Best Supporting Actress 1974

[FilmFan720]

I too voted for Cortese. I don't have much to add that hasn't been said by her supporters already, except that I think this is a stronger lineup than most give it credit for. I especially like that we always gripe about comedies not getting their due, but when Khan gets nominated for a great comedic performance in an all and out spoof, people gripe that it isn't substantial enough...what do you want?

[Mister Tee]

Bergman's was the performance of the moment.

I don't know... I mean, I was too young back then, but I find it difficult to think that that cameo role could have been considered "the performance of the moment"

I would say that the "performance of the mont" at the time was Liv Ullman's in Scenes From A Marriage, followed by Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under The Influence. I honestly can't recall anyone actually talking about Bergman, except in general discussions about Murder On The Orient Express (eg, " . . . oh, and Ingrid Bergman was sweet." )

Yeah, I was resisting getting into yet another dispute with Magilla, but...

Bergman got zero mention from the critics, couldn't even score a Globe nomination against such fierce competition as Jennifer Jones in Towering Inferno. She indisputably won the Oscar, and I'm glad for you it made you happy. But I see no evidence her victory came from any groundswell of support. It was more like Don Ameche's -- won because the competition was (except for the French-speaking lady)so lackluster.

[Damien]

Bergman's was the performance of the moment.

I don't know... I mean, I was too young back then, but I find it difficult to think that that cameo role could have been considered "the performance of the moment"

I would say that the "performance of the moment" at the time was Liv Ullman's in Scenes From A Marriage, followed by Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under The Influence. I honestly can't recall anyone actually talking about Bergman, except in general discussions about Murder On The Orient Express (eg, " . . . oh, and Ingrid Bergman was sweet." )



Edited By Damien on 1282196098

[Big Magilla]

Yes, she currently ties Hattie McDaniel for the most votes in the supporting actress polls so far.

Rounding out the top five vote-getters are Eva Marie Saint with 14 and Angela Lansbury (The Manchurian Canddiate) and Cloris Leachman with 13 each.

[Reza]

19 votes (and counting?) for Cortese. I'm surprised so many folks here have actually seen Day for Night.

[ITALIANO]

I thought it could be Ladd

[Mister Tee]

By the way, I wonder who of the other three nominees had the courage of complaining for having being ignored by Bergman - Uri is totally right about this, well, yes, cultural aspect - and not a good one.

I think all three of them did. She said in her biography:

"Three other actresses had been nominated, and they were also very good; they were kind of mad that I'd only mentioned Valentina. It would have been better if I'd kept my mouth shut altogether."

My recollection is Diane Ladd specifically saying, "Hey, Madeline Kahn, Talia Shire and I aren't exactly chopped liver"

[Big Magilla]

By the way, I wonder who of the other three nominees had the courage of complaining for having being ignored by Bergman - Uri is totally right about this, well, yes, cultural aspect - and not a good one.

I think all three of them did. She said in her biography:

"Three other actresses had been nominated, and they were also very good; they were kind of mad that I'd only mentioned Valentina. It would have been better if I'd kept my mouth shut altogether."

She did lend her Oscar to Carmine Coppola to pose for pictures with Talia because his was broken.

The best quote of the evening, though, was Art Carney's at the Governors' Ball. When asked by Ryan O'Neal if he could hold his (Carney's) Oscar:

"What's the Matter, Ryan, won't Tatum let you hold hers?"

[ITALIANO]

Bergman's was the performance of the moment.

I don't know... I mean, I was too young back then, but I find it difficult to think that that cameo role could have been considered "the performance of the moment" - it just wasn't challenging enough, especialy for an actress of Bergman's caliber.

The other reasons - affection, respect, guilt, star status, etc - all certainly contributed to her victory. Which was probably well-received back then - and, of course, that speech made it (MAKES it) much more acceptable.

By the way, I wonder who of the other three nominees had the courage of complaining for having being ignored by Bergman - Uri is totally right about this, well, yes, cultural aspect - and not a good one.



