Best Actor 1975

[ITALIANO]

Like others, I shouldn't vote here because I haven't seen all the nominees, but also like others, I will.

The one I haven't seen is Maximilian Schell, which is a pity - the role looks great on paper, and Schell is an actor I like.

The one I have only half-seen is James Whitmore. One day I swear I will finish watching Give 'Em Hell Harry - not an easy task, trust me, but I will. The movie is a movie only in the sense that it was filmed and that it was shown in cinemas - so Whitmore's nomination is certainly an oddity. The performance in itself is actually good, definitely better than Matthau's, but yes, it's difficult to believe that the Academy couldn't find - at least, to follow Uri's law, abroad - a worthier turn in a "real", though maybe subtitled, film.

It's of course between Pacino and Nicholson, both at their best, which makes a choice between them quite difficult. I'm going with Pacino this time - but I could pick Nicholson on another day.

[anonymous1980]

I've actually seen 3 of these performances: Nicholson, Pacino and Schell.

I think One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a fine film and Jack Nicholson is quite great in it and it's obviously a famous iconic role for him. I don't begrudge him his win. I recently rewatched Dog Day Afternoon and I marvelled at the young Al Pacino and lament that he's such a hammy old guy right now. I saw The Man in the Glass Booth for my line of work and I enjoyed watching Maximillian Schell's showboat of a performance. I'm gonna throw him my vote since I think it's gonna be neck-in-neck with Pacino and Nicholson anyway.

[Bruce_Lavigne]

Haven't seen Give 'Em Hell Harry; don't think it affects my vote one way or the other. Schell is very good in a movie it's hard to work up much enthusiasm for; The Sunshine Boys -- and Matthau's performance therein -- has almost completely vacated my memory.

Pacino's Dog Day Afternoon performance is probably my favorite of his career, but he's a clear runner-up behind Nicholson this year.

[Reza]

Have yet to see the performances of Schell and Whitmore. The Sunshine Boys is crap and I'm amazed Matthau's incessant mugging got him a nomination.......but then he was a very popular and beloved star at the time and this was Neil Simon territory after all, and who could do nothing wrong during the 1970s.

This is a two horse race as everyone already knows. I voted for Nicholson's iconic performance.

My picks for 1975:

Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Al Pacino, Dog Day Afternoon
Gene Hackman, Night Moves
Robert Mitchum, Farewell, My Lovely
Richard Dreyfuss, Jaws

The 6th Spot: Tim Curry, The Rocky Horror Picture Show

[Uri]

After breaking the tie and voting for Pacino in '74, it's time to do it again and vote for Nicholson.

And on my list, along with these two and the already mentioned Bridges, I'll add The Man Who Would Be King's duo Caine and Connery.

[mlrg]

Jack Nicholson - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

[Mister Tee]

The year in male performances was an inverted pyramid -- very thin at the bottom but double-wide at the top, in another "Why does one have to lose?" contest.

It hardly mattered who the nominees beyond the top two were, but I'll throw in Jeff Bridges, doing charming work in Hearts of the West, and Giancarlo Giannini, a year ahead of Oscar's reognition, for his U.S. breakthrough in Swept Away.

Walter Matthau was his usual latter-day cantankerous self in The Sunshine Boys. I can see why he was a nominee in a thin year, but the movie was so flat I have almost no memory of it.

James Whitmore was by then virtually forgotten by movie-goers, which explains why he'd taken this impersonation stage show on the road. He lucked into the fact that Merle Miller's interviews-with-Truman book Plain Speaking had become a huge success in the wake of Truman's death (also that, with the guy no longer around, the mythologizing around his presidency took off). Give 'Em Hell Harry was actually pretty enjoyable...but barely a movie, and not a consideration.

I remember watching the Man in the Glass Booth with some friends, seeing Maximillian Schell rattle off a speech with breathtaking precision...and then ending it with a theatrical "Right, sweetheart?", which deflated the entire effect. That's my overall impression of the performance: strong moments, punctuated by utterly false ones.

Though Oscar races rarely turn out the way we fans envision them ahead of time (prior to films being screened, I mean; not after awards season begins), once in a great while things go according to form, and 1975 was a prime example. Looking at the Fall release schedule, everyone zeroed in on Dog Day Afternoon and Cuckoo's Nest as sure-fire vehicles for their now way-overdue leading men.

