GM(ovie)P - Strangers On a Train, Frances
No, you haven't escaped my posts on Premiere's 100 Greatest Performances list - muahahahaha! I stopped doing them for a while because I couldn't get hold of a copy of #85, among other things. But now I've seen it, so back to the list I go!
86. Robert Walker as Bruno Anthony
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Robert Walker as Bruno is my idea of the creepiest kind of bad guy. So charming you can almost taste it, very likeable and with a sing-song kind of voice that can send a chill right to your bones (once you know what the guy is capable of). The movie, as many of you probably already know, centers around two guys who meet on a train. They get to talking, and Bruno instantly starts to rub Guy the wrong way. There's nothing particularly abrasive about him, but he seems to be trying much too hard. As they talk more, Bruno picks up on the idea that both of them have people in their lives they'd be better off without. He suggests, jokingly Guy thinks, that they each commit the other guy's murder - Bruno would kill Guy's estranged wife and Guy would kill Bruno's father. Guy shakes it off until his wife turns up dead and Bruno shows up to demand Bruno keep his end of the deal.
Bruno is especially maddening because he is always a step ahead of Guy and seems perpetually able to turn the whole situation against Guy and lay the blame entirely at his door. There is just something so bone-chilling about Walker's normality and smarm concealing such terrible rage and psychosis. Excellent performance, and surprisingly ahead of its time.
85. Jessica Lange as Frances Farmer
Frances (1982)
I had never even heard of this film until a few years ago when Lange was on Inside the Actor's Studio. She was answering the questionnaire and when answering about her favorite curse word, she referenced the scene in Frances where her character - stage and film actress Frances Farmer - was being arrested. The arresting officer asks for her occupation, and she answers "C***sucker."
The film itself is a rather sensationalized version of Frances Farmer's story (she was, for example, apparently not given a lobotomy, as is depicted in the film). But Lange's performance gives a glimpse of a woman who was so independent that it scared the people around her. Her moxy is something in and of itself (I loved when she called a woman out on the red carpet of her movie premiere for making nice with her when she had once damned the young Frances to hell).
What's really spectacular, though, is Lange's work in the second half of the film, where she has to fight to prove her sanity. People thought she was a lunatic and her mother had her committed to a mental institution. Watching her try to outfox her psychologist and get out of the institution, you can really feel her frustration. Perhaps my favorite part, though, is the scene where she "plays sane" for the people who will decide whether she'll be released. Her calm, muted delivery is intercut with a scene from the evening before where she is practicing what she's going to say in front of the other inmates, as if this is the performance of her life (which, in a way, it is). And you get a glimpse, as she's addressing the doctors, that she isn't as sane as she was when she first came to the institution.
This is also apparently the film where Lange met and began seeing her now 25-year companion, Sam Shepard (who plays one of Frances' lovers). Great film, but it's one of those that's overshadowed somewhat by a force of a performance.
86. Robert Walker as Bruno Anthony
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Robert Walker as Bruno is my idea of the creepiest kind of bad guy. So charming you can almost taste it, very likeable and with a sing-song kind of voice that can send a chill right to your bones (once you know what the guy is capable of). The movie, as many of you probably already know, centers around two guys who meet on a train. They get to talking, and Bruno instantly starts to rub Guy the wrong way. There's nothing particularly abrasive about him, but he seems to be trying much too hard. As they talk more, Bruno picks up on the idea that both of them have people in their lives they'd be better off without. He suggests, jokingly Guy thinks, that they each commit the other guy's murder - Bruno would kill Guy's estranged wife and Guy would kill Bruno's father. Guy shakes it off until his wife turns up dead and Bruno shows up to demand Bruno keep his end of the deal.
Bruno is especially maddening because he is always a step ahead of Guy and seems perpetually able to turn the whole situation against Guy and lay the blame entirely at his door. There is just something so bone-chilling about Walker's normality and smarm concealing such terrible rage and psychosis. Excellent performance, and surprisingly ahead of its time.
85. Jessica Lange as Frances Farmer
Frances (1982)
I had never even heard of this film until a few years ago when Lange was on Inside the Actor's Studio. She was answering the questionnaire and when answering about her favorite curse word, she referenced the scene in Frances where her character - stage and film actress Frances Farmer - was being arrested. The arresting officer asks for her occupation, and she answers "C***sucker."
The film itself is a rather sensationalized version of Frances Farmer's story (she was, for example, apparently not given a lobotomy, as is depicted in the film). But Lange's performance gives a glimpse of a woman who was so independent that it scared the people around her. Her moxy is something in and of itself (I loved when she called a woman out on the red carpet of her movie premiere for making nice with her when she had once damned the young Frances to hell).
What's really spectacular, though, is Lange's work in the second half of the film, where she has to fight to prove her sanity. People thought she was a lunatic and her mother had her committed to a mental institution. Watching her try to outfox her psychologist and get out of the institution, you can really feel her frustration. Perhaps my favorite part, though, is the scene where she "plays sane" for the people who will decide whether she'll be released. Her calm, muted delivery is intercut with a scene from the evening before where she is practicing what she's going to say in front of the other inmates, as if this is the performance of her life (which, in a way, it is). And you get a glimpse, as she's addressing the doctors, that she isn't as sane as she was when she first came to the institution.
This is also apparently the film where Lange met and began seeing her now 25-year companion, Sam Shepard (who plays one of Frances' lovers). Great film, but it's one of those that's overshadowed somewhat by a force of a performance.