Edited By ITALIANO on 1282121896

[Big Magilla]

By the new standards of post-1968, sexually liberated America, Hollywood's treatment of Bergman more than twenty years before must have seemed, in 1974, truly something to be ashamed of - which of course led to another Oscar due to guilty feelings even more than to respect. The first, for Anastasia, had been certainly more deserved; this wasn't - it came for the wrong movie and for a performance which, while obviously not terrible, an actress like Bergman could have given in her sleep.

Yes and no. If on balance, Cortese's performance is the better one, and of course it is, Bergman's was the performance of the moment.

Her 1956 Oscar was clearly attributable to collective Hollywood guilt, but by early April, 1975 when the 1974 Oscars were handed out, Bergman's popularity had reached a new high.

She had been a host and/or presenter on several Oscarcasts in the recent past. It was she who opened the envelope to reveal the tie between Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Stresiand at the 1968 awards. In 1972 she took part in a televised tribute to Humphrey Bogart at the height of the discovery by a new generation of Casablanca which had emerged as more revered than Gone With the Wind and Citizen Kane among film buffs.

The week before the 1974 Oscar nominations were announced she was a presenter at the AFI Tribute to Orson Welles and she was one of several actresses who sent a letter to the Academy, published in major newspapers, admonishing the Academy for the silly rule that kept Scenes From a Marriage and its star, Liv Ullmann, from competing in the current Oscar race. By this time she was more than respected, she was beloved, perhaps even more than Hepburn.

It was that enormous popularity and affection the Hollywood community, as well as the public at large, held for her, combined with the revulsion and contempt the younger generation felt for the older generation which had banned her from Hollywood for seven years from 1949-1956 that made her such a popular winner at the time.

There was no reason for the two actresses to have been in competition in the first place. Day for Night was a Warner Bros. release which opened in New York to rave notices months before the end of 1973. It came out at a time when large numbers of people actually sought out foreign language films. There was no logical reason not to release the film in Los Angeles for an Oscar qualifying run in 1973.

So, again I say Valentina Cortese was the best supporting actress of 1973; Ingrid Bergman was the best supporting actress of 1974.

[ITALIANO]

By the new standards of post-1968, sexually liberated America, Hollywood's treatment of Bergman more than twenty years before must have seemed, in 1974, truly something to be ashamed of - which of course led to another Oscar due to guilty feelings even more than to respect. The first, for Anastasia, had been certainly more deserved; this wasn't - it came for the wrong movie and for a performance which, while obviously not terrible, an actress like Bergman could have given in her sleep.

The three others weren't bad but had to deal with roles which were either underwritten or, in Kahn's case, a bit too broadly-written - Mel Brooks's movies have aged badly, and Blazing Saddles is no exception; Kahn was a very good actress but honestly there's too much of her and her character in this movie, and one can't be funny forever (at least not in a Mel Brooks movie).

Valentina is on another planet. She had always been - on stage especially, when critics often pointed out how she took the audience to a different world, in an almost mystical way (which reminds one of the ancient saying that actors are in touch with the gods). Her being almost out-of-this-world was, of course, used well by Fellini in the short but effective part he gave her in Juliet of the Spirits; it would have worked even better in a role that, as a critic wrote, could have been written for her but she never had the chance to play - Blanche Du Bois. Her film career had been important, though she had really been a true movie star only when she was very young, in the Italian cinema during and right after the war. In America she never became very popular but it's true that she was generally given good roles in good movies - unlike other Italian actors, she felt respected there. And then basically she became this "star-supporting actress" in international movies (the fact that she could speak three languages helped). Day for Night was her best chance, definitely, though she could have been easily nominated two years before for The Assassination of Trotzki had the film been more widely seen or, more simply, better than it was. She's good in it though, and she's great as Severine in Day for Night - her signature role, so much that last summer, when she was made honorary citizen of my city, the movie they showed in her honor - and she sat watching it for what must have been I think the hundredth time - was, again, Day for Night.
She has that famous scene in it - by now a classic; she has other, less showy moments though, including one towards the end when she sadly realizes that the movie is over and once again the family she has formed there will be lost forever. The role probably wasn't specifically written for Valentina, but only Valentina could have played it that way - her natural way of being "grand" more a sign of emotional frailty than, as so often is for many actors and especially actresses, a display of strength and power. The Oscar should have been hers.



