Best Actress 1979

[dbensics]

Gidget unionizes a factory and becomes known thereafter as Widget.

[OscarGoesTwo]

I was always rooting for Bette Midler in The Rose, I remember watching it and thinking there wasn't a better performance that year, but then I watched Norma Rae and had by socks knocked off..

So Sally Field gets my vote

Bette Midler in 2nd

Marsha Mason in 3rd

Jane Fonda in 4th

Jill Clayburgh in 5th

[mayukh]

Marsha Mason – tiring and unimaginative.

Fonda was very good in a role that you'd expect her to play, but she doesn't "become" the character – she condescends to it.

I could barely get through The Rose, but Bette Midler was full of raw feeling, and she does energetic things in the movie that "trained" actresses wouldn't do.

Sally Field is great in Norma Rae. As many have said here, Ritt certainly understood her limits, and so he extracted from her a performance of simple humanity. You don't feel like a simp for wanting to root for this character.

Jill Clayburgh was, to me, like Diane Keaton minus the overt charm – quirky, odd, and not endearingly so. But Starting Over is one of the few times I found this talented, not easy to like actress really personable, so much that I understood how pathetic and lonely her character felt.

Women who missed out for me were Meryl Streep, so perfect in Joe Tynan; MacLaine, funny and sad in Being There; and Diane Keaton in Manhattan.

For those who were around at the time – was Hanna Schygulla eligible at all? I see she was runner-up at both NSFC and NYFCC (among a few others, I bet). (Also runners-up at NYFCC that year for Nathalie Nell for "Rape of Love", a movie I'm intrigued by, and Mary Beth Hurt, and I can't imagine they were real players in the Oscar race.)

[Hustler]

Vote for Field followed by Midler.

[ITALIANO]

The key is Field's speech. You found it nakedly emotional, I found it, well, basically fake, or overprepared.

Well, maybe this is what emotional nakedness looks like when one is brought up in Hollywood and not Bergamo.

True.

[Uri]

Why are we even talking about the infamous Sally Field speech for this year? She didn't give it until '85.

We used her infamous speech as an illustration to her persona in general.

[Uri]

I can't ever win with you guys, can I?

Relax, the original John Simon comparison was a joke in the first place.

And it's not like I and other gaywads here don't occasionally lapse into similar territory (i.e. Philip Seymor Hoffman a.k.a. "blob").

Were you joking? Shit. What am I going to do now with all those pills I was about to swallow?

[Uri]

The key is Field's speech. You found it nakedly emotional, I found it, well, basically fake, or overprepared.

Well, maybe this is what emotional nakedness looks like when one is brought up in Hollywood and not Bergamo.

[flipp525]

Why are we even talking about the infamous Sally Field speech for this year? She didn't give it until '85.

[Eric]

I can't ever win with you guys, can I?

Relax, the original John Simon comparison was a joke in the first place.

And it's not like I and other gaywads here don't occasionally lapse into similar territory (i.e. Philip Seymor Hoffman a.k.a. "blob").



Edited By Eric on 1258035817

[ITALIANO]

As much as I like the well constructed, coherently intelligent or humorous acceptance speeches of the Redgraves and Streeps and Thompsons, the real highlights are those rear exhibitions of naked, unguarded, messy emotional neediness one is supposed to somehow control. In lack of any better term, it's about the ability to be unapologetically pathetic. That's why I liked Jonathan Demme or indeed Sally Field up there (somehow Adrian Brody managed to be both).

This section of the spectrum of human behavior – this non heroic, often irritating and certainly not conventionally sexy ability to be a doormat or a desperate wanabe - is rarely celebrated on film and even less so when it comes to awards. Shirley Booth is the only winner who comes to mind. Hepburn in Alice Adams or Blethyn in Secrets and Lies didn't fully make it.


