Speaking of bewilderment-a more pleasant variety, this time-just how did the NYFCC come up with this fascinating choice? Bankhead wasn’t an Oscar nominee that year, and while she was top-billed in Hitchcock’s ensemble drama, her role isn’t significantly more prominent than anybody else’s, though she’s having more fun than anybody else. New York Film Critics Circle: Tallulah Bankhead, Lifeboat.This kind of mismatch happens all the time, but that doesn’t make it any less bewildering. Mostly, though, I’m just a bit gobsmacked to be reminded that Bergman’s three Oscars were for Gaslight, Anastasia, and Murder On The Orient Express, rather than for any of the canonical classics with which she’s most associated. This is a role that any number of actors could have fretted their way through equally well, and in some ways, Diana Wynyard plays it more adroitly in the British version of the film, made four years earlier-Bergman cranks every reaction up to 11, whereas Wynyard maintains a steady thrum of subterranean apprehension, which is frequently more effective. Compare this performance to her turn as a frustrated wife in 1950’s Stromboli, the first film she made with future husband Roberto Rossellini, and it’s clear she was capable of a great deal more complexity than Gaslight allows her, even in a circumscribed context involving marital torment. It’s solid work, but everything’s right on the surface, and director George Cukor tends to place Bergman at the center of the frame and have her react with exaggerated alarm to conversations behind her or noises above her. #Ingrid bergman gaslight movieGaslight, which came out a year after Casablanca, unquestionably provided her with a memorable showcase the movie is about a woman who’s being slowly, deliberately driven insane, and Bergman plays her with a range that encompasses every emotion on the spectrum from low-grade anxiety to full-scale panic. Ingrid Bergman was somehow not even nominated for her performances in Casablanca, Notorious, or Journey To Italy, yet she won three Oscars for work that’s much less fondly remembered today. Hollywood began its tradition of rewarding its greatest actors for the wrong roles early. Academy Award: Ingrid Bergman, Gaslight.
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