I’ve never seen Jeffrey Wright in a bad movie. He is such a good actor, and I’m so glad to see him take the lead, at last. Maybe he’s had plenty of leading roles before, but not in anything I’ve seen, though I’ve seen him in plenty of supporting roles. There’s just something about him that screams intelligence and maturity, both qualities that the character of Dr. Thelonious “Monk” Ellison needed. Wright fit the bill perfectly, as if the script was written with him in mind.
This was a movie that had an incredibly smart script, a great cast of actors, and a message that really spoke to me. Monk Ellison is a black author. He comes from a family of college graduates and respectable affluence. It’s important to say it that way because the point of the movie had to do with race and the prevailing white perception of the black American experience. The irony around which the plot revolves is that Monk is a highly educated man whose books do not sell because they aren’t black enough for white readers.
But when, as a joke, an accusation, he uses an assumed name to write a “black” book about thugs, drugs, and criminals, it becomes his only best-seller. The publishing house, run by white people who love the story because they think it is raw and real, portraying what they think all black people are like, proving just how instinctively racist they actually are. The trouble is, that though he hates the book and all it stands for, Monk can’t turn down all the money the book sales generate.
And the B plot is nearly as interesting. It follows Monk as he navigates his complex relationships with his siblings, his aging mother, and a new love interest. Joining Wright in this great cast are Tracee Ellis Ross as his sister Lisa, Sterling K Brown as his gay brother Cliff, Leslie Uggams as his mom Agnes, Myra Lucretia Taylor as his mother’s housekeeper who is as close as family, and John Ortiz as his agent. Issa Rae was good as a contemporary author who unapologetically wrote her own “black” novel. And finally, Erika Alexander played his girlfriend Coraline, who I thought did a really good job, playing opposite Wright. She was beautiful and easy, and I enjoyed watching her on the screen.
In the modern age of woke political correctness, it seems to be almost trendy for rich white people to champion anything that’s black, the blacker the better. There is nothing worse for a wealthy white person than to be accused of being racist. And so they give profuse attention to black people and black issues, as if doing so makes them look more enlightened and Non-racist. The problem is that for years, the media, especially the white media, has told them that most black people are gang members, drug dealers, and criminals, and they believe it.
I don’t pretend to know the statistics, but I know that there are millions of black people that are just as ordinary and affluent as the Ellison family in American Fiction. And I also know that there are a lot of educated black people who are way smarter and more well-spoken than me. So why is it that so many movies, so much pop music, and so many news stories seem to focus on, or even glorify the negative stereotypes? It makes no sense. That is what this movie is trying to draw attention to, and it does so in a lightly comedic way. I mean, the relationship story-lines weren’t funny at all, but the creation of the pseudonym, and the educated man trying to “black it up” were pretty amusing.
I also have to mention the cool jazzy soundtrack that was used. It gave the whole movie an easy, lighthearted feel that I quite enjoyed. Composer Laura Karpman wrote twenty-one tracks for around forty-seven minutes of music, and it was buoyant and delightful. And it was nice to have a movie that specifically dealt with an aspect of racism, with decidedly black themes, that wasn’t hip-hop or rap.
And finally, I’d like to mention the interesting ending. The movie was about Monk’s story, writing an intentionally pandering novel, and becoming a secret success for it. But the end of the film began to blend his story with that of his novel, making the viewer question how much of the film was fiction, and how much of it was reality. It was a fictional story about an author writing fiction, and even the title American Fiction had a double meaning, referring to Monk’s book, and the lie surrounding its creation. It’s not the first time such a storytelling device was used, but it was done rather effectively here.
This movie just worked on so many levels, but mostly, I think it worked because of Jeffrey Wright. He is simply a great actor and he seems like such a nice and likeable guy. Even though his character had problems sharing his emotions with anyone, a welcome flaw in his character, he just seemed like a big friendly teddy bear, and a smart one, at that, which is always an attractive trait. I’m so happy that he was nominated for Best Actor. And he wasn’t the only one who was nominated for an acting award. Sterling K. Brown was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, as well, though neither of them took home an Oscar. In fact, they were both beat in their respective categories by someone from Oppenheimer, and it’s kind of hard to argue with that powerhouse.