And this quality is what Field has as an actress as well. Too often, when manifested in a standard Americanized psychologically motivated pieces – such as Not Without My Daughter or Steel Magnolias – she's indeed on the verge of being insufferable. But in Norma Rea it all falls beautifully into place. It might have something to do with Ritt's sensitivities and inclinations – this may not be the second coming of Das Kapital, but the fact that he was able to see people as part of a grander social fabric and not merely a collective of individuals made him a rarity in mainstream American films (as opposed to European cinema, were this simple truth is a given). And this habitat he gave her enabled Field to shine and step a little bit away and have that much needed third eye to save her from being emotionally over indulgent (Places of the Heart was somehow similar, and again she was very good in it).

The key is Field's speech. You found it nakedly emotional, I found it, well, basically fake, or overprepared. I love spontaneity a la Jonathan Demme of course, but it has to be, as it was in his case, real. And I think I have the same problem with Field's acting; she never really moves me, and while she was adnittedly quite natural in Norma Rae, by the time of Places in the Heart she was already relying on tricks too much (those big bulging eyes to express sorrow!), like even good actresses tend to do when they are old - and Field wasnt old.

[Big Magilla]

I don't know anyone who saw Norma Rae as radical then or now. Ritt and his screenwriters, Irving Ravetch and his wife, Harriet Frank, Jr., were known for their richly observed humanistic dramas, which is what Norma Rae is.

Ravetch and Frank are still alive, at 89 and 92, respectively, and would be excellent candidates for a Special Oscar or at least Kennedy Center honors. They won the Writers Guild's Laurel Award for career achievement in 1988.

Their screenplays include those for The Long, Hot Summer; Home From the Hill; The Dark at the Top of the Stairs; Hud; Hombre; The Reivers; The Cowboys; The Carey Treatment; Conrack; Murphy's Romance and Stanley & Iris.



Edited By Big Magilla on 1258030457

[ITALIANO]

Marco, believe it or not, some of us here in America (or at least in New York City) thought Norma Rae was pretty lame for a would-be lefty movie. That being said, I do believe that Martin Ritt's picture from the previous year, Casey's Shadow, is one of the loveliest and most underrated American films of the '70s.

I havent seen it; I'm sure it is good, and Ritt COULD be a good director. I'm glad that you agree that Norma Rae isnt a revolutionary movie.

[Uri]

Although she's the most irresistibly attractive or attractively irresistible person of all times – the only reason I'm not married and have no children it because I never had the chance to meet her – I'm not going to vote for Jill Clayburgh.

ROTFLMFAO

Ditto ... because he's still judging the performance on her physical qualities.

I can't ever win with you guys, can I?

[Uri]

As much as I like the well constructed, coherently intelligent or humorous acceptance speeches of the Redgraves and Streeps and Thompsons, the real highlights are those rear exhibitions of naked, unguarded, messy emotional neediness one is supposed to somehow control. In lack of any better term, it's about the ability to be unapologetically pathetic. That's why I liked Jonathan Demme or indeed Sally Field up there (somehow Adrian Brody managed to be both).

This section of the spectrum of human behavior – this non heroic, often irritating and certainly not conventionally sexy ability to be a doormat or a desperate wanabe - is rarely celebrated on film and even less so when it comes to awards. Shirley Booth is the only winner who comes to mind. Hepburn in Alice Adams or Blethyn in Secrets and Lies didn't fully make it.


And this quality is what Field has as an actress as well. Too often, when manifested in a standard Americanized psychologically motivated pieces – such as Not Without My Daughter or Steel Magnolias – she's indeed on the verge of being insufferable. But in Norma Rea it all falls beautifully into place. It might have something to do with Ritt's sensitivities and inclinations – this may not be the second coming of Das Kapital, but the fact that he was able to see people as part of a grander social fabric and not merely a collective of individuals made him a rarity in mainstream American films (as opposed to European cinema, were this simple truth is a given). And this habitat he gave her enabled Field to shine and step a little bit away and have that much needed third eye to save her from being emotionally over indulgent (Places of the Heart was somehow similar, and again she was very good in it).