Popmatters.com posted an article about the 100 Greatest Female Perfomances. It was an outstanding and detailed collection of many inspired performances by known and unknown actresses who tear into movies and leave us begging for more. So it got me thinking about brilliant performances by women that have singed my own conscience. Here are just a few that very quickly come to mind and why I chose them:
Elizabeth Taylor: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?Taylor’s portrayal of Martha in this astounding film adaptation of Edward Albee’s wickedly masterful play is a Revelation with a capital “R”. Taylor often regarded for her incredible beauty gives a hard-hitting performance with such brutal magnitude. The film centers around college president’s daughter Martha and her verbally and emotionally abusive marriage to her history professor husband George (played pitch-perfect by Richard Burton) which becomes a psychological battle of the wits when they invite the new professor Nick and his sensitive wife Honey over for cocktails one long, dizzying night. Taylor could have easily made Martha unlikable to audiences with her overtly sexual, brash, occasionally crude drunkenness, which in the hands of any other actress could have come across as annoying and overacted. But Taylor’s precise and determined performance is a Master Class in acting. In my opinion one of the best performances ever given on screen. We not only sympathize with Taylor’s Martha, we fall in love with all her heart-aching brokenness and see beyond the drunken gaze, the sight of a deeply wounded woman whose illusions are slowly shattering. By the end of the film, we not only feel her abyssal fear, we are frightened and helpless. And that, I think, is the point.
Diana Sands: The LandlordPerhaps the most phenomenal unknown Black actress to come along thus far. Diana Sands died at the age of 39 before she was able to seek the stardom she so richly deserved. Sands had this raw and soulful presence on screen. A raspy voice, a touch of brashness, uncommon beauty and a wounded magnetism, she literally lit up the screen which is what makes her so captivating in Hal Asby’s arthouse 1970’s social satire The Landlord. Sands played opposite Beau Bridges as one of the two black women his character takes a romantic interest in. The role may be supporting but Sands gave us such complexity we rather focus on her life as a woman married to a man (played by Louis Gossett Jr.) suffering with mental illness. Sands has a few very tender scenes which are the driving the force that anchor this movie in its complex, unflinching racial realities. Near the end of the film, when Sands has Bridges’ baby, she gives the baby away to Bridges’ character and tells him to raise the baby as “white.” When Bridges asks why, Sands replies: “’cause I want him to grow up real casual, like his daddy.” It’s so heartbreaking yet unsentimental. Only an actress with Sands’ kind of depth could make a line like that carry an entire film. It’s just a testament to her power as an actress. She is completely connected to some profound inner truth and does not waste one scene. Damn.
Meryl Streep: A Cry in the DarkI’ve watched her movies often and questioned whether she is an actual human. How can such an extraordinary gift such as hers be of this galaxy? Her talent---let’s face it—is supernatural. She can be anyone, any time period, any accent, good or bad movie—she is always, always magnificent and 100 percent. There are so many Streep performances worthy of writing about—hell, one could dedicate a book or twenty to it. But one performance that constantly haunts me is her portrayal of Lindy Chamberlain. The true account of a religious woman accused of murdering her baby because of her seemingly outlandish claim that a dingo ate her baby. Streep’s performance has so much complexity and depth—you’re never quite sure what you think of her. Sometimes you believe her, sometimes you’re unsure. It’s that quiet, menacing uncertainty that keeps you focused. Streep illuminates a sense of strange uneasiness without pushing cheap melodrama. The court room scenes showcase some of her strongest work as an actress. There’s real dimension, sadness, and suffering. And when she’s not speaking in her flawless Australian accent, we simply watch her gaze; those eyes, piercing and mysterious. We see her wounded by the vicious attacks of a society and media quick to cast blame yet she emerges from the ashes, demonstrating her own quiet war with God.
Faye Dunaway: NetworkFaye Dunaway as Diana Christensen the cold, heartless TV producer whose mission for Reality TV content was about 20 years ahead of her time—since we now live in Diana Christensen twisted television paradise of overstuffed Reality TV domination—blood, guts, and ratings! Dunaway with spitfire speed and brutal ambition steals her every scene—a brilliant script gives Dunaway just enough ground to launch into a towering, frightening symbol of the modern day ice queen—bloodthirsty, bitchy, and singeing with blind ambition. You feel almost terrified for William Holden’s character Max Schumacher who falls helplessly into her artificial clutches. Her blistering presence makes her all the more exciting to watch. And we know Miss Christensen could care less who we are. We just know we better keep watching—or else.
