1938 – Miliza Korjus
The Great Waltz
I’ll start this review off by saying that I didn’t particularly care for Miliza Korjus’s performance, and I have two reasons why. She wasn’t terrible, but she wasn’t great, and sadly not worthy of her nomination. I’m not going to say she couldn’t act, but I’ve seen better. And I’m not going to say she couldn’t sing, but again, I’ve heard better. But I will give her one thing. She was absolutely gorgeous.
So let’s look at those two points a little more closely. First was her acting. As I said, she wasn’t bad. But her performance seemed to lack passion and conviction for me. The role she played was that of a vain opera star who is won over by the music of Strauss. In stereotypical fashion, she was used to getting her way all the time. But if you are going to play the spoiled diva, then play it. Give us a little more energy, more drama. Be more grandiose and more animated. She had these qualities, but I think that they were a bit too subtle. It felt to me like she was holding back, almost as if her command of the English language affected her self-confidence. I don’t know if that was true, but that’s what it felt like.
And then there was her singing. Now, this might not have been her fault, but that was why she was in the movie. She was there to look pretty and to sing. Maybe it was a bad sound recording, but she sounded shrill and unpleasant to listen to. I have no doubt that she sounded fantastic if you were listening to her in a live performance, but in this film, her soprano voice became a little piercing. She sounded a little like Snow White, in the first Disney animated feature, and thus fit for a cartoon character. Her occasional staccato melismas were awful. Granted, there were times where she sounded alright, especially when she was singing in a lower register, but her high notes were just not pleasing to the ear.
But there was one scene in particular that I actually liked her performance a lot. It was the scene in which she first hears Strauss’s Tales From the Vienna Woods, and finds herself falling in love with him. She was properly mesmerized by the beautiful music, entranced by the grandeur of the lovely melody. In that moment, I believed her. But if that was the highlight of her performance, I think I wanted more.