There is a lot to say about Oppenheimer. It was a very good movie, and I can see why it was nominated for Best Picture. I can understand why it won. It was a dramatized biopic about the career of the man who was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the first nuclear bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. It was an event that had an effect on the course of human history, and thus, he was a man who literally changed the world forever in ways that, even now, we might not be able to foresee. It looked at his personal relationships, his professional relationships, and his involvement in events that changed the world in both bad and good ways. He was a brilliant theoretical physicist, and at times, a complicated and tortured man. In other words, he was the perfect subject for the creation of a Best Picture winning movie.
Oppenheimer was nominated for twelve Academy Awards, and took home seven. Most notable, Christopher Nolan won for Best Director, Cillian Murphy won for Best Actor, and Robert Downey Jr. won for Best Supporting Actor. The film also took home Oscars for Cinematography, Film Editing, and Best Original Score. The nominations it didn’t win were for Emily Blunt in the Best Supporting Actress category, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design, and Best Sound. That’s a pretty impressive list.
As seems to be the trend in recent years, the story was told nonlinearly. It kept jumping back and forth between three plot lines. The main story was that of J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Murphy, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that developed the nuclear weapons. This story, which began in 1926, followed a fairly linear path, but it was intercut with scenes from the 1959 Senate Confirmation hearings of Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss, who, as depicted by the film, was secretly a rival of Oppenheimer, seeking revenge for professional and personal sleights, both real and imagined, and a private security hearing in front of a Personnel Security Board concerning Oppenheimer’s Q clearance, in which his loyalty to America was questioned. It is later revealed that this hearing was orchestrated by Admiral Strauss, in order to discredit Oppenheimer.
The main story was filmed in color, while the senate hearings that took place later were in black and white. Director Christopher Nolan, who also won the Best Director Oscar, said that this was to tell a more objective story from a different character’s perspective. But I think this device also served to more firmly separate the stories that were being told simultaneously. Each of the three plot-lines were interesting in their own right, and I’d bet that each of them could have made an interesting film by themselves. But the way that Nolan spliced them together, with ideas and revelations that overlapped and had relevance across the board, was absolutely brilliant.
Interesting note: Many critics have called Oppenheimer a masterpiece. It has been lauded as the best of the director’s films. To quote Wikipedia, “Steven Soderbergh said of the film, ‘Oppenheimer is a real accomplishment. I read somewhere that Chris [Nolan] implied that this is the movie he’s been building toward, and I think he’s right. And I’m thrilled that it’s a massive hit.’”
I think it is fair to say that not only did the film tell an interesting story in an incredibly entertaining way, but it also had a certain amount of historical and social relevance. It was almost a cautionary tale about the dangers of opening a Pandora’s Box. What are the moral consequences of creating such a devastating device as a nuclear bomb? Did it save more lives than it destroyed? And what would the creation of such a lethal device do to the psyche of the man who developed it? And was Oppenheimer, the man, the scientist, to be praised for his work, or condemned for it?
That’s where the real drama of the movie came out, and the fantastic cast really stepped up to the plate. That’s why three members of the cast were nominated for acting awards, and why two of them won. In the lead was Cillian Murphy, playing the title character. Not only did he look like the real man he was portraying, but he nailed the pathos of the character, bringing out the inner workings of the mind of the man, from the way he behaved, to the way he reacted to the events in which he was participating. Even when he was saying nothing, Murphy allowed us to hear what Oppenheimer was thinking, with his posture, his eyes, his facial expressions.
Robert Downey Jr. has had a long career, a problem with drugs and run-ins with the law that ruined him professionally, and a comeback that turned him into one of the highest-payed and most sought after actors of his generation. Most people today know him from his work as Iron Man in the MCU franchise, a role that has effectively ended. But here he proves, yet again, how good an actor he really is. But I have to note the similarities between his role here as Admiral Strauss and Tony Stark. Both characters are rich and powerful in their fields. They both have an ego that often gets the better of them. But as Strauss, Downey brought out a pettiness and a vindictiveness Stark didn’t possess. The movie almost portrays Strauss as a behind-the-scene villain, the unapologetic Salieri to Oppenheimer’s Mozart.
