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| Joe Vitus |
 Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 5:54 pm |
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And I agree with Marj that the movie is scary.
Billy, didn't mean to knock Sunset Blvd., which is a classic. Just that I can warm up emotionally to Eve in a way I can't to the other. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 7:23 pm |
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Joe Vitus wrote: Oh, but I think Eve should be transparent—to us. But at the same time, I think Baxter should have agreed to the Best Supporting Actress Nomination, so that Bette had a clear shot at the Best Actress Oscar.
It should have been a tie between Davis and Swanson. Holliday was superb but not in the same league as Bette and Gloria. Baxter gave the Oscar to Judy. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 7:50 pm |
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| Not being sure whether I had seen John Ford's Searchers before or not, I saw it over the past two days. I am still not sure whether I had seen it before or not, although some scenes looked very familiar. I can't say that I enjoyed it. Ward Bond does liven up a few scenes, when it feels like a Texas version of The Quiet Man. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 7:56 pm |
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Ghulam wrote: Not being sure whether I had seen John Ford's Searchers before or not, I saw it over the past two days. I am still not sure whether I had seen it before or not, although some scenes looked very familiar. I can't say that I enjoyed it. Ward Bond does liven up a few scenes, when it feels like a Texas version of The Quiet Man.
How dare you knock the "quintessential American movie"? It's got that cache in certain circles. I agree with you. Not all that great at all. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 8:01 pm |
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| I love The Searchers, though I hate the "Indian bride" racial humor. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 8:02 pm |
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billyweeds wrote: Joe Vitus wrote: Oh, but I think Eve should be transparent—to us. But at the same time, I think Baxter should have agreed to the Best Supporting Actress Nomination, so that Bette had a clear shot at the Best Actress Oscar.
It should have been a tie between Davis and Swanson. Holliday was superb but not in the same league as Bette and Gloria. Baxter gave the Oscar to Judy.
Which seems a very Eve-esque duty. What was she muttering to herself as she handed over the statue? |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 8:18 pm |
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Joe Vitus wrote: billyweeds wrote: Joe Vitus wrote: Oh, but I think Eve should be transparent—to us. But at the same time, I think Baxter should have agreed to the Best Supporting Actress Nomination, so that Bette had a clear shot at the Best Actress Oscar.
It should have been a tie between Davis and Swanson. Holliday was superb but not in the same league as Bette and Gloria. Baxter gave the Oscar to Judy.
Which seems a very Eve-esque duty. What was she muttering to herself as she handed over the statue?
In case you misunderstood, I meant she gave it to her figuratively by not accepting the Supporting Actress nomination. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 8:26 pm |
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| LOL I completely misunderstood. I thought it very strange that a fellow nominee would be given the duty of handing out the award. What would have happened had she won? "I now present this year's award to...me!" |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 8:39 pm |
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billyweeds wrote: In case you misunderstood, I meant she gave it to her figuratively by not accepting the Supporting Actress nomination.
Do you actually have a choice? I thought the studio decided which category to put you in.
Isaac Asimov was presenting the Hugos one year when he was up for one and was surprised to discover he had won it, since he figured they wouldn't let him give one to himself. One his friends told him that they figured if anyone handle it, he could. I think someone else had to come up and announce the win. |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 8:53 pm |
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| I changed my mind. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 9:20 pm |
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Syd wrote: billyweeds wrote: In case you misunderstood, I meant she gave it to her figuratively by not accepting the Supporting Actress nomination.
Do you actually have a choice? I thought the studio decided which category to put you in.
I had thought Zanuck and Davis asked Baxter to accept a Best Supporting Actress nomination and she refused. But the info is not in the book I thought I read it in. Could I have imagined it? |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 10:22 pm |
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| I changed my mind again. |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:48 am |
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billyweeds wrote: It should have been a tie between Davis and Swanson. Holliday was superb but not in the same league as Bette and Gloria. Baxter gave the Oscar to Judy.
