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Re: Best Actor 1961
Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2016 7:52 pm
by Mister Tee
FilmFan720 wrote:For those struggling with this category (I know Mister Tee is one), The Mark is on TCM tomorrow night!
I had pointed up a showing of the film about a year ago, in the VCR/DVR alert thread, but had forgotten I'd not come back here. It doesn't make much difference, since I'd made one of my rare "I'm voting without completeness" choices: Newman's performance being such a favorite I didn't want to pass on it.
And seeing Whitman's work changes nothing. Whitman wasn't an especially good actor, and it feels like it was mostly the subject matter that got him his nomination. The real surprise in the film is Rod Steiger, giving such a restrained performance, you have to keep pinching yourself to believe it's really him.
Re: Best Actor 1961
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2016 9:02 pm
by FilmFan720
For those struggling with this category (I know Mister Tee is one), The Mark is on TCM tomorrow night!
Posted: Fri May 06, 2011 12:48 am
by Uri
Voted for Newman.
Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 7:57 pm
by Okri
I thought this would be Newman in a rout. It's not.
Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 6:24 pm
by Big Magilla
Stuart Whitman's character in The Mark long ago became a staple of TV police procedurals. It is a good performance, but I still say it's the character, not the performance that got him the nod over "let's nominate him next year instead" Mastroianni; Golden Globe winner Chevalier, retiring Cagney and one I forgot, Sidney Potier in A Raisin in the Sun.
Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 3:50 pm
by ITALIANO
Fanny is the equivalent of those American movies set in Italy and full of Italian actors playing (for money) cliched, exaggerated versions of Italian themselves. Only this time it's the South of France, an area that I know well and love, which is one of the reasons why I find this not very good movie rather pleasant. Marseille isn't THAT Marseille anymore of course, but then Joshua Logan's Marseille isn't Pagnol's Marseille - how could it be? It definitely lacks the genuine soul of Pagnol's characters. Of the movie's actors, Boyer is the best and acts with a certain gusto - but he's still on the level of the rest of the movie.
Tracy's performance is the best of this late phase of his career, and one of the best among those he was nominated for.
The Mark may not be a masterpiece, but its approach to a controversial subject is remarkably honest and deeply-felt. And I doubt that an American movie made today on the same issue would be much more daring. It treats its main character - a child molester - with unusual sympathy and compassion; Stuart Whitman's nomination was at least partly a tribute to his accepting a role that even today, half a century later, an actor, and especially a star, would have many doubts about. His conventional, "clean" good looks are intentionally used to make the character more bearable, but the performance itself is actually good - and the sense of confusion, loneliness, self-disgust quite well conveyed. He went back to being wooden in action movies, but in this one he's not bad.
It's definitely between Schell and Newman though. Schell is certainly memorable in Judgement at Nuremberg - an intelligent turn and an Oscar that few could complain about. This is also objectively the only chance we have of honoring an often very intense, and important, European actor. By contrast, Paul Newman would be nominated several times after The Hustler, so there are lots of good opportunities of picking him - and Paul Newman is an actor worthy of more than one Oscar.
Still, The Hustler is one of his best roles ever, a difficult one that he plays perfectly. One would be tempted to call it his "signature" role even, but there are too many in Newman's long and prestigious career. This is why while I'm sure that I will vote for Newman once again after this time, I still don't know for which movie.
Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 1:28 pm
by Sabin
I haven't seen Fanny or The Mark, so I can't vote here. I can't imagine voting for anybody other than Newman though. Schell is good but it's a supporting role.
Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 2:18 am
by Reza
All the performances this year are very good and as noted already there were a few more that got left off the list.
Voted for Schell although it should have been in the supporting category.
My picks for 1961:
Marcello Mastroianni, La Dolce Vita
Paul Newman, The Hustler
Albert Finney, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Spencer Tracy, Judgement at Nuremberg
James Cagney, One, Two, Three
The 6th Spot: Stuart Whitman, The Mark
Mister Tee, do try and track down Stuart Whitman in The Mark. He is actually very good.
Edited By Reza on 1304061761
Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 11:26 pm
by Mister Tee
The most notable omittees came with subtitles -- Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless. But those nominations were never going to happen. Even though the early 60s were when we first started getting foreign-language acting nominees, they came from more familiar, easily digestible films -- Never on Sunday, Two Women, Divorce-Italian Style. Only the writers or directors went for the mold-shattering films of the era -- La Dolce Vita, Through a Glass Darkly, 8 1/2.
This is a "theoretically I shouldn't vote" situation, because I've never been able to track down The Mark for Stuart Whitman's performance...but 1) I've never heard anyone tell me I NEED to see the performance and 2) I'm not about to sit out a race involving one of my all-time favorite performances.
Charles Boyer is not the one who gives it. He's perfectly solid, as ever, in Fanny -- and at least he's not Maurice Chevalier. But I find Fanny a ho-hum affair overall.
I gather Spencer Tracy's nomination came as something of a surprise here, but it's a pleasant surprise. It's a very good performance, if in familar Tracy mode, and well worth noting.
However, Maximillian Schell clearly gives the standout male performance in Judgment at Nuremberg. He's an insinuating questioner, wheedling answers to try and bend things his clients' way, even while knowing he faces a hopeless uphill climb. I can't completely dispute the Academy's judgment in choosing him. It's a very worthy piece of work.
But it's not The Hustler -- a much better film (my favorite of 1961's nominees), and the early glory of Paul Newman's career. All the promise of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was fully realized in this beautiful, dominant performance, full of varied tones. He's different with every other actor in the cast -- tender with Piper Laurie, cocky with Jackie Gleason, wary and feisty with George C. Scott (their barroom conversation in the early half of the film is like an acting clinic). Newman has given many, many fine performances over the years, but only one other time (in Nobody's Fool) did he have such perfect material so utterly suited to him, so splendidly achieved.
Another year, Schell might be my winner (I said a week or so ago, these years '59-'62 are full of tough choices). But I can't go with anyone but Newman here.
Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 11:05 pm
by Big Magilla
Where were Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita; Maurice Chevalier in Fanny and James Cagney in One, Two, Three?
Of the actual nominees this has to be between Newman and Schell.
Spencer Tracy's judge has an impassioned eleventh hour speech from the bench, but his best scenes in Judgment at Nuremberg are the bittersweet ones with Marlene Dietrich. Nomination worthy, yes, but winner material? Not this year.
Charles Boyer has his best late career role in Fanny but Maurice Chevalier is stronger and if there was room for only one of the film's stars, it should have been him.
Stuart Whitman is good in The Mark, but it's more likely the novelty of the character - a recently paroled child molester - that got him noticed than his actual performance.
Paul Newman's iconic role in The Hustler vies with Hud as his best performance of this period and a win would here would not be out of place, but my vote goes to the Oscar winner, Maximilian Schell as the defense counsel in Judgment at Nuremberg. This is a bordlerline lead/supporting performance, but next to the non-nominated Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita the most memorabe of the year. In a more perfect world Schell would have been nominated and won in support and Mastroanni would ahve been nomianted and won in lead, but that's not what we have to work with.