Best Actor 1974

[Reza]

I hope you finally saw Scenes from a Marriage. Wonderful film. One of my favorite Bergman, along with Persona, The Naked Night/Sawdust and Tinsel, and Winter Light.

I still haven't gotten round to watching it. Ditto Sawdust and Tinsel............but will, hopefully soon.

[nightwingnova]

I hope you finally saw Scenes from a Marriage. Wonderful film. One of my favorite Bergman, along with Persona, The Naked Night/Sawdust and Tinsel, and Winter Light.

As for Pacino's performance in the Godfather films, I have always been bothered by Pacino's ubiquitous dramatic pauses in these movies. To me, he doesn't seem to be truly living his character and instead acting and using dramatic tricks.

Reza, I disagree. I'd rank Pacino, Hoffman and the non-nominated Hackman/Joesphsson ahead of Nicholson

I guess everyone has their own preference but of the three, mine are Nicholson, Hoffman and Pacino........in this order.

I haven't seen The Conversation in years and I remember being induced into a state of catatonia by the film. Hackman, after the charged performance of The French Connection and a number of similarly loud performances was suddenly seen in The Conversation in ''quiet'' mode, which maybe seemed revelatory to some. But like I said, I haven't seen the film in many years and I should give it another try even though the film's subject hardly interests me.

I've never seen Scenes From a Marriage although I've had the Criterion DVD for many years now. I think it's time I finally check out the acclaimed performance of Liv Ullman and in the process see if Erland Josephsson deserved a nod or not.

[HarryGoldfarb]

I decided to vote even though I haven't seen Harry and Tonto... this might be absurd, specially considering some of the the comments and raves about Carney's performance. My mind could change after I catch that film, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.

A few years ago I suffered "Lenny". I can see why Hoffman was nominated: the bigger than life character, or at least that was what I thought about his approach to the role. I don't know much about Lenny Bruce, have never seen him so I can't judge the characterization work, but at the same time my interest in the character (as it was portrayed in the film) was minimal. The film was incredibly, and unexpectedly, hard to sit through... I tried to appreciate for its own value but I ended very tired. Hoffman, for my money, somehow over the top, is off...

"Murder in the Orient Express" is a better film, or at least one I can rewatch anytime soon... But I have a hard time trying to associate this specific Finney's performance with an Academy Awaard. Witty, but pretty average, and not a very profound one, in the end...

I just wrote a long paragraph praising Pacino's work in "The Godfather, Part II"... I went to lunch and when I got back, the system had logged me out! But well... I didn't see the hatred some have showed here towards Pacino coming at all... I find him very commanding, in a very elegant/mischievous way... He is capable of transmitting so many emotions with an apparently expressionless face that I can't help to admire. Some of his face work, his staring at some blank-spots though the film might appear common place in acting, but he elevates this stunt by actually expressing what's going on in this man's head, the tumultous ammount of disturbing and complex thoughts, the conflicts including the weight of his father's legacy, that need of being at the height of the expectations... and the fact that all of this needs to be concealed in order to be this man, this specific commanding persona, is amazing in my estimation. Though I do believe he is better in "The Godfather", he would have been a very deserving winner...

But then I finally catched "Chinatown" earlier this year... and the experience itself was superb. By the time it ended, I was ashamed of having not seen it before! Through all these years, somehow I managed to skip ANY information about this highly iconic film, about its story, the production values... I only knew evverybody apparently love it (though here in Venezuela, I doubt a lot of people have seen it!). The film, hypnotizing to say the least, work as it does in part (a great part) because of Nicholson's work: another example of "less is more" but definitely with that capacity of filling the whole screen with just a presence... I do believe that both Nicholson's and Pacino's films are greater than their performances alone, but Nicholson's contribution to "Chinatown" is greater than that of Pacino to his own film. So Nicholson got my vote...

[ksrymy]

I'm kind of surprised nobody has mentioned Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein. That performance is usually very high when it comes to 100 Greatest Comedic Performances lists. Would anyone have nominated him?

He wasn't even nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical. I don't recall his being on anyone's Oscar radar.

I meant our personal selections not any academy or guild's choices.

[Damien]

I'm kind of surprised nobody has mentioned Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein. That performance is usually very high when it comes to 100 Greatest Comedic Performances lists. Would anyone have nominated him?

