Best Actor 1973

[mlrg]

Jack Nicholson - The Last Detail

[Reza]

Brando is an easy choice here. I agree it's his best latter day performance and ranks up there with his Streetcar and Waterfront performances.

Nicholson and Pacino are both very good and deserved their nods. I think Pacino's best performance was in The Godfather and Nicholson has a number of better performances upcoming in the years ahead. Redford got his nod probably for the double box office whammy of both The Sting and The Way We Were that year but he really didn't deserve a nod for either performance. In fact I prefer Paul Newman to him in The Sting. Yes, Lemmon's is probably the worst performance to ever win Best Actor.

My picks for 1973:

Sean Connery, The Offence
Marlon Brando, Last Tango in Paris
Jack Nicholson, The Last Detail
Al Pacino, Serpico
Paul Newman, The Sting

The 6th Spot: Donald Sutherland, Don't Look Now

[Reza]

You're moving, Magilla? Permanently? I knew you said you were travelling, but I had no idea. Where to, on the east coast?

Brick, NJ, the safest city in America pop. 75,000 or more since 2006.

Wow, I had no idea you were moving. Have you sold your lovely house in / near San Francisco that Samina and I visited in 2003?

[Big Magilla]

You're moving, Magilla? Permanently? I knew you said you were travelling, but I had no idea. Where to, on the east coast?

Brick, NJ, the safest city in America pop. 75,000 or more since 2006.

[Mister Tee]

You're moving, Magilla? Permanently? I knew you said you were travelling, but I had no idea. Where to, on the east coast?

As for 1973...I thought it was a lackluster year by 70s standards, but there were as usual a few strong competitors for the best actor prize. I can't say anyone was criminally excluded, but I'd have replaced the lesser two of the nominees with Gene Hackman, for an unappreciated and perhaps almost-forgotten performance in Scarecrow, and Robert Mitchum for his best post-Kennedy administration performance in The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Peter Yates and company semi-butchered George Higgins' novel -- I didn't totally get the plot until I read the book later -- but they preserved Higgins' wonderful dialogue, which Mitchum delivers like a master.

Of those named...it will surprise no one that I would quickly expunge Jack Lemmon, for the loathsome, reactionary, counter-culture-baiting Save the Tiger. I was a big fan of Lemmon's up till then, but the movie (and the hoopla surrounding it) so turned me off that I could barely stand him as an actor for the rest of the decade. (That he appeared in equally dreary bourgeois pieces like Prisoner of 2nd Avenue didn't help any) One of the worst best actor wins ever.

In such company, Robert Redford's nomination seems only a minor nuisance, though it's completely unnecessary. I admire certain things Redford does as an actor, but I can't say there's any performance for which I think he rates an Academy nod. Certainly not this one.

Since everyone knew there was no way voters were going to give Brando a second consecutive chance to humiliate them, those of us appalled at the thought of a Lemmon victory coalesced around Al Pacino. Pacino gave a good performance in Lumet's crude but effective movie, and sentiment that he'd been slighted the year prior made it seem possible he'd win. Would that he had -- both because it would have spared us Lemmon and maybe it would have spared us the Hoo-ah! victory 20 years later. But I can't say I think it's Pacino's best work; even excluding The Godfather, I think his Dog Day Afternoon performance is far superior.

My actual second favorite was Jack Nicholson. Yes, Last Detail was an LA-only opener in '73...but I'd managed to catch it at a sneak preview at the Evanston I shortly before going home for Christmas that year. And I just LOVED Jack's performance. This may have been the first time he gave full range to his joy in performing -- something of which it's easy to have grown tired in subsequent years, but which was a revelation at the time. Some of his line readings ("I am giving this broad such a line of shit and she's BUYING it") stick in my head to this day, and his coup de grace moment -- "I AM the fucking Shore Patrol, motherfucker!" -- was pure elation on the screen. Some people called this his Cagney performance, presumably based on the fact Cagney had played so many navy men himself. But the description is also apt on the sheer level of pleasure conveyed, which is fit to stand alongside Cagney's Cohan.

Despite that enthusiasm, I didn't vote for Nicholson -- partly because, as Magilla says, there'll be ample opportunity to select him down the line -- but mostly because Marlon Brando gave the performance of the decade in Last Tango in Paris, and any other choice in unthinkable. Brando had of course been the perfect actor for his moment of emergence in the 50s, but he'd drifted into irrelevancy as the 60s wound to a close. Fortunately, he was alert to some of the filmic energy coming from overseas, and he actively sought to work with the directors responsible. His collaboration with Pontecorvo, Burn!, didn't turn out so well. But Last Tango in Paris was the zenith of Bertolucci's achievements, and brought Brando's greatest work as well -- the one time he got in tune with the cultural ferment of the 70s and contributed a lasting portrait. Many people remember his character's highly dramatic moments, particularly the wrenching monologue over his wife's coffin. But I was just as taken with his wry conversations with Maria Scheider -- I recall him telling about a guy who always had drool hanging out of his mouth, a story that was somehow funny and sad and revealing in the way Brando spoke the words. This was the most intimate Brando performance ever.

Sadly, he never followed up on it -- the self-exposure was said to have pained him so much that he withdrew, and spent most of his remaining career just earning dollars (though his last Oscar nod, for a Dry White Season, was for creditable work). But this moment nonetheless deserves enshrinement. He's my easy vote for 1973.

[Big Magilla]

I'm in the midst of packing for my move back to the East Coast so my reference material is not close at hand.

As best I remember 1973, Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris and Al Pacino in Serpico were the only nominated performances I liked at the time. Jck Nicholson in The Last Detail did not open in New York until 1974. My choice at the time was Pacino.

I still think Pacino gave his best performance in Serpico, certainly his best non-Godfather performance anyway, but I recently revisited Brando in Last Tango and I have to say that this is not only Brando's best mid to late career performacne, but one of the three great perforamnces of his career, along with Streetcar and Waterfront. I would be happy to see either win here, though I will still cast my vote for Pacino who has to win some time.

Nicholson will have many more chances.

Robert Redford's performance in The Sting is decent enough, but it's not really of award calibre in my estimation.

Jack Lemmon's pathetic loser in Save the Tiger is one of his most maudlin and embarrassing performances. Of his numerous nominations, only 1980's Tribute is a worse film. Oscar voters, though, after Brando's kiss-off the previous year, were in the mood for honoring someone who was expected to be humble and grateful and Lemmon fit the bill. I think they should/could have waited for The China Sydrome or one of two splendid performances for which they failed to nominate him in Mass Appeal and Glengarry Glen Ross for to honor him with a lead Oscar.

Worthier choices than Lemmon and Redford: Max von Sydow in The New Land; Robert Ryan in The Iceman Cometh and both Michael Moriarty and Robert De Niro in Bang the Drum Slowly.