Edited By ITALIANO on 1282070117

[Mister Tee]

Having screwed things up the previous year by demoting a strong best actress contender to support, the Academy reversed course and embarked on a three-year run of taking a clear front-runner in support and placing her in lead. I can't say for sure Valerie Perrine would have won if properly spotted -- there was a sizable "but the movie's filthy!" caucus among the voters -- but she would certainly have been a stronger candidate than most of the strays who filled out a weak-for-the-era slate.

Ingrid Bergman's nomination was, for me, an "I never even gave it a thought when I watched the movie" stunner. People seriously think that "I raise brown babies" monologue was Oscar territory? I found it borderline laughable. When people started predicting her to win...when she actually DID win...well, in tandem with the previous year's unforgivable lead acting pair, it made me re-evaluate my entire attitude toward the Oscars -- where, prior, I'd thought the voters were going to flirt with bad taste but somehow rescue themselves in the end, now I had the feeling that, year after year, they would find ever-more inventive ways of disappointing me. Of course on the odd great Oscar night ('77, '83) I've been able to briefly recapture the earlier enthusiasm, but the innocence was gone after this.

Talia Shire was another surprise nominee. I could barely remember what she'd done in the movie. It surprised me a bit that, if voters were so sold on the film, they didn't go for Diane Keaton, who had a far more more substantial (if unimpressive) role.

As a huge Madeline Kahn fan, I was perfectly happy with her taking one of the slots, but, even with my bitterness over her not winning the previous year, I couldn't stretch all the way to wanting her to win for something so trivial. As for Blazing Saddles as a whole -- I found it truly funny at the time, but I was, you know, 22, and later viewings have made me wonder why I was so amused. (Same with other Brooks movies; maybe he's just not as funny the second time around)

Diane Ladd also came a bit from nowhere -- as I said in the best actress thread, Alice was a one-week-in-LA-only qualifier, and such films didn't often yield major nominations. But I think Ladd is truly in the spirit of the supporting actress category, a deserving nominee and my runner-up choice.

But Valentina Cortese was divine -- funny and heartbreaking, insightful and all that good stuff. I (madly) hoped she had a chance to win, given the lackluster competition, but that was clearly naive. As a critic wrote at the time (anticipating your take, Uri), it was almost more insulting for the Academy to nominate foreign folk if they didn't ever have a chance in hell of competing with local product for victories. (Of course, when subtitled performers finally won major Oscars, they weren't exactly well received around here) Anyway, Bergman spoke for many of us when she declared Cortese the rightful winner, and I see we here are giving her one of the stongest majorities we've managed so far. Well-merited.

[Reza]

Voted for Cortese.

My top 5:

Valentina Cortese, Day For Night
Diane Ladd, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Wendy Hiller, Murder on the Orient Express
Ingrid Bergman, Murder on the Orient Express
Madeline Kahn, Blazing Saddles



Edited By Reza on 1282048548

[Bruce_Lavigne]

Cortese isn't the best of 1974 by the titanic margin by which she would've been the best of 1973, but for the second year in a row, it simply would not be right to give it to any of the other nominees instead of her. And this year, we actually have the chance to reward her. So I'm taking it.

If there's an acceptable choice other than Cortese, it's Kahn, who's unforgettably hilarious in Blazing Saddles. Bergman gives a wonderful performance, but gives it in a somewhat forgettable, old-fashioned movie - not an unforgivable crime in and of itself, and certainly worthy of a nomination, but not something I'm going to give anybody an award for in an era of ambitious and innovative cinema. Ladd is terrific in a good old-fashioned "sidekick" role, and deserved her nomination. Shire's performance in Part II is surprisingly good based on how little she'd really been called on to do in the original Godfather, but ideally, I'd move Lenny's Valerie Perrine into the proper category to round out my lineup.

[mlrg]

Valentina Cortese - Day for Night