Horror Actressing: Amy Irving in "Carrie"
Monday, September 9, 2019 at 1:00PM by Jason Adams
When we talk about Brian De Palma's 1976 horror masterpiece Carrie we talk about Actresses. But we tend to talk about the Big Two -- Sissy Spacek as Carrie White and Piper Laurie as her mamma Margaret, who were both rightfully Oscar-nominated. (They both should have won too, says me!) Then if there's oxygen left in the room after talking those two we'll gravitate towards the showier female roles below the line -- Nancy Allen playing one of cinema's greatest bitches Chris Hargensen, or wondering if Betty Buckley's Miss Collins is, in the grand tradition of P.E. teachers, same-sex-oriented.
What I haven't seen nearly enough love for is Amy Irving, who's celebrating her birthday tomorrow and who gives a truly complicated performance as Sue Snell, the girl whose motivations switch midway through, the one who sees through to the error of her ways but too late, and the one who ends up giving the film's tragedy, Carrie's tragedy, its shape....
Irving is tasked with the Everygirl -- she's not the weirdo with the superpowers (although she'd play that role for BDP two years later with The Fury) and she's not truly one of the Mean Girls; she's stuck somewhere in between. Perhaps that's why I always look past her?
Sue Snell's transformation is a tricky one; it has to be sold in barely there increments. She starts telling lies in order to get the nefarious revenge plot rolling, but slowly she starts to believe her lies... since the lies she's telling are the honest truth. Carrie White deserves to be treated better by everybody, and she deserves to go to the dance, and she deserves to be able to just live like a normal girl. Unfortunately Carrie White is not just a normal girl, and unfortunately Sue's lies have already gotten way, way out of her own control by the time she realizes she needs to be the one stopping that bucket from its fall.
But over the course of the film we watch Irving discover Sue's goodness bubbling up, surprising herself -- you can see Sue start to say things and come down on the end of the sentences like a person who only realized their truth somewhere around the middle. We spend a ton of time with her, yes clicking the plot into place, but also building up the film's infamous ending -- one of the great "watch videos of an audience losing their shit" ones -- to its full peak power. Irving gives us a Sue Snell so freshly decent and right in her own first-floor-level human way, that its shriek of an undoing -- that bloody hand rocketing out of Hell itself -- becomes tenfold aberrant; the Good Girl normative narrative pierced like a knife.
Reader Comments (27)
She is quite strong as the good girl to Chris's bad girl we believe her turnaround,but I always thought Betty Buckley gave the film other stand out supporting turn and could've joined Laurie in that category she gives us something rooted in reality,she behaves like a teacher would in the 70's and the mirror scene where she covers her lips is a gr8 knowledge of what she really feels,why did Carrie killer i still can't work it out.
Oscar Nominated for Yentl!!
Another fine choice, Jason, but I disagree completely that Amy/Sue Snell was at all involved in Chris' plot to get Carrie at the prom. From the get-go Sue was portrayed as trying to make good on being a part of the shitty thing the girls did to Carrie at the beginning of the film (she was wracked with guilt at her behavior). The novel would back me up on this assertion.
Right Rob,she's never in on it.Norma on the other hand.
Yeah, I think that Sue may have been aware of but not <I>in on</I> the nefarious plot. And Ms. Collins, unfortunately, seems to have been merely collateral damage in Carrie's unleashing. Such fine performances, across the board.
P.S. Love the subtle Clueless ref. ;-)
Yeah, I think that Sue may have been aware of but not in on the nefarious plot. And Ms. Collins, unfortunately, seems to have been merely collateral damage in Carrie's unleashing. Such fine performances, across the board.
P.S. Love the subtle Clueless ref. ;-)
Yeah I probably shouldn't have said that Sue did what she did "in order to" get the revenge plot rolling -- I do think the film wants us to question Sue's motives the whole time along though, and that we only realize at the end (too late, always too late) that she's really been trying to atone for what happened at the start. We're supposed to doubt her intentions alongside Carrie. But yes, ultimately, Sue did mean well and didn't want the pig blood thing to happen.
@Jason I remember Pauline Kael writing in her (very positive) review of the film that Sue's hand in the plot was left ambiguous, so other smart people have interpreted Sue's motives differently than how I have always perceived them. But again, in the novel (and, I posit, in the film) Sue has no idea of the terrible plot that Chris has engineered. She's just trying to do the right thing and tragically it all backfires horribly. I love Irving's performance too - in the scene where Betty Buckley is laying into the girls for their rotten behavior you can just see the misery in Irving's face - she has to come to terms with her ugly actions in the locker room, knowing there's no good explanation for any of them.
Irving's fabulous - but I think the terribly underrated Nancy Allen is even better.
Carrie is like the Gosford Park of Horror for supporting actress possibilities.
I feel a little confuse about this post-series right now. I thought it gonna be about great horror performances and this feels like a mention of a good actress in a horror movie.
Amy Irving does an adecuate performance in the movie but the facial expressions of Sissy Spacek, that's scary.
César -- well right up front I think you're being a little rough on Irving, I think her work's better than "adequate." But no this series isn't meant to just be a list of the Great Horror Movie Performances. It's more specifically about Great Moments, ones that involve actresses in horror films, which allows me to dig a little deeper and go a little broader and wilder than just reiterating all of the usual suspects.
Sure I could've written about Sissy or Piper... I have a million times. And that's the problem. No Irving doesn't shine as bright as those two but here I wanted to zoom in on the tricky balance that Irving does accomplish in the film. I think it's a fascinating little thread that she winds through Carrie, in the shadow of those legends.
I suppose sometimes I'll have something to say about the great big legendary performances -- I can't imagine I won't want to talk about Mia Farrow or Ruth Gordon in Rosemary's Baby, for instance -- but I think more often I'll want to ramble a bit about the smaller moments, the ones where good actresses manage to turn the material into something it might not have been in somebody else's hands.
