Barbra Streisand: Funny Girl
Vanessa Redgrave: Isadora
Katharine Hepburn: The Lion in Winter (winner)
Joanne Woodward: Rachel, Rachel
Patricia Neal: The Subject was Roses
What’s Missing
This is a year where, as usual, I like some of the nominations and dislike others. There’s plenty of room for improvement here. Nominating Jane Fonda for Barbarella would be funny, and I would have been entertained by it a lot. The same is true of Judith O’Dea for Night of the Living Dead. In both cases, I love the idea but they don’t really belong in the mix. Olivia Hussey would have been an interesting choice for Romeo and Juliet, and while I like this version of the story about as much (or as little) as I ever do, she’s prettier than she is great in the role. Gena Rowlands in Faces is a serious choice, though, and I’d have her in the running without question. The biggest miss, though, is absolutely Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby. Mia has never been nominated, which is shocking. That she wasn’t nominated for this role is almost unbelievable.
Weeding through the Nominees
5. I don’t have anything against Vanessa Redgrave, but I hated everything about Isadora including her performance. Truthfully, Redgrave probably did as much as she could with this role and I don’t know that anyone else could have done more with the role than she did. This is a movie about a woman who cared about nothing but herself act in ways that screw over everyone she possibly can for her own pleasure until her own hedonism gets her killed in a legendarily ridiculous way. I’m actually angry that I had to watch this.
4. I’m being unfair to Barbra Streisand putting both her and her performance in Funny Girl in fourth place. This is absolutely a case where I am penalizing the actor not for the performance but for the role. I hated Fanny Brice for all of the reasons I hated Isadora: the self-aggrandizement, the ego, the constant need to be the focus of attention. The only reason that Babs is in fourth place and not fifth is that the movie is a touch better and she is a true talent who gives this role as much as she can despite it not being worth it.
3. It feels very much like I’m saying the same thing over and over here, but Patricia Neal’s performance in The Subject was Roses is a lot of very good work in an unpleasant film that didn’t deserve this kind of effort. This is an unpleasant family drama that, if you can’t get enough of your drunk relatives at Thanksgiving, will be something you’ll enjoy. I realize that I shouldn’t punish the actor for the role, but unless the performance is absolutely transcendent, I have serious issues promoting and rooting for a role that I genuinely dislike.
2. Rachel, Rachel is a difficult film and not one that I have a lot of desire to watch again anytime soon, but it’s not a film that is as unpleasant an experience as the three above. I found a great deal in this film that was worth the watch, and much of that is the quality of Joanne Woodward’s performance in the title role. This is a film that walks a careful tightrope over a chasm of maudlin tripe. Woodward manages this as well as it could be done and never makes a misstep. In a different year, she’d be an easy choice for a winner.
1. Given the five nominations, Katherine Hepburn is the clear choice. As good as Joanne Woodward was, Hepburn is absolutely perfect in The Lion in Winter. She delivers a role that is memorable in her career, which is incredibly noteworthy. There’s not a moment she is on screen that she doesn’t dominate every moment—an achievement considering the opposite performance of Peter O’Toole. Of the five nominations, she’s the clear and only choice for me, but she’s not the choice I would have liked to have had.
My Choice
This should have been Mia Farrow’s Oscar. In a world where she has never been nominated, what is her strongest and best role should be the one that earned her the Oscar that she has so richly deserved for half a century.
Final Analysis