He wasn't even nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical. I don't recall his being on anyone's Oscar radar.

[Reza]

I thought Madeline Kahn was the standout from Young Frankenstein. I'll never understand how she was nominated for Blazing Saddles.

I think both performances helped get her nominated. Young Franenstein may be the better film, but her dead-on take on Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again was funnier than her imitation of Elsa Lanchester in Young Frankenstein if only by a smidgen.

I still think her best comedic performance is in What's Up Doc?

[Big Magilla]

I thought Madeline Kahn was the standout from Young Frankenstein. I'll never understand how she was nominated for Blazing Saddles.

I think both performances helped get her nominated. Young Franenstein may be the better film, but her dead-on take on Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again was funnier than her imitation of Elsa Lanchester in Young Frankenstein if only by a smidgen.

[Greg]

There had to be some make-up support for The Godfather Part II after The Godfather, while winning Best Picture, lost the Director, Supporting Actor, and Film Editing awards to Cabaret.

[Mister Tee]

Well, I'm intrigued.

Back in early 1975, you didn't predict that Al Pacino would eve be nominated over James Caan for The Gambler (which I suppose I need to see) or Gene Hackman? I had assumed that he was something of a lock for a nomination. Likewise, did you honestly think that The Godfather: Part II would lose to Chinatown? With its DGA win? I'm a bigger fan of Chinatown (and The Conversation) than The Godfather: Part II, but I assumed it was something of a juggernaut.

I had Pacino at the lower end of acting predictions, though my low opinion of the performance may have colored my judgment.

I can't speak for everyone around at the time, but I went into Oscar season thinking Chinatown was the front-runner. Neither Chinatown nor Godfather II were smash hits in the way the films of the years just preceding had been (Godfather II opened huge, thanks to its predecessor's fame, but leveled off quickly), but they were the only real options, and the fact that Godfather II was a sequel seemed to put it in second place. This view seemed confirmed when Chinatown swept through the Globes, and got all the key nominations. (Godfather II tied with 11 overall nods, but was missing editing which, then as now, was viewed as a somewhat definitive category)

Obviously, the DGA win changed the outlook, but 1) the DGA was in a period of less-than-infallibility, having failed to predict 1968 and 1972 and 2) there was some feeling that Coppola would win best director in tribute to his overall year (having two films nominated for best picture), but Chinatown would take the top prize.

In the end, it appeared the Hollywood community didn't much care for Polanski's masterpiece -- to the point of disgracefully choosing Towering Inferno over it for cinematography and editing.

[Sabin]

I thought Madeline Kahn was the standout from Young Frankenstein. I'll never understand how she was nominated for Blazing Saddles.

[Reza]

I'm kind of surprised nobody has mentioned Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein. That performance is usually very high when it comes to 100 Greatest Comedic Performances lists. Would anyone have nominated him?

I thought Cloris Leachman was the standout in this film.

[ksrymy]

I'm kind of surprised nobody has mentioned Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein. That performance is usually very high when it comes to 100 Greatest Comedic Performances lists. Would anyone have nominated him?

[Sabin]

Well, I'm intrigued.

Back in early 1975, you didn't predict that Al Pacino would eve be nominated over James Caan for The Gambler (which I suppose I need to see) or Gene Hackman? I had assumed that he was something of a lock for a nomination. Likewise, did you honestly think that The Godfather: Part II would lose to Chinatown? With its DGA win? I'm a bigger fan of Chinatown (and The Conversation) than The Godfather: Part II, but I assumed it was something of a juggernaut.

[Damien]

This is one of my very favorite Oscar races ever because it’s a rare case in which the most deserving nominee won despite having been given very little chance to triumph.

Art Carney’s performance is just wonderful., warm without being sentimental, funny without pushing the humor, and there are heartbreaking moments where he is forced to acknowledge the shortcomings of his children, heartbreak expressed in Carney’s eyes and through small facial movements and body language. My only regret is that Carney's win is often derided as a "sentimental" choice against supposedly more deserving cutting edge actors when, as far as I'm concerned, Carney
s performance is easily the best of the bunch. (And sad to see that canard being reiterated here.) And I think Academy voters genuinely felt the same way, both because Carney was not really "of the movies" but also because of the result of another race that night. A New York resident, Carney was originally a radio actor and television and theatre occupied him more than cinema, so he wasn't perceived as a beloved movie actor who needed a career award. And if voters were truly feeling sentimental, then there would have been no way Fred Astaire would have lost Supporting Actor. Astaire was at the peak of his iconography then. That's Entertainment, released in 1974, reminded everyone how much they adored him. And the competition in Supporting Actor was much weaker than the Best Actor lineup. No I think the Academy realized that Art Carney's had a depth the others were lacking and voted accordingly, although, admittedly, some affection for Ed Norton must have also come through.

