The Final Conclusion - Best Actress 1964

1964

So the much anticipated ranking is:

5. Debbie Reynolds in The Unsinkable Molly Brown

I can say that I got what I expected, a standard 60s musical performance from Debbie Reynolds. Although this work is really mixed and uneven, there are some scenes to admire or at least like about it. It's nothing mindblowing or ground-breaking but it did not bother me that much, so I don't feel bad about it.

4. Sophia Loren in Marriage Italian Style

This is a great performance by the magnificent Sophia Loren, which may not be her career best but it's still very good work. Although there are amazing scenes in this work, the really common comedy scenes drag Sophia's performance down. She's still wonderful but she could have been once again mindblowingly brilliant.

3. Anne Bancroft in The Pumpkin Eater

This is an incredibly hard performance to judge. Anne chose all the difficult and risky ways with her character but she succeeded and she was able to put on a shocking, perplexing and terrying character study of a woman who has serious problems in her life.

2. Kim Stanley in Seance on a Wet Afternoon

This performance is also extremely hard to judge. It's full of fantastic scenes and it's overall effect is just brilliant and just like with Bancroft, I am not really sure what I am going to think about her. However, I just cannot overlook that Kim Stanley was able to put on a fantastic, chilling and unforgettable performance as Myra Savage.

1. Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins

It's a great achievement and it's no wonder that it became an iconic performance among children. Because if you really want to see the wonders of this role, you must loose yourself and (and just like Banks) become a child again for two hours. I may be alone with this but I think that this is fantastic work.

So I can proudly announce

that my winner is...

Julie Andrews

in

Mary Poppins

Julie is preparing to accept this award... :)

Final thoughts: A superb year but the performances were all so difficult to rate. My reaction to Julie Andrews was just as shocking to me as it was to you. Loren was great as expected, Bancroft was the most difficult to rate ever but now there are small problems that occured. I knew that Reynolds would suck and I loved Stanley when I first saw her, she was in a Bryan Forbes movie, so there was no surprise about her. However, after all Julie Andrews was a clear cut winner despite some tough competition from Kim Stanley. I think many of you think I'm crazy but I was truly captivated by Julie's performance and its mysteriousness.

Omissions: 

• Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (she was way better than Debbie Reynolds)

The ranking of the already reviewed years:

1. 1969
2. 1974
3. 1989
4. 1959
5. 1964
6. 1939
7. 1977
8. 2010
9. 2009
10. 1980
11. 1941
12. 1963
13. 1966
14. 1973
15. 1990
16. 1978
17. 1954
18. 1948
19. 2002
20. 1940
21. 1998

About the next year: I couldn't decide between two (consecutive) years. Both are said to be quite weak and yet I'm so interested in both of them. Plus they are from the decade I've been ignoring for a while. However, I've chosen the second year as I've seen only one of the nominees and I love when I have new performances to discover. The clues (quite easy ones):

• (L) Nuns (L)
• (L) Soaps (L)
• Viva Italia!

What do you think?

Off-topic: I saw 127 Hours yesterday. It was BRILLIANT and would have deserved Best Picture (tied with Black Swan), Actor, Editing and Song. You lose a lot if you don't watch it in a movie theater (fantastic cinematogrpahy BTW and a directing that should have WON and it wasn't even nominated).

Kim Stanley in Seance on a Wet Afternoon

Kim Stanley received her first Oscar nomination (out of two) and her only one in the Best Actress category for playing Myra Savage, a woman in possession of a strange "gift". I'm a bit uncertain if I think about Stanley's chances of winning that year. Although Anne Bancroft swept the high-profile awards, Stanley got all the important acclaims from the critics. Still, the movie was too British (much like The Pumpkin Eater) and she wasn't as much of a movie star as Bancroft. Stanley was basically a stage actress and did not make many movies.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon is a very weird and tough movie. It's really full of tension and it's quite different from the other movies of Bryan Forbes. It's not a real kitchen sink drama like The L-Shaped Room and The Whisperers, it's just a very intense psychological drama. Richard Attenborough, who went on to receive an Oscar for Best Directing the year Kim Stanley was nominated for Frances, gives an excellent performance as the coward, terrified husband of Myra. He was totally robbed of the nomination, in my opinion. Anthony Quinn was better as Zorba but Attenborough was great anyhow.

Kim Stanley's performance is so interesting and I am so full of emotions about it. I don't know her work very well and as she worked mostly on the stage, I really doubt that I can see that much of her later. She was a real method actress and that's really visible in this performance. She totally becomes this very complicated woman and Stanley, the actress completely disappeared. As I was watching the movie, I always saw Myra Savage, the British psychic and not Kim Stanley, the American actress.

Myra Savage is a character that requires someone who's an actress first and not a star. She's a very ordinary woman with an ordinary face and a very annoying personality. I mean, we should just imagine Elizabeth Taylor playing her. We would get the tears, the shouting but we wouldn't get the simplicity of Myra. Although it's a very tough and hard role to play, Stanley handled it with visible self-discipline and she never went too over-the-top with her. The part had some traps and difficulties but Stanley managed to avoid all of them.

Kim Stanley added all the layers to this character, step by step. First, Myra seems to be obsessed woman who seems to be acting a lot. However, she sinks deeper and deeper into her madness and her obsession with a terrible secret, which Stanley always suggests us with her acting. She gives little clues with short sentences, words and we just can't see the truth behind them. And it's just astonishing how Stanley managed to always keep Myra very mysterious. Whenever you feel that you're getting to know her, something very extremely surprising comes and you feel so shocked.

Furthermore, Stanley's always so frightening in those seance scenes. One can always feel that Myra really believes that she has this gift and that she's really talking to spirits. It's extremely hard not to talk about this performance without giving away much about the movie and it all the twists of the plot. However, I can say that Stanley's responisble for the suffocating tension of the movie and even its overall effect on you.

Also, Stanley and Attenborough have a marvelous chemistry and they work together astonishingly well. There's a huge confrontation scene between them, which is just perfect. It's great that they never try to outdo each other, they truly co-operate and the result is just fantastic. Attenborough is the more subtle and quite one, Stanley is more loud and emotional and as a result the performances keep the balance and that's amazing, I think. They always remain very believable and one just doesn't have any doubt that they have been indeed married for a long time.

This performance (very much like Bancroft in The Pumpkin Eater) is extremely hard to judge. It's full of fantastic scenes and it's overall effect is just brilliant and just like with Bancroft, I am not really sure what I am going to think about her. However, I just cannot overlook that Kim Stanley was able to put on a fantastic, chilling and unforgettable performance as Myra Savage. Great work.

What do you think?

The Next Year

1964

So the nominees were:

• Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins
• Anne Bancroft in The Pumpkin Eater
• Sophia Loren in Marriage Italian Style
• Debbie Reynolds in The Unsinkable Molly Brown
• Kim Stanley in Seance on a Wet Afternoon

Wow, I know it's surprising that I'm going to do this year now but I just got The Pumpkin Eater and I haven't started reviewing 1991 (I can't resist), so I'm doing this year now and the first review comes next Friday (March 11th). I'm so excited about this year as I don't have a clue on who will get my vote. So interesting and it's rarely talked about besides Andrews.

What do you think? What are your predictions? What's your ranking?