abstew here. Only 15 women in the 87 year history of the Academy have scored a Best Actress nomination for a foreign language performance. In contrast, British actresses have won Best Actress 14 times. While the Academy has always warmed to Brits, their European neighbors have had to struggle to breakthrough with recognition in the acting races. (There has still never been a Best Actress nominee for a performance in any language outside of a European origin.) The first actress to even score a nomination for a foreign language performance was Melina Mercouri for Never on a Sunday in 1960, over 30 years into the Academy's history. Only two women have actually won Best Actress for a foreign language performance and both those women have the even rarer distinction of being honored twice with nominations for foreign language performances. The first was Sophia Loren who won for 1961's Two Women and was nominated again for Marriage Italian Style (1964). The other is this year's nominee for Two Days, One Night, Marion Cotillard, who won Best Actress for La Vie en Rose (2007).
With her second nomination, Cotillard joins a small but prestigious group of actresses that in addition to Loren includes Liv Ullmann and Isabelle Adjani. Three actresses in three separate languages (Italian, Swedish, and French) that proved their talent was able to transcend language barriers not once, but twice with the Academy. To receive an Oscar nomination is an honor, to do so a second time shows that you've earned the respect of the Academy, and to do it both times for performances not even in English, well, that's a feat reserved only for iconic women like these.
To celebrate Cotillard's place alongside these international legends, for the next few days we'll look back at the three previous foreign language, double-nominated Best Actress contenders. First up, the beauty from Italy that made Oscar history with her first nomination...
Sophia Loren
after the jump
Best Actress 1961 winner: Two Women (dir. Vittorio De Sica) Other nominees: Audrey Hepburn Breakfast at Tiffany's, Piper Laurie The Hustler, Geraldine Page Summer and Smoke, Natalie Wood Splendor in the Grass
Best Actress 1964 nominee: Marriage Italian Style (dir. Vittorio De Sica) Winner: Julie Andrews Mary Poppins Other nominees: Anne Bancroft The Pumpkin Eater, Debbie Reynolds The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Kim Stanley Séance on a Wet Afternoon
When Sophia Loren became the first performer ever to win an acting Oscar for a foreign language performance, she was hardly unknown to American audiences. The Italian beauty had been making films in her native country since 1950, building a reputation among movie-goers that sought out foreign films. But in 1958 when she signed a contract with Paramount to make 5 Hollywood films, she became an international star. Starring in films alongside Cary Grant and Clark Gable, she even scored a Golden Globe nomination for 1960's It Started in Naples before winning her Oscar. But usually cast as the exotic beauty or sex-kitten love interest, her performance in Two Women, in which she plays Cesira, a mother protecting her 12-year-old daughter during WWII, Loren was given a more earthy and gritty part to play - proving that her talent was more than skin deep. While there is no doubt about Loren's cinematic legacy, for me, the performance is not as fully realized as it could be.
In the film, Loren and her daughter go through a harrowing experience when they are both gang raped in a church, leaving both mother and daughter broken and bewildered. Loren's anger and grief are fully felt but the event happens so late in the film, that Loren is never given enough time to completely explore the after effects it has on her character. And up until that point, there has been very little for Loren to do that challenges. The film doesn't seem all that interested in her to begin with. Standing as a symbol for motherly love and for displaced war refugees, the film seems more concerned with showing us the tragedies of war without examining what it actually does to the people living it. So we're left with a brutal act that almost entirely defines Loren's character, reducing her to the role of victim. It's easy to see how the shocking dramatic impact of that moment won Loren the Oscar, but I would've much preferred Natalie Wood's similarly tragic but much more nuanced turn in Splendor in the Grass as that year's victor.
Her other nominated role as a prostitute that has been kept by a wealthy man for decades, also suffers from a similar problem in that the film's intentions are revealed far too late in the film for Loren to build a complete performance. It doesn't help that the 29-year-old actress is playing a woman in her 40s for most of the film, with bad gray streaks in her hair to signal her age but no real history or weight to back it up. The flashback scenes where Loren is vivacious and sexy, including one where she's decked out in see-through lingerie with a black spider design barely covering her assets, are certainly memorable but for purely titillating reasons. She lost that year to a much more wholesome performance from Julie Andrews as a magical, singing nanny. Andrews was such a surprising and unconventional choice for a Best Actress win and she was completely deserving of her victory.
Unlike her contemporary Marilyn Monroe, whose skills as an actress were often overshadowed by her measurements, it's impressive that Loren managed to be honored for her work twice by the Academy. And it's all the more amazing that she was able to do so with performances in Italian films, making her truly one of the first global superstars. Loren has since received an Honorary Academy Award in 1991 for her contribution to international cinema and at the age of 80 is still going strong having recently appeared in the film version of the musical Nine. And her co-star in the film happened to be the only other actress to win Best Actress for a foreign language performance and a fellow two-time, non-English-speaking nominee, Marion Cotillard.
Do you think that Loren's performance in Two Women was worthy of becoming the first foreign language performance to win an Oscar? Let us know in the comments.