 version was much better; pretty much all the voices were American or British actors. Anyway, despite being from the wrong country, Bergman brings a deep sense of humanity to the character, as she does in most of her roles, so that the audience is always on her side. In the film it's never proven beyond all doubt that she is Anastasia - and in recent years it's actually been proven using DNA analysis that the woman whose story this is based on could not have been her - but watching it you desperately want her to be, just so this poor woman knows who she is. If I didn't feel so bad for her I probably wouldn't have connected with this movie, but Bergman makes her so real that I can't help it.

This was Bergman's fifth of six Best Actress nominations. Her fourth had been for 1948's Joan of Arc, and her final nomination didn't come until 1978's Autumn Sonata, although she won Best Supporting Actress for 1974's Murder on the Orient Express. If you're wondering why there were such large gaps between nominations, I think a lot of it had to do with Roberto Rossellini, the Italian director she had an affair with and eventually married. Hollywood was pretty upset with her for a while, so this Oscar for Anastasia was kind of their way of saying, "We forgive you." Which all seems rather silly now, but back then it was a big deal apparently. In addition, for most of her career she switched back and forth between European films and Hollywood films, which probably also prevented her from receiving more nominations. The final reason I can think of is that by this time she was already over 40, and there have never been too many interesting roles in Hollywood for women in that age group, unless you're Katharine Hepburn or Meryl Streep. In any case, even though I think she was far more worthy in Gaslight than in either of her other two Academy Award winning performances, I still think she deserves to be one of only three actresses so far who have been awarded three Oscars, and if I were in charge she probably would have received more.

Up next: Joanne Woodward, the second Best Actress winner who is still alive

1955: Anna Magnani for The Rose Tattoo

Anna Magnani plays Serafina Delle Rose, a Sicilian immigrant who is convinced that she's married to the greatest man in the world. When he dies, she is devastated for three years. Then one day she hears a rumor that her husband was having an affair, just before she meets a man who has the same rose tattoo on his chest as her husband did.

I know, I thought it sounded kind of intriguing, too. However, this turned out to be one of my least favorite films I've watched for this project so far (I still think it was better than Coquette, though). The pacing was terrible: most scenes took painfully long to get through, but then it would unexpectedly skip a bunch of time. It seemed like some time had passed, and then someone would say, "Earlier today..." and you'd realize that no, it was still part of the same, incredibly long day. None of the characters ever reacted to situations in a logical way, either. They'd all be yelling at each other, and then for no reason they'd calm down and be happy, but pretty soon they'd start yelling again, with seemingly no provocation. The only characters I liked were Serafina's daughter (even though I kind of hated that her name was Rosa Delle Rose) and her sailor boyfriend, but the film didn't focus enough on them except when Serafina was shouting at them. All in all, not a very enjoyable movie to watch, and certainly not one that I would recommend.

It's difficult to evaluate this performance because I don't know how much Anna Magnani is to blame for how bad the movie is. On the one hand, it seems unfair to call this a terrible performance because I'm convinced that not even the greatest actress in the world could have made this a good movie, and a terrible actress probably could have made it much worse than it was. She did a good job of looking and acting completely out of it between her husband's death and meeting the other man. I just had a very hard time believing her character, especially the way she overreacted to everything, and that she apparently didn't even suspect that her husband was having an affair when it was so painfully obvious to everyone else. It would be one thing if she had just been in denial, but she had no clue. I think most of the problems I have are more to do with the way the character was written than the way she was portrayed, but I definitely think she could have been portrayed better. When the script called for an odd reaction, she didn't have to overdo it quite so much. In some ways I like that she really went for it, but it would have been more effective if she had backed off a little bit. I did like some of the banter between her and Burt Lancaster, but then either one or both of them would react in a way that made no sense to me. Maybe the way they acted was consistent with Sicilian culture, which I confess to knowing very little about, but either way I didn't get it.

Anna Magnani was an Italian actress, and this was her first English-speaking role in a Hollywood film. Tennessee Williams had written this play with Magnani in mind, but she turned down the role on Broadway because she didn't speak English very well. She accepted the film role, but still didn't think her English was good enough to win her an Oscar, which is probably why she didn't attend the ceremony. While I obviously didn't love her performance, I think her genuine Italian accent was probably the best part of it. Though I had a lot of trouble understanding why she was so devoted to her husband and why she reacted to situations the way she did, it was easy to believe that she was a recent immigrant. Her accent brought a sense of reality to the character that nothing else did, and I think it might have helped the film if they had cast her opposite an Italian actor, instead of New Yorker Burt Lancaster putting on a half-hearted attempt at an accent.