I agree with Mr. Tee on Al Pacino's dull, lugubrious performance -- what a comedown after his sensational work in The Godfather. But, then again, I've never understood the appeal of, or acclaim for, Godfather 2, which has always struck me as a pointless, empty vessel. I think Vincent Canby of the NY Times was spot on in his dismissal of the film.

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review? ... se#preview

Among Canby's perceptive observations (as opposed to Idiot Girl Pauline Kael who wrote that while she was watching the picture she felt it expanding in her head "like a slow bullet" and whose even more idiotic acolytes are responsible for this film's absurd reputation):

"It's a second movie made largely out of the bits and pieces of Mr. Puzo's novel that didn't fit into the first. It's a Frankenstein's monster stitched together from leftover parts. It talks. It moves in fits and starts but it has no mind of its own. Occasionally it repeats a point made in "The Godfather" (organized crime is just another kind of American business, say) but its insights are fairly lame at this point."

"'The Godfather, Part II,' which opened yesterday at five theaters, is not very far along before one realizes that it hasn't anything more to say. Everything of any interest was thoroughly covered in the original film, but like many people who have nothing to say, "Part II" won't shut up."


I was shocked on Oscar night when this thing won Best Picture over Chiatown.

Jack Nicholson was the only other nominee besides Art Carney who deserved to be nominated. He's perfect in Chinatown, but his performance doesn't have the same range as Carney's nor as his own work in Five Easy Pieces, The Last Detail (still my favorite of his performances) or the non-nominated Carnal Knowledge.

I generally can't stand Dustin Hoffman, and Lenny is him at his worst. In typical Dustin Hoffman fashion, he wants the audience to like him, so he takes the sleazy, venal (but brilliant) Lenny Bruce and sentimentalizes him into unrecoganizabilty, turning the scabrous comedian into a warm-hearted martyr whom viewers are expected to take to their collective hearts. A simply terrible performance.

I think Albert Finney is the greatest of all the Brit actors who came up in the early '60s but his Hercule Poirot in that dreary Sidney Lumet picture just struck me as wax works.

I hadn't predicted Finney or Pacino to be nominated back then; in their places I had Gene Hackman and James Caan in The Gambler.

My Own Top 5:

1. Art Carney in Harry and Tonto
2. Martin Sheen in Badlands
3. Jack Nicholson in Chinatown
4. Erland Josephson in Scenes From A Marriage
5. Robert Blake in Busting

[Damien]

Roberto Benigni is a half-step out of the standard pattern. He was only marginally known to most (and those who did know him did so for the sort of films that never got Oscar-nominated). But he had the advantage of a best picture nominee, Harvey Weinstein flogging his cause, and the fact that nominal front-runner Ian McKellen's film had barely done $3 million at the box office.

Marion Cotillard, though, really defied tradition. She was a virtual unknown, and her film wasn't a broad Academy success. Yet she was seen as in the race all the way, despite the fact that it wasn't a super-lean year for actresses (Amy Adams could easily have been nominated in her place, given the widespread raves she'd received for Enchanted). And she upset a long-time veteran who, yes, already had an Oscar, but it was 42 years and three other nominations in the past.

A prime reason -- and for Cotillard THE prime reason -- that these two non-English speaking actors won is that they played the Oscar campaign game beautifully, hanging around Hollywood during voting season, being taken to parties to meet all the right people, being ubiquitous on L.A. TV and other media. People in the industry got to feel as if they actually knew these people. Julie Christie remained pretty indifferent to the whole awards game and Ian McKellen was in England doing theatre for most of Oscar season. But with Benigni there's no denying that Hollywood adored his movie.

By the way, I have to admit that I was angry and bitter that Cotillard defeated Julie Christie for a performance that was more in the make-up than anything else, but I've since come to like her a great deal as an actress, including recently in Midnight in Paris.