1935 – Claudette Colbert
Private Worlds
Man, it’s a good thing I’m only reviewing Colbert’s performance, and not the movie as a whole. I had to view it through my modern eyes, and the insensitive way it dealt with mental illness was horrible, not to mention the blatant sexist overtones of the film. But Colbert was fine, though I’ve seen her do better. Just watch her in 1934’s Imitation of Life, and you’ll see what I mean.
And I think my disappointment in her performance can be traced back to the script. As I’ve said before, I believe an acting nomination should be a partnership of actor and script. A wonderful actress can’t do much with a terrible script, but a poor actress can be elevated by a great script. Colbert was a very good actress, and she did what she could with this one, but there just wasn’t much room to shine. There was one scene in which she calms an asylum patient having a violent episode, and she was good there. There was an intensity in that moment that her character seemed to lack in much of the movie. She simply didn’t have a lot to work with.
She played the character of Dr. Jane Everest, a scientist and clinical psychiatrist working in a mental asylum. When the hospital’s management changes, the new superintendent is ridiculously conservative, and immediately demotes her without looking at her work history or even speaking to her. He believes that women have no place in professional medicine. Her solution is to meekly accept the extreme discrimination and reject the support of her friends and colleagues. I think she was supposed to be a figure of female empowerment but this utterly failed. Look how smart she is. Look how confident she is. Look how professional she is. But in the end, falling in love with the man who mistreated her was what made her complete.
Colbert could have been so much better as a woman who fought against the sexist behavior and earned respect and fair treatment from her new boss, not by being a woman he could fall in love with, but by standing her ground and not allowing him to put her down. I wanted Dr. Everest to be strong, but instead, she was weak. And I don’t know if there was anything Colbert could have done, as an actress, to bring that to the surface. That was what the script required, and she did her job.