Then there were the two leading ladies of the movie, Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt. Blunt played Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, Pugh, his mistress, Jean Tatlock, a psychiatrist and member of the Communist Party USA, who committed suicide after Oppenheimer ended his relationship with her. They both did a great job, but Blunt stood out more, simply because her character carried a more significant portion of the film’s drama. She played the woman behind the man, the one who supported him and occasionally had to push him onto the path she knew he had to follow. She gave us Kitty’s sense of guilt for her own part in her husband’s creation, and her clear respect for his genius, which sometimes seemed to border on fear. Blunt really gave us a fantastic performance.
And there were even more big names in the cast, names like Matt Damon, who played General Leslie Groves, the military officer who was the director of the Manhattan Project. He was hard and staunch in proper military fashion, and Damon did an amazing job. There was Josh Hartnett, Casey Afleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Jason Clarke, James D’Arcy, Alden Ehrenreich, Matthew Modine, and even a single memorable scene with Gary Oldman playing President Harry S. Truman. They all did a great job.
For me, I think Ehrenreich and Clarke both really stood out. The former played Admiral Strauss’ Senate aide, who, when Strauss’ true motives were revealed, began to turn against his boss. It must have been difficult for him to play all his scenes against Robert Downey Jr., who was at the top of his game, but he really stepped up to the plate and did a fine job. The latter played Roger Robb, the main interrogator in the private security hearing, who was appointed by Strauss, with the agenda of discrediting Oppenheimer. He was particularly good in the scene where he questions Kitty. She was great in that scene, too!
Interesting Note: Another paraphrased quote from Wikipedia: “The casting process was so secretive that some cast members did not know which role they would be playing until they signed on. Downey, Damon, and Blunt took pay cuts, with each earning only $4 million in lieu of their usual $10–20 million salary. Downey would later describe Oppenheimer as “the best film” in which he has appeared to date. When Blunt was offered the role of Kitty, she enthusiastically accepted, then contacted Murphy to ask what working with Nolan would be like.Damon was taking a break from acting as a result of negotiations with his wife in couples therapy, but signed on to Oppenheimer as he had reserved one exception: if Nolan offered him a role in a film.”
Now I have to mention the film’s score. Composer Ludwig Göransson put together a score that was both structured and fluid at the same time. There was music that created tension, even in scenes that shouldn’t have any because we all know, historically, what was going to happen. There were passages of the score that reminded me vaguely of the music of Phillip Glass. There were repeating circular patterns of counterpoint that were perfect for setting moods for the scenes, and building a sense of expectation that was so effective. I am glad that Göransson took home the Oscar for Best Original Score. He deserved it.
As with all movies that are based on real events, I like to do a little reading to determine just how accurate the film was. In the case of Oppenheimer, I am happy to report that it was apparently quite accurate. The differences were subtle. An embellishment here, an omission there, a changed character here, an altered reaction there. For example, President Truman did indeed call Oppenheimer a crybaby, but it was in a letter at a later time, not directly after his meeting with the scientist, and within earshot as he exited the Oval Office.
But aside from those small things, Nolan, who wrote the screenplay, remained very true to the real events of the story. It was based on a book about Oppenheimer by authors Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, called American Prometheus, Prometheus being the Greek figure who stole Fire from the Gods and gave it to mankind. I’ve no doubt that the film’s historical accuracy went a long way to impress the Academy voters.
Something else I found fascinating were the film’s visual effects. Nolan is known for his preference for practical effects instead of CGI effects, something I happen to agree with. I have no problem with CGI, as it has gotten to a point where most computer generated imagery looks perfectly real. It’s so good that most of the time you don’t even see it or recognize that it is a digital effect. But I have a respect for filmmakers that find creative ways to create in-camera illusions. If executed properly, they have a solidity to them that, at times, even perfectly executed CGI effects don’t seem to have. And I am impressed by the cleverness and ingenuity it takes to make them work.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the first test of a nuclear bomb in the New Mexico desert. Again, we all know that the test was successful, but it was interesting how Nolan was able to put us all into the event, like we were more than just an audience. We were participants. The excitement, the hopefulness, the fear, of what was being done, and why. The cuts between the different groups of people watching the test, the music, and the persistent countdown, made for a masterfully crafted scene. And when the explosion came, the music stopped and the fire and destruction is seen in near absolute silence. All we can hear is quiet breaths from the observers.