It was an interesting choice,I'd have chosen BB but it's gr8 someone singled out Amy.
@Jason
I appreciate your response. Maybe my confussion is because i was expecting to read about performances that inspires you something scary (like Angela Bettis in May...or even Fairuza Balk in The Craft) but now i understand that is about key roles in horror movies.
She is over shadowed by Spacek and Laurie but she is as good as they are in a less showy role
This and her performance in Yentl were both cerebral performances. Both characters internalize their thoughts and emotions. The audience can see that something is going on but can't always pinpoint what it is. I think Irving is underrated in general. I wonder if her split with Speilberg had anything to do with that. I know she was almost not invited to the Academy Awards when she was pregnant and not married.
Jason, thanks for writing about Amy Irving. She was SUCH a special actress in the 70s and 80s, and it was a loss that she disappeared. In addition to Carrie, The Fury, and Yentl, she's marvelous in Crossing Delancey as well. It's a bummer she stopped getting major film work.
She is overshadowed by Spacek and Laurie but she is as good as they are in a less showy character.
Leather Wonder
Wow, I never read the film as Sue possibly knowing about the scheme. In viewings before reading the book and those after. Will watch it with that in mind next time. I thought you were conflating a couple of characters at first, that’s how much it didn’t occur to me ha.
Thanks so much for this long-overdue tribute to Amy Irving's CARRIE performance! It became (& remains) my favorite film ever the night I finally persuaded my parents to take my obsessed 9-year-old ass to see it on the big screen.
I've often wondered how I could be a one-person cheering section for Amy as Sue Snell... although the fact that the fan letter I wrote her upon the release of THE FURY a year and a half later -- sent from Maine c/o the Fox lot on Pico Blvd and containing photos of her and tiny movie ads I'd clipped from my CARRIE movie tie-in paperback and US Magazine -- was answered a couple months later, everything carefully autographed to me along with a note, postmarked Marina Del Rey, made me a lifelong Irving fan.
I agree with everyone saying Sue had ZERO to do with Chris's pig-blood stunt. The book makes that crystal-clear, and the film version of Sue's character is one of the most faithful in Lawrence D Cohen's phenomenal adaptation. But whether or not a viewer's familiar with Stephen King's novel, the permanent rift between Sue and Chris is explicit onscreen -- when snotty Chris is banned from Prom and slapped by an outraged Miss Collins during calisthenics-detention, and the spoiled teen queen demands support from the rest of the class, only Sue has the balls and belated good judgment to tell her ex-clique-mate to "just shut up!" From that point on, Sue and Chris are on parallel but entirely opposite quests regarding Carrie White... and any ambiguity Irving brings to the role is all about Sue trying to decide who she's trying to make feel better about her own part in the shower-room mob-attack, Carrie or herself.
The screenplay featured a brilliant twist not in the book -- with no Twitter, texting or Instagram, Sue ducks out of family dinner to take a discreet peek at how Tommy & Carrie's "magical" night is going... leading to her horrific discovery of the bucket above the stage as DePalma's dazzling camera & editing and Pino Donaggio's insanely underrated score build to a crescendo and the film's final act is unleashed, no matter how fervently viewers wish it wouldn't.
And there couldn't possibly have been anyone better than Amy Irving to enact DePalma/Cohen's final surprise, a heart-stopping shock for even the most fanatical fans of King's book -- in a white gown, flowers in her hands, as radiant as an Italian Renaissance canvas, Sue approaches the scorched plot of land where Carrie's house used to stand ... and no way am I going to spoil it for any 9-year-olds scheming to see this incredible movie.
That said, I also think Nancy Allen, William Katt & PJ Soles could use a shout-out from you about the truly memorable & iconic characters they created in CARRIE. Maybe you can do a triple-strength follow-up in the near-future,
Christian McLaughlin
For all your original CARRIE movie poster needs, please visit my webstore westgategallery.com
Another small touch that enhanced Amy Irving's work here was the decision to cast her mother, Priscilla Pointer, to play Sue Snell's mother. Their few moments together on screen have a palpable sense of shared experience.
I love it when directors do that! (Laura Dern & Diane Ladd in WILD AT HEART & the HBO series ENLIGHTENED come to mind.) Amy's sister Katie Irving also had a tiny role as Sue's little sister in the Prom Night dinner scene at the Snells' -- but more importantly she sang both Prom songs "Born To Have It All" -- and the main romantic theme "Someone Like You", to which Carrie & Tommy danced as DePallma's spinning camera flawlessly replicated the dizzying rush of teen infatuation.
DePalma had done the mom/daughter thing in SISTERS, when Jennifer Salt's mother Mary Davenport played the meddling, patronizing pitch-perfect Staten Island mom of Jennifer's crusading scrappy local reporter Grace. Mary was so funny, DePalma also gave her a memorable cameo as a lunching NYC matron horrified to overhear Nancy Allen's perky, graphic description of sexual-reassignment surgery to Keith Gordon at the next table near the end of DRESSED TO KILL -- a moment totally obscured if you're not viewing the movie at its full Scope aspect ratio.
Follow the latest trends Yellowstone Beth Dutton Fur Coat.
She is looking so smart in quilted black leather jacket. How i describe her fashion look. I just say amazing.. Yellowstone Jacket Collection
I always found very much interesting content on your posts. keep posting, thanks for sharing us and giving us your precious time. Harley Quinn Jacket
Charlie Hunnam sons of anarchy vest is an ideal vest for Bikers if you are willing to impress the viewers. SHOP NOW!
CAN YOU ESCAPE IN 60 MINUTES?
A Fun and Challenging Escape Room Adventure for the Whole Family.