Mary Tyler Moore: Ordinary PeopleI don’t know how one prepares for a role like this. Moore--a long way from her sitcom--plays Beth, a mother frozen into emotional paralysis after the death of her eldest son to the point where she cannot connect with her surviving son, wracked with depression. It’s the subtlety Moore has so eloquently displayed. The carefully painted strokes of a woman slowly drowning in her grief—without all the Lifetime movie melodramatic sentiment. This portrayal is so unsentimental, which makes it so fiercely profound. The only way Beth can function is to keep her head above water and shut off her ability to feel. A heart-wrenching, delicate performance like this requires a specific sort of brilliance. Moore plays the role so tight, so internally, so close to the hip that you want to hate Beth for her arctic detachment but you simply can’t. She won’t let you. She allows us to latch on, uneasily, to Beth’s unfathomable anguish and by the end of the film, our attempts to fully understand her are shattered. Don't expect Beth to illustrate some sort of pity at the end. No, it's not that simple. Grief--she reminds us--is never that simple.
Ruby Dee: A Raisin In the SunRuby Dee gives a wrenching, heartfelt performance as Ruth Younger in the film adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's excellently-crafted play. Dee's Ruth is the long-suffering yet loyal and unwavering wife of Walter (Sidney Poitier). What makes Dee so amazing is how natural her performance feels. We are truly captivated by her vulnerability and desire for something better in this world. No matter her feeling trapped and despairing, her family is all she has and she'd do anything to protect it--even the unspeakable. There's one key scene where Ruth thinks she'll finally see her piece of happiness in this life. Dee expresses it with such profound glory, that our tears start to flow as we come to understand what it means to hold tightly to a dream and--all too easily--see it deferred.
Alfre Woodard: Passion FishAs a former drug addict turned caretaker Chantelle, Woodard is brilliant. Chantelle is a woman desperate to defy her past and move into some sort of uncertain future as she cares for a former soap opera actress who was paralyzed in an accident. This may very be one of the most underrated performances of the 90's. Woodard spends so much of the movie trying to save her patient May-Alice from drowning in her own grief--she must fight to keep her own head above water. Woodard's quiet strength is masterful. Everything she can't express through words, she says painfully with her eyes. Sometimes too painfully. There are scenes where Woodard can just grab your heart. We know her frustration, we channel her fears, we watch as she fights for her life, the longing for her child, and her need for love but her uneasiness to love. In the final scene, Chantelle and May-Alice talk about Chantelle's childish need to please her father. May-Alice talks of once playing the faithful daughter Cordelia in King Lear and says: "All you can do is play it straight until the end." And that's exactly what Woodard does.
Debbi Morgan: Eve’s BayouIn the dark and lyrical film, Eve’s Bayou, Morgan is as stunning as she is mysterious as Mozelle, the black widow sister to her philandering brother played by Samuel L. Jackson. She puts so much soulful conviction in the role of a woman whose gift and curse lies in her psychic powers to see the pain of everyone’s lives but her own. By a lesser actress, this role could very easily fall flat but Morgan’s so deeply attuned to Mozelle’s wounded grace. There’s a key scene—superbly directed—where she unfolds her dark past in the reflection of a mirror and the scene is as magical as it is moving—just like this performance.
Gena Rowlands: A Woman Under the InfluenceHow does one even define a performance as immense and profound as this? I don't truly have the words. You just have to watch this film. Rowlands so embodies the sometimes horrifying truths of what it means to suffer from mental illness. This is not your movie of the week head-case, where mental instability is packaged neatly into melodramatic plot points. No. Rowlands goes deep. And by deep I mean, somewhere into the abyss of agonized brokenness. She plays a wife and mother constantly spiraling, needing so desperately to be rescued from herself. This is a Cassevetes masterpiece--stark, unflinching and uncompromising in its force. It doesn't want you to blink but often times you want to turn away--even for a moment of relief. But Rowlands won't let you. She has no relief--so why should you? This performance is a lesson in total transformation, full embodiment. Maybe that's what "acting" is but upon repeated viewings of this film, I think she's doing something way, way beyond.
Bette Davis: All About Eve“funny business, a woman's career.
The things you drop on your way up
the ladder, so you can move faster.
You forget you'll need them again
when you go back to being a woman.
That's one career all females have
in common - whether we like it or
not - being a woman.
Sooner or later we've all got to
work at it, no matter what other
careers we've had or wanted... and,
in the last analysis, nothing is
any good unless you can look up
just before dinner or turns around
in bed - and there he is. Without
that, you're not woman. You're
something with a French provincial
office or a book full of clippings -
but you're not a woman...” Yeah, that’s really all it takes. Delivering lines like this with pitch-perfect control. Hearing this monologue by Bette Davis as Margo Channing continues to haunt me and strike a real, tender chord. Here is a woman on the edge. A so-called “aging” stage actress in her 40s fighting tooth and nail for her place on the unsettling rollercoaster of celebrity. But that Davis’s speciality—delivering a great line with her brashness and soul. And those eyes! She just locks you in. It’s so calculated but she commands us with such feminine ease. Who else could so easily tight-rope walk internal agony with outward theatrics—in her fiery, bitch-please way? The film might be called All About Eve but all I care about is Bette.
