Weekly Top Ten: Actresses performances

I’m trying now, laboriously, to keep this blog alive, but the heavy workload has made it hard to continue, especially since I agreed recently to help someone out with their own work. I won’t write reviews anymore though, as I have tired of the same formula I’ve been using for too long. Instead, I want to write fewer and more substantial articles. To start off with, though my personal best acting performances by actresses. Male actors to come next. Only rule is that no actress can be mentioned more than once, to make it as varied as possible.


10. Anne Baxter as Eve in All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)

Not maybe the most talked about performance to start off with, but I really like Anne Baxter in All About Eve. She plays the ‘nice girl’ part perfectly, and shifts at command. But there is always something uncanny, ambiguous and uncertain about her ‘niceness’ and this is where I find the value in her performance. She plays very well off the other characters, and even though the film is not from her point of view, and at times she doesn’t really seem like the main character even, she indeed steals the show, and it is just All About Eve.

9. Gena Rowlands as Mabel in A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)


Powerful and energetic performance to say the least, Rowlands bring all that we perhaps wouldn’t want in a wife to the screen, but still manages to convey profound humanity in her character. As I have experience with others who watched this film, she is a character who quickly becomes one that the viewer might hate, but she removes these issues with a truly heartbreaking performance.

8. Hideko Takamine as Hisako in Nijushi no hitomi (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1954)


There is a moment in this film, where Hideko Takamine looks towards the screen with a face that so perfectly expresses her sadness that it was almost impossible to look at the screen. It is often very easy to be alienated from Asian performances as their style is so foreign to the west, but Hideko Takamine’s humanistic and honest character brings so much life to this film. Great example of how in some films the actor is essential to how the story works.

7. Ingrid Thulin as Marianne in Smultronstället (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)


An understated performance, Marianne is the perfect companion piece to the main character Isak. She seems to bring a softer side to the film, but ultimately suffers from her own anxieties and personal demons, particularly in her marriage. At times impenetrable and distanced, others the seemingly only glow of humanity in the film. A very mature performance.

6. Gloria Swanson as Norma in Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950)


Gloria Swanson literally brings herself to life as the ageing queen of silent cinema in Billy Wilder’s effectual film on Hollywood. Perhaps overstated, but it works in perfect context with her characters. She gives close attention to every word she speaks; every move she makes, her long slender fingers an all too literal manifestation of the grasping power she uses to ensnare the protagonist.

5. Bibi Andersson as Alma in Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)


Bibi Andersson might have been much more humanitarian, charming and affectionate in her other Bergman films, but it is here that she brings out her most remarkable performance. The power play between her and Liv Ullmann is excellent, cold and calculating. She brings something different to her personality than is usually exhibited in the work she did with Bergman, and ultimately it is her most devastating role.

4. Elizabeth Taylor as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966)


Devastating performance piece this film and the entire cast is superb. But Elizabeth Taylor’s interplay and explosive dialogue with Richard Burton is where the films real power lies. She walks through almost all emotions a character can show in this fairly short film, and as a character study it is remarkably powerful.

3. Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967)


Well, another film by Nichols, and this time it is Bancroft in her iconic performance as Mrs. Robinson, who seduces a young and naive Dustin Hoffman. Despite somewhat advance age, she is still wonderfully sexy, seductive and alluring, playing off with consummate ease on Ben’s uncertainty of his own manhood and future. The later scenes she is also powerful, but in a much more remarkable way. Easily steals the show.

2. Madhabi Mukherjee as Charulata in Charulata (Satyajit Ray, 1964)


Ray is an excellent director of actors, and in my opinion the best performance he gets is Mukherjee as Charulata in the film of the same name. She did some other exceptional performances for Ray, but here she is at her finest. Subtle and calm, she can express so much with just the look of her face. She does things slowly, but effectively, and her portrayal remains profound and forever infatuating. Filmmaker, film and actress remain criminally underrated.

1. Louise Brooks as Lulu in Die Büsche der Pandora (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1929)


Here we are at the nr. 1. This is acting as it’s purest. Louise Brooks was a natural for the screen, who didn’t need dialogue to express her feelings and emotions. The way she uses her whole character; her face, her body, her sexuality and her charisma is wonderfully blended in this film. She finds the simplest ways to portray the most complex of emotions, and in her performance, shows just how simple effective acting can be. An almost ridiculously clear nr. 1 for this list.