The silence lasted for a full minute as we see the explosion from different angles. Finally, we hear a note from the orchestra creep into the texture of the scene. After another thirty seconds, we hear Oppenheimer quote, “And now I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” About a minute and forty seconds after the initial detonation, we finally hear the boom and see the mushroom cloud in all its terrible glory. The tension was released and we all reveled in the success of the test. But we also feel a certain amount of guilt because we know that the genie is now out of the bottle, and can never be put back inside.
Interesting note: Digital compositing was used for the Trinity scene to add multi-layers to the explosion which was shot in a multifaceted viewpoint. though the explosion itself, was done as a practical effect.
Because the film was a biopic of Oppenheimer’s career, it also had to deal with the times in which he lived. It explored the social implications of both Soviet and US Communism, the threat of WWII, the arms race with Nazi scientists who were also attempting to develop nuclear weapons, and the inevitable slippery slope that turned into the Cold War with the Soviets. And then it dealt with the national political backlash of Oppenheimer’s work and his legacy. Oppenheimer did what he had to do, but how was he treated once he had done it?
But when it comes down to it, it was just an enjoyable film to watch. I’m not generally interested in historical biographies, but Nolan put it together in such a way as to make it engaging. It was a story that held my interest for the entire three hour run-time. He, and the incredible cast of actors did a great job of making the dry subject matter seem palatable. It was a slice of history about which I didn’t know I needed to know.
And both critics and audiences agree. The film had a box-office take of over $964 million on a production budget of only $100 million. That in itself is pretty impressive. And some regard the film as not only the best picture of the year, but as one of the best and most important films of the century. I don’t know if that’s true or not. What I do know is that I enjoyed the movie from beginning to end, and I think it really deserved all the accolades and awards it has been given.
So Spider-Man finally gets his own movie. Finally. Spider-Man has always been a fan favorite, and I think Tom Holland is an incredible version of the character. Not only is he more age-appropriate than earlier versions like Toby Maguire or Andrew Garfield, but he does a great job as the unmasked hero, Peter Parker. He has an air of innocence and teenage realism that the other actors often missed. And of course, it’s always special when Robert Downey Jr. shows up as Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man.
And of course, we have to mention the awesome villain, Adrian Toomes, the Vulture, expertly played by Michael Keaton. Keaton is one of those actors who has been around for a long time, and pretty much everything he does is good. He seems to throw himself into his roles and this is no exception. And we are used to seeing him as the hero, Beetlejuice notwithstanding. But here, he plays the bad guy, and it is so good! He is even frightening in the way he treats Parker, once he makes the connection to Spider-Man.
The visual effects for this movie were, as you might expect from an MCU movie, were incredible. All you have to see is the whole Staten Island Ferry scene to know that. When the Ferry gets cut in half, length-wise, and Both Spider-Man and Iron-Man pull it back together, it was so cool to watch on the screen. It was epic, and this is only the first of the MCU Spider-Man films! The action was exciting, and the story was fantastic. Add to that the perfect cast and their phenomenal acting, and you have yourself a great movie!
But there was so much more to it than even that. In Captain America: Civil War, we got a great introduction to the character within the franchise. We all loved him there, but here they expanded on the character. We didn’t need to see the origin story again, it’s been done before, more than once. We all know what happened. Here, the filmmakers concentrated on what it means for a teenager to deal with being a high-school student and a superhero at the same time. Even Parker’s approach to being a crime-fighting hero came from a realistically immature perspective, which was smart. Even the emotional angle of Parker overcoming his teenage insecurities to find his strength and beat the bad guy was great to watch in the exciting climax.