Poppycock. And, I Heart myself some Davis and Swanson, too. |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 11:12 am |
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I changed my mind one more time.
Even Bette Davis (after her disappointment subsided, until Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? upended her expectations yet again) asserted that Eve was the hardest role in Everything Concerning Gertrude, and that Anne Baxter met the challenge brilliantly. It isn't critical that we not see through her -- Mankiewicz deliberately points our suspicions from the beginning. What's critical is that in her first great performance -- the alley encounter and dressing room saga -- Gertrude Schlessinski pitches her calculations to play on Margo's diva insecurity and Karen's naivete and Lloyd's authorial ego and, briefly, Bill's Hollywood distraction. And it works -- An Actor Prepares. Yes, Birdie is on to her from Reel One, Addison from Reel Three, with Coonan staying quiet for the three weeks out of a fairy tale, DeWitt too smart to expose his hand, being Eve's mirror, after all. But they, and the other principal performances, register in adjunct to/against/off of that organic turn, which reaches its apex in the Cub Room ladies' room, where the subtle distinctions of posture and expression hitherto hinted at suddenly go from dulcet to reptilian on a single line -- "Yes, there is something you can do for me, something most important" -- and the trace of Bette-plosives in her exit thrust to Karen -- "I'dt do much more for a pardt thadt goodt" -- signals the beginning of Eve's solidification in The Other Kind of Star. Baxter's killer-to-killer maneuvers with George Sanders remain stunning, and the performance in totum is the best of her mannered career. Margo has the heart, but Eve has the part, and don't turn your back on Phoebe.
Eleanor Parker in Caged was also a factor in the 1950 race. That performance was hailed to the skies at the time, and got her that year's WhoKnew? nomination. Judy Holliday is marvelous in Born Yesterday (and how interesting that, as with WHTBJ? La Davis lost her award to someone repeating a stage role), and the Touch of Class Conundrum was another element.
ZanuckZanuckZanuckWhatAreYouTwoLovers? and La Davis did push Mrs. John Hodiak to submit herself as Supphose -- Baxter's famous reply: "Bette, it's not called All About Margo." Cagey strategizing on one side, entitled career assessment on the other. All the more remarkable then that, in subsequent years, Baxter was one of Davis' few woman friends other than Olivia De Havilland.
I dig Solardescent Thoroughfare, and Gloria Swanson is, eternally, a revelatory astonishment (and thank heavens Mary Pickford and Norma Shearer turned down the role, though Pola Negri, almost signed before La Swanson came aboard, might have been astonishing in a different way). Holden is also very fine (one can only speculate what might have been had Montgomery Clift not turned down that role). The Alex North score is as potent in its sardonic jazzy way as Alfred Newman's Eve score is in its lush leit-motivic way, von Stroheim nearly steals the show, the bridge-playing waxworks are inspired and my money's always on the dead chimp. It has hardly been rivalled as Whollyweird self-slapdown, the Cukor A Star Is Born, S.O.B. and The Player coming closest, and it's an undeniably brilliant bitter pill. But that's also a handicap: the sour core under the coruscating dazzle can distance, as can a certain overawareness of effects (as Agee noted originally) and the satire and pathos don't so much mix as curdle. Splendid to be sure, but ruthlessly black comic Screenland cautionaries are a harder sell than acerbically heartfelt Broadway pyrotechnics on film, and that, along with low grosses, is why Wilder's masterwork lost the Racso to Mankiewicz's finest hour.
And again, I wouldn't want to be without either film. |
Last edited by inlareviewer on Thu Feb 01, 2007 2:40 am; edited 1 time in total
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 2:14 pm |
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| Well, inla, I will say you've made me appreciate Anne Baxter as Eve more than I thought possible. But I still ache to see the same movie with Audrey as Gertrude--Roman Holiday transforming into Two for the Road. |
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