This was Magnani's first Oscar nomination and her only win. She was nominated once more for 1957's Wild is the Wind. Most of her work was in Italian films and television, and the Academy tends to only recognize English-language performances (with a few exceptions, of course), so it's kind of amazing that she ended up with two nominations. Perhaps I would like her better in other roles, or maybe her style of acting is just beyond my ability to comprehend. Either way, I will not be revisiting this film anytime soon.

Stay tuned for Ingrid Bergman's second Oscar-winning performance

1954: Grace Kelly for The Country Girl

Grace Kelly plays the wife of a depressed, alcoholic, washed-up actor. She is devoted to him even though he treats her abominably, but hopes he will be able to return to the man he once was when he's given a starring role by the director of a new play, who also treats her abominably. Did I mention that she's treated abominably?

I had watched this movie twice before, but I remembered very little about it. I didn't even recall that William Holden was in it, much less that I wanted to punch both him and Bing Crosby in the face about fifty times each throughout the course of the film. I remembered not being particularly fond of Kelly's performance, but the main scene of hers I remembered was the first time she appears, which I determined this time is definitely her worst scene. Her performance improves significantly from her next scene on, so that by the end I decided that overall it's fairly impressive. I still find it rather uncomfortable to watch, partly because the story's so disturbing, and partly because Grace Kelly is so un-Grace Kelly-ish.

When I think of Grace Kelly, I think of her roles in movies like Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, and High Society: sophisticated, poised, glamorous, upper-class ladies whom one could easily picture becoming, say, the Princess of Monaco, for a totally random example. But there is absolutely nothing regal about her character in The Country Girl. Her life has been indescribably painful and difficult, and she's just barely managed to keep it together, and she looks it. Kelly was only 25 when she made this film, which means that Bing Crosby, who played her husband, was more than twice her age, but while he does look older than her, the age gap between them doesn't appear nearly that great. The usually beyond-gorgeous Grace Kelly looks at least ten years older than she is, and not as though she's taken very good care of her appearance, due to a combination of makeup and a defeated demeanor. Not only that, her voice sounds different. She doesn't sound nearly as posh or self-confident as I'm used to. I even caught her actually pronouncing the "r" at the end of words that came before consonants a few times. Consequently, there are moments when she becomes almost unrecognizable, and I have to remind myself that I'm watching Grace Kelly, not some strange actress I've never seen before.

I'm virtually positive that that's why she won this award. While she was always fabulous, there isn't much variety in the kinds of roles she's known for. In this movie, she successfully played against type, so she got an Oscar for it. You're still rooting for her - except maybe not quite so much the first time, when you don't know for sure just how much of a butthead her husband is - but it's because she has such a crappy life, not because she's so fabulous you can't help but love her, as is the case with most of her other roles. She very effectively convinces the audience that she's making the best of impossible circumstances before she has convinced any of the characters, which is why I wanted to punch them in the face. I guess in a way it's kind of similar to her role in Dial M for Murder, but even in that movie she still gets to look pretty. In this movie she does not look as traditionally beautiful as she usually did, demonstrating that she had significant talent in addition to one of the most beautiful faces in the world. Not that she doesn't give good performances in her other films, but her talent is more noticeable when you're not distracted by her appearance. Imagine all the amazing performances she could have given if she hadn't married that prince.

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, many Judy Garland fans are still outraged that Garland didn't win for A Star is Born instead of Grace Kelly for The Country Girl. While I can definitely see where they're coming from, since Judy gives a phenomenal performance in that movie, don't knock Grace's performance until you've seen it a couple of times. It certainly took me three viewings to fully appreciate it, but it really is a very good performance. This was both Kelly and Garland's only nomination in this category, and both were also nominated for Best Supporting Actress once without winning (although Garland was awarded an honorary Juvenile Oscar for her work in 1939). Interestingly, they were both nominated this year for playing the wife of a washed-up actor. Anyway, I'm not saying Garland didn't deserve to win; I'm just saying Kelly didn't not deserve to win.

Grace Kelly was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Mogambo the previous year, and this was her final Oscar nomination. This is not at all surprising, as she didn't make very many movies after this because two years later she married the Prince of Monaco and retired from films forever. I mean, I'm happy for her, she got to be a princess and everything, but I still wish she had made more movies. Is that selfish of me? If she had stayed in Hollywood she probably wouldn't have died in that car crash in 1982. Just saying.

Sorry I spent most of this post rambling about Grace Kelly's other performances. The following year's winner was Anna Magnani, who I don't think I've seen in anything ever, so this won't happen next time.