But more than that, the movie firmly established Spider-Man in the overall tapestry of the MCU, cementing his place, his role. They tied things into the bigger picture with how the Vulture acquired the technology to become a super-villain. It was the alien Chitauri tech recovered from the Battle of New York in the first Avengers film. And they showed pieces of the Airport battle from Civil War from Parker’s perspective. Such a cleverly-written script!
I also really liked how the narrative stepped back and changed the role of Mary Jane into the new character of Michelle, who is called MJ. She payed homage to Mary Jane, but was a completely different character. Zendaya was great. She was not even portrayed as Peter’s love interest, though it did leave it open to that potential in the future. And I can’t forget another made-up character, Ned, Spider-Man’s funny side-kick, played by Jacob Batalon. He was funny, but not stupid. Again, he was a believable teenager, which was the point. And there were a few other smaller parts that were important to the story, like Liz, Parker’s actual love interest, who just happened to be Toome’s daughter, played by Laura Harrier. We also had Jon Favreau, coming back as Happy Hogan, and Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, Donald Glover, Tony Revolori, Bokeem Woodbine, Michael Chernus, Martin Starr, and Tyne Daly coming in to fill out the cast. It was a really good and smart venture into the character of Spider-Man, in his first solo film in the official MCU franchise.
Top 10 Favorite Parts
A Film by Peter Parker – The events of Civil War from a different perspective.
Spider-Man stops the ATM robbery
Peter leaves the party to chase down the first Shocker
Toomes kills the first Shocker by accident
Peter is trapped in the Damage Control Deep Storage Vault and his conversation with the suit lady.
Spider-Man rescues the students from the Washingtonn Monument elevator.
The Staten Island Ferry scene and Stark’s talk with Peter afterword. “If you’re nothing without this suit, then you shouldn’t have it.”
Toomes threatens Peter in the car before the Homecoming Dance. Keaton was so scary in that scene!
Peter finds the strength to get himself out from under the collapsed building.
The climactic battle between Spider-Man and the Vulture on the outside of a flying airplane!
I liked Greer Garson in this movie, but I didn’t love her. She was good but not great. Yes, some of it had to do with the way the character of Edna Kahly Gladney was written, but at the same time, some of it was the way Garson played her. She was very unrealistic. She was so saintly and good that she almost felt fake. Nobody is that sweet, loving, and unfalteringly perfect. Throughout the film, she displayed near-god-like powers of wholesomeness and sweetness. But darn it if she wasn’t a pleasure to watch.
The character of Edna was based on a real woman who not only cared for orphaned infants and children, but she fought to have the stigma of their illegitimacies be removed from their birth records so they could live their lives without the shadow of shame turning them into social pariahs. Yes, the woman did wonderful things, but even real saints were human and had flaws. But not Garson. She was sheer perfection, and she looked gorgeous doing it.
Garson had an aristocratic air about her. She had poise, and grace, and beauty. She had style and personality. She looked flawless whether she was in love, or had just given birth, whether she was pleading a passionate case in court, or was weeping over her dying husband. But I think her performance, though good and sweet, could have been taken to another level if she had shown us a deeper, care-worn countenance, a sense of exhaustion or worry, or maybe even eyes that were haunted by the death of her only son.
But I don’t want it to sound like I didn’t enjoy watching Garson. I did. But could you imagine how much more impactful Edna’s story could have been if she’d ever shown a moment of deep weakness, or maybe even a short temper. True, there was that one scene when her husband brings home an orphan to replace her son. She shows a little bit of anger and grief, which is undercut in the very next scene, when she accepts the child into her heart. I guess my real problem with her performance was that she played a caricature, not a character. She was an idealized saint, not a real woman. But I enjoyed watching her anyway.
I have to say, I have never heard of Patricia Collinge before now, but I was very impressed with her supporting roll performance in this movie. She really stood out to me as a wonderful actress who did an incredible job creating a memorable character. And the thing is, she did this without much screen time. She played Birdie Hubbard, the emotionally and mentally abused wife of Oscar Hubbard. Before marriage, she had been the daughter and heiress of a wealthy cotton plantation, though she now knows, and is constantly reminded, that Oscar had only married her to take her inheritance for himself. So she drinks.