Giulietta Masina: Nights of CabiriaIn Fellini's film, Masina plays the lovelorn Cabiria with such emotional nakedness at times I wanted to turn from the screen. Cabiria suffers endless humiliations from just about everyone she encounters in her life. We watch her on this quest for true love and connection and we feel every inch of her anguish. An anguish that runs so deep, it stirs up our own anxieties about connectedness. Masina's performance is astounding. She slips so naturally into Cabiria's optimistic prostitute, filled with such enormous passion that she's punished for it by the heartbreak she finds at every turn. For me, this is my favorite Fellini film, perhaps because of Masina's strong, bruising performance. Never has Fellini so honestly and singularly portrayed the devastating, unusually cruel spell that love can cast--especially on those so willing and ready to receive it. Masina plays a woman constantly bloodied by the brutality of love and her performance is the sucker punch that gives the film its searing power.
Judy Marte: Raising Victor VargasBeing a teenager is hard. Even harder if you’re growing up in a working class neighborhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan as a pretty girl who is constantly and often crudely being harassed by boys and men. Maybe it’ll toughen you—because Marte’s character also named Judy is definitely tough—but there’s such sadness, heartfelt teenage angst, spiritual bruising—even a sense of grown woman bitterness which is so unfortunate to see: a youngster who has lost all wonder for the world so early. That’s Marte’s gift. Because as a supporting character, much of Judy, feels very sketched in to the driving story. But Marte makes Judy’s presence carry so much weight you want the movie to be about her. She comes across like a little girl lost, scared, trying not to fall in love with the conceited, self-proclaimed Romeo, Victor who can’t see beyond her blinding beauty. But when he finally sees, when we, the audience, finally see the Judy underneath all the hardness, we are transfixed and anxious like young love itself—Marte’s performance of subtle brilliance--gives us butterflies.
Kate Winslet: Holy SmokeIt was tough to choose between two of my favorite Winslet performances--it was between this one in Holy Smoke and her spunky heartbreaker in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But this won out. Holy Smoke is an overly ambitious, sometimes profound, sometimes confusing examination of spirituality in the modern age. Winslet as Ruth is so strong, intimate, and fiery as a rebellious young woman who was in a cult and is in need of deprogramming. She totally elevates the film at every calculated turn with such extraordinary depth. She gets to the core of our spiritual trappings--our exhausting battle with disillusionment and despair. She's almost too effortless, which is essentially the reason she is one of my favorite actresses. And in this role she proves herself as one of the most--if not the most--fearless actresses of her generation. Her performance is the savior of this film which never quite knows what it wants to say. But Winslet speaks volumes--odd, perplexing, beautiful, wounded, and ripe with intelligent fury--this performance is its own religious experience. Amen.
Diahann Carroll: ClaudineDiahann Carroll! Oh the extraordinary Miss Carroll burns up the screen as the down-trodden, emotionally-wounded Claudine, a single mother in the ghetto raising six unruly children. There are lots of raised voices frustrated and distressed with the harsh realities of urban living, that being pushed up against the wall lifestyle that bruises and breaks so many—but there’s this ferocious spirit Carroll evokes in Claudine. There’s a tenderness underneath all the weariness. That tough love sentiment she expresses with her older son and daughter is some of her finest work. There’s one scene between Claudine and her eldest daughter that is heart-breaking. It’s as if Claudine is seeing herself through a mirror, watching her daughter make her mistakes. It’s one of the most powerful mother-daughter scenes I’ve ever seen. When Claudine falls in love with a garbage man, Rupert (played with soul by James Earl Jones), the scenes are filled with disillusioned passion. Carroll demonstrates such control, such brilliance as a woman slipping away from herself—and what she desires more than anything is her own moment, her own self-possession where she doesn’t need to be anything to anyone—and Carroll does it all with her eyes. Now that’s some damn-fine acting.
Angela Bassett: What's Love Got To Do With It?Angela Bassett. She gave the definitive performance as Tina Turner in "What's Love Got to Do With It?" We watch as she evolves from the fragile, downtrodden Anna Mae Bullock abandoned by her mother to becoming Tina Turner, fearless queen of rock n' roll. Angela's dynamic power to truly illuminate the magic of a musical goddess who also was in an abusive and turbulent marriage to rock pioneer Ike Turner is utterly captivating. You believe Angela IS Tina. There is such raw emotion and fire that stirs in Angela as she portrays a legend and becomes a legend in her own right.