Dog Day Afternon came along first, in September, and was certainly the riskier of the two projects. When I heard the plot description, I said "What?" (somehow I'd missed the actual event on which it was based). But reviews were outstanding, especially for Al Pacino, and the film became an instant success (in that way off-beat films could in the 70s). I still think this is one of Pacino's greatest performances -- even though (in line with what Sabin says about Nicholson) it opened him, too, to a more flamboyant style of acting that was to later lessen him as an actor. But his Sonny is, while big enough to command the screen, a fully human and touching character. For the six weeks or so prior to the opening of Cuckoo's Nest, Pacino was the undisputed front-wunner for best actor. I have no doubt that, had Cuckoo's Nest failed, Pacino would have had the Oscar with little dispute.

But Cuckoo's Nest was very much not a failure. In a way, this project was the opposite of Dog Day Afternoon: far from an iffy project, it seemed so surefire that one was only nervous it would fail due to some perverse reverse karma. Kesey's novel was one that virtually everyone I knew had read and embraced (and, given how many of us were film/theatre folk, probably more than half-envisioned in our heads). And when Nicholson, coming off Last Detail, was cast, it seemed the perfect package was in place.

In many ways, of course, we were right, but I think we were also surprised, because Milos Forman made the film in a way that made it play far more quietly, subtly than other interpretations of the material (like the off-Broadway adaptation) might have. The film's Nurse Ratched is not a shrew; she's a soft-spoken, bureaucratically deliberate monster. And McMurphy -- the role Nicholson now seemed born to play -- matched her in nuance. Obviously Jack had his out-there moments -- peaking in the glorious World Series narration -- but there was always alot going on behind his eyes. He had moments of self-doubt; moments where you wondered just what he was doing in this situation to begin with -- which made him a far more interesting character than the Christ of the Psych Ward Kesey had put on the page. This was a big performance and a small one at the same time.

Thanks to all this (and a powerful, passion-play-derived plot), Cuckoo's Nest became an even greater success than Dog Day Afternoon -- one of the biggest of the decade -- and Jack, perceived as the one most directly robbed by Art Carney the year before, took home the Oscar (and all the critics' prizes) to fairly universal acclaim. I won't dissent from that old consensus. Al came close, but he picked the wrong year. This was simply Jack's time.

[Sabin]

This is the only time I will be voting for Pacino in a leading role. This is obviously THE turning point role in Nicholson's career, and although he is pretty great, it's a rather sad one towards monsters permanently. This is the strangest role of Pacino's career, and it's an incredibly funny performance of sustained exasperation.

I have not seen Whitmore or Schell, but this is the rare instance where I can't believe it would make any difference.

[Big Magilla]

You guys really don't have to wait for me to do this. Today was the original date my furniture was supposed to arrive from Northern California, but it hasn't even left the local facility yet. Latest estmate is 7/18 with the computer now scheduled to be hooked up to Comcast on the 19th, but that could change again.

Anyway, here we go:

1975 was really a contest between two actors: Jack Nicholson (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's House) and Al Pacino (Dog Day Afternoon) who had come close to winning over the previous few years. There was no way the Oscar was going to go to former winner Maximilian Schell for what was basically a filmed play in The Man in the Glass Booth or former Supporting Actor nominee James Whitmore in what was even less, a film of his one-man show interpretation of Harry Truman in Give 'Em Hell Harry. Nor was there any chance of former Supporting Actor winner Walter Matthau winning for his curmudgeonly old coot in The Sunshine Boys.

Nicholson's film was more popular and he was favored to finally win, which, of course, he did. He gets my vote, followed by Pacino and the non-nominated Gene Hackman in Night Moves (better in my estimation than he was in his more acclaimed performance in The Conversation); Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely (his last good big screen performance, though he would still excel in later years on TV) and Warren Beatty in a role that seemed at the time to be closer to the real guy than any of his previous roles in Shampoo.

I am enabling the re-voting option for those who check the wrong box and wish to change their vote. I trust it won't be abused by anyone seeking to change the outcome.