Collinge was so good in this role. First, Birdie was a bit of a chatterbox, though her husband habitually chastises her to silence. He publicly berates her in front of family and guests alike. He treats her like dirt under his shoes. Even her son, Leo, takes after his father, and is more-or-less apathetic about her. The only solace she has from her miserable existence is her memories of her dear mother, and alcohol. She has been treated like garbage for so long, she doesn’t know how to feel like anything else. It was a sad and pathetic role, and Collinge played it perfectly.
From her mousy body language to her haggard and tired facial expressions, from the haunted, chaffed look in her eyes, to the clear and obvious depression, Collinge did a fantastic job. There were two scenes that stick out in my memory. The first was such a brief and subtle moment after a business dinner. Her husband and brother-in-law were trying to schmooze a prospective business partner into going into business with the family. She tried to contribute to the conversation, but was summarily shushed and chided for drinking too much and speaking too much. After the businessman left, the conversation continued in the parlor, and you could see Birdie sitting alone in the background, looking forlorn and hurt to the point of tears.
The other was when she had an alcohol induced breakdown, admitting all her woes and sorrows, and ending up a sobbing mess. Collinge did it all with pathos and desperation that was heart-wrenching to watch. Her emotion really stood out, even next to the likes of Bette Davis and Teresa Wright. I loved her performance.
I have always been a fan of Teresa Wright, ever since the first time I saw her on screen in 1942’s Mrs. Miniver. She was young and fresh-faced, and an incredible actress. She had a natural innocence in her appearance that not many actresses had and yet there was also a strength that was undeniable. She knew how to turn on the emotion, but she was never over-the-top. She seemed very at ease in front of the camera.
But I have to say, despite all that, and though I actually liked her performance in this movie, I think I was a little disappointed with her here. Her character was a little one-note. As Alexandra “Zannie” Giddons, the daughter of the callous and manipulative Regina, she was sweet and honest, though you could see the little ways in which she easily took after her mother. This was her from the first moment she appeared on the screen. She was petulant and immature in her innocence, and so she always had a look of self-righteous irritation on her face. It was a very good acting choice, but the problem is that she stayed pretty much the same in just about every other scene in which she appeared, and it eventually got old.
But you see, I know Wright was a better actress than that. It was the script that failed the actress, not the other way around. Of course, I know I’m over-simplifying her character a bit, and that there were several layers to her character. These came out in her relationships with her father and her aunt Birdie. But those scenes were too few and too brief. Then, she was sympathetic and sweet. Unfortunately for Wright, they sometimes required the same expressions of immaturity and confusion as did the scenes of innocent petulance.
But it was the final scene that really sticks out in my mind. It was there that Wright’s exceptional skills as an actress began to shine. She saw just how evil her mother really was, confronted her, and left her. Just enough of the innocence fell away and she saw her mother with a contempt born of experience. The flicker of a fire began to bloom in Zannie’s eyes as she stood up to Regina and left her alone with all her ill-gotten gains. That was where she earned her Oscar nomination.
Bette Davis, number six. This was her sixth nomination for Best Actress. She was clearly good at doing the deep drama, and she seemed to have a natural knack for playing a viperous villainess. In The Little Foxes, she is a greedy and mean woman, willing to screw over her own family in order to become filthy rich, and she does it all without committing any actual crimes, other than blackmail. She accomplishes her avaricious goals through manipulation and a generally sour disposition. And while she did not actively murder her husband, she calculatingly watched him die without lifting a finger to save him. Is that murder? Maybe it is.
Bette Davis had been around the block a few times by 1941, but she was clearly still the hot ticket. She was the queen of the silver screen bitches. Well, maybe that isn’t entirely true. After all, she played a virtuous and innocent victim in at least two other Oscar nominated films: Dark Victory and All This and Heaven Too, though she wasn’t nominate for her performance in that second one. But if you look at all her other Best Actress nominations, she played a mean and spiteful woman. Look at her films like Dangerous, Jezebel, or The Letter. She seemed to be perfect for those kinds of parts, and both audiences and critics loved her for it.
Here she played Regina Giddons, one of three siblings who are willing to scheme, manipulate, steal, and in her case, even murder, kind-of, to become super wealthy. She sacrifices the life of her unloved husband and her relationship with her beloved daughter to get what she wants. In other words, she played a horrible woman. The scene where she watcher her husband have his heart-attack was particularly good. The look of calculated inactivity on her face, the frozen, manic anticipation in her eyes was perfectly done.
I might sound critical of her performance, but I actually really liked Davis in this movie. She seemed to be perfectly cast, and I bet it was a difficult decision to award the Oscar to Joan Fontaine in Suspicion. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if she had won. Sure, she was being typecast in the bad-girl roles, but darn if she wasn’t so good at it.
Ok, I’m going to say it. This little more than a mildly amusing movie. The plot was silly and frivolous. They had a few big names like Gary Cooper, who played himself… again, and Barbara Stanwyck, who was, granted, probably the most interesting character in the film, though the roll itself was not terribly dynamic or dramatic. Now, I understand that the movie wasn’t trying to be a heavy drama or a deep romance. It was a light romantic comedy. But did that make Stanwyck’s performance worthy of an Oscar consideration? I’m not convinced.
She played Katherine “Sugarpuss” O’Shea, a nightclub dancer and singer who is mixed up with a mob boss. When the police come looking for her to interrogate her about her boyfriend, she hides out in the house of eight professors who are working on writing an encyclopedia. Her fast-talking charm and sexy legs bring light and passion into their dreary den of scholarly endeavors. This is what Stanwyck had to bring to the table. Well, there is no doubt, she had the legs!
But the interest in her character, and the way she played it, was in her duplicity. In order to convince the professors to let her stay, she had to make them all fall in love with her, especially Gary Cooper. But she was lying to them all, and planned to leave him flat when he got her safely to her mob boss boyfriend, played by Dana Andrews. The internal conflict the actress had to portray was certainly there most of the time, and the slow transfer of her affections from the mobster to the scholar was gradual enough to be believable.
So I supposed I have to check myself. Sure, the role itself lacked intensity, but that doesn’t make it a bad performance. The plot point of the professor needing to research modern slang, and her proficient and easy use of it, gave her some dialogue that sounded tricky, at least to my modern ears, though there were a few times it sounded a little forced. Stanwyck was good, and she performed the role as it was written, exactly as it was intended. But did it challenge the actress? Did it challenge the audience? Did it stand out as an outstanding performance? Maybe. Why not? So I guess I don’t mind the nomination. But I am glad she didn’t win.
Clearly, Alfred Hitchcock had his favorites, and when it came to Joan Fontaine, the reason why was obvious. Not only was she absolutely gorgeous, but she knew how to act, as well. She was first nominated for an Academy Award in 1940 for Rebecca. I liked her performance there, but I liked her even more here. The character she played seemed to be more realistic, more relatable. In Rebecca, the second Mrs. DeWinter was a little one-note in her terminal shyness.
In Suspicion, she played Lina McLaidlaw, a sheltered young woman who was on course to be a spinster, when she meets and falls madly in love with Johnnie Aysgarth. Very soon after they meet, they are married, and when they arrive home from their honeymoon, she learns that her new husband is a penniless playboy who has never worked a day in his life. After learning she has been lied to, and that her man has already put them into financial distress, she would naturally begin to doubt all his motives and intentions. He continues to lie to her as the marriage progresses, mostly about money and gambling.
This is where Fontaine shined. Her consistent disappointments, and the ever-present lack of communication that was a staple of 1940s movie romances, all combined to make her doubt his every word. Fontaine really understood her character, never allowing herself to go over the top with her reactions. Her facial expressions and her body language was all perfectly timed. In other words, she sold the character, lending complete credence to the film’s title, even to the point of suspecting Johnnie of murdering his best friend for his money.
Fontaine was wonderful as she drew her audience into her character’s suspicions, making us doubt her husband as much as she did. That is the mark of both a great script and a great actress. I mean, Cary Grant played Cary Grant (again), but Fontaine played a nuanced character with a wide range of emotions. I really loved how she played every moment when she learned of Johnnie’s shortcomings. She had worry, disappointment, fear, and everything in between, but she clearly never lost her love for her man. After all, it was still 1941.
