The Supporting Actress Smackdown series picks an Oscar vintage -- 1991 this time -- and explores.
THE NOMINEES Oscar went with two sentimental favourite veterans (Jessica Tandy and Diane Ladd) and three first-timers (Juliette Lewis, Mercedes Ruehl, and Kate Nelligan) who were having hard-to-ignore years. This shortlist was full of characters: a chatterbox octogenarian, an agressively needy video store owner, a sexually mercurial teenager, a monstrous southern matriarch, and a proto-feminist in the deep south.
THE PANEL Here to talk about the performances and films are, in alpha order, entertainment journalist Mark Harris ("Pictures at a Revolution", "Five Came Back"), Tony winning actress Nikki M James (The Book of Mormon, The Good Fight), Tony nominated actor Rory O'Malley (The Book of Mormon, Hamilton), Vanity Fair's deputy editor Katey Rich, Drama Desk winning actor Nick Westrate (Casa Valentina, Turn: Washington's Spies), and your host at The Film Experience, Nathaniel R. Let's begin...
1991
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN + PODCAST
The companion podcast can be downloaded at the bottom of this article or by visiting the iTunes page...
Diane Ladd as "Mother" in Rambling Rose
Synopsis: An idealistic free-thinker convinces her husband to have patience with the sexually promiscuous young boarder in their house.
Stats: Then 56 yrs old, 36th film, 2nd billed. Third (and final) nomination. 35 minutes of screen time (or 31% of the running time)
Mark Harris: It’s a drag of an assignment to play a paragon of gentle kindness with a steely core of human decency—how can anyone act when they’re smothered in that much golden light?—but it has been the road to many a Supporting Actress nomination, including this one. Besides sweet rapport with Laura Dern, Ladd brings some welcome eccentricity to the role, and she delivers in her climactic scene, where she tells off both her husband and a doctor (though it goes on a beat too long, “Designing Women”-style). Nice work, but the character isn’t much more than an overidealized sketch. ♥♥
Nikki M James: Of the five films, this is the only one I hadn't seen before. I was unprepared! I don't know who writes these synopses, but they truly underplayed this one. The movie is strange, but Diane Ladd was a dream. It's a pitch-perfect combination of earnestness and eccentricity. The big payoff comes in the scene where two men discuss "spaying" our Rambling Rose. They speak as if the woman in the room couldn't possibly understand their coded language. The flash of fierceness in her eye, and a speech that, as far as this movie goes, is downright feminist. At least one of the four stars is making that hearing aid not feel like a gimmick.. ♥♥♥♥
Rory O'Malley: Not at all what I was expecting when I told my mom she should watch with me. The “robbing the cradle scene” was a lot to handle. Dianne Ladd’s character is a brilliant woman trapped in the wrong time, but her relentless defense of Rose is like the first green shoots of modern feminism. I think her daughter Laura Dern playing Rose really affected her performance. She gives a speech in the doctor’s office about female sexuality that is most definitely the best part of the film and a satisfying triumph for her character over her misogynistic husband. ♥♥♥
Katey Rich: It’s fun to imagine the fantasy mother-daughter Oscar nominations that could have happened for Wild at Heart a year earlier, but this is nothing to frown at either, for as odd a movie Rambling Rose is. Ladd seems to recede to the background of the film for a while, given how much else is going on, but the scene she and Duvall have with the doctor really makes it clear how this happened. ♥♥♥♥
Nick Westrate: Watching her build this complicated woman with such ease and incredible ability to listen- even while playing someone hard of hearing! Her strength and great wit shine in this wonderful film. It is also so moving to witness her onscreen warmth with her real life daughter, delivering a seminal early performance in her career. Dianne Ladd creates this ultra-modern woman with such humor and grace. I also have to mention that Lukas Haas deserves a nomination for this movie, I would give him the Oscar over Jack Palance. Also, Diane Ladd’s fierce defense of “her category” may make her this podcasts’ ultimate hero. Her performance in this is a marvel. ♥♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: Laura Dern is the headliner and Robert Duvall is the legend but nobody told Diane Ladd that because she is not letting anyone coast through a scene when she's around, whether by billing or reputation or narrative importance. Ladd never phones it in is what I'm saying and this is a completely endearing turn that's easy to imagine going very wrong in lesser hands. Calibrated just a bit differently it could have been cloyingly preachy, unbelievable, or schmaltzy. She's really digging into the unique psychology of this woman and always present even when she's not quite keeping up with the conversation. Fine work in a tricky role. ♥♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "A lesser actress would have cried and sobbed during her monologue at the doctor's (and won)" - Peggy Sue (Reader average: ♥♥♥)
Actress earns 24 ❤s
Juliette Lewis as "Danielle Bowden" in Cape Fear
Synopsis: A sexually curious teenager is fascinated and then repulsed by the man who is tormenting her father and probably killed her mom's dog.
Stats: Then 18 yrs old, 6th film, 6th billed. Her first (and only) nomination. 28 minutes of screentime (or 22% of the running time)
Mark Harris: I was wowed revisiting Lewis’s performance, especially by the thirteen-minute centerpiece in which she holds her own with De Niro as he lures her, first by phone and then in person, into his clutches. It’s a terrifying duet—the innocent who doesn’t realize how innocent she is being captured by the big bad wolf—and she commands your attention every second, manifesting all the interest and uncertainty she’s feeling in every vocal choice and physical gesture. She exposes herself so fearlessly; you feel you’re watching a real teenager (which she was) try to think things through in real time. ♥♥♥♥
Nikki M James: Juliette Lewis, an 18-year-old Juliette Lewis! She gives an extraordinarily mature and nuanced performance here. The promise of her future success is evident; she is already full of quirks and honesty. She's captivating, the perfect combination of vulnerability and volatility, the angsty, ignored teen, just shy of the age when she knows when to be turned on and when to be terrified. It’s both terrifying and heartbreaking to see the pure terror in Dani's eyes while she attempts to mollify and seduce De Niro, her mouth and her eyes telling two different stories, all while not telegraphing to the audience for a single moment. Casting her might have been the single best choice Scorsese made in the uneven film. ♥♥♥♥♥
Rory O'Malley: This performance runs the gambit of emotion of a teenage girl and Juliette Lewis delivers beautifully in every moment. Her scene with Robert DeNiro on the high school stage is a masterwork in acting. The layered dynamics between teacher and student, adult and teen, psychopath and innocent are on full display and make for a chilling conversation. She also finds complete truth in the horror of finding her friend the housekeeper dead, burning DeNiro’s face with lighter fluid and dealing with Nolte, a creep of a dad who always coddles her instead of telling her the truth. ♥♥♥♥
Katey Rich: It’s exciting to watch this and see so much of her future star persona emerge, and realize that she was enough of an unknown quantity at the time that she could believably be the innocent teenage girl at first before transforming as the film goes on. You wonder how this movie pulled off such an odd combination of nominations-- actor and supporting actress! -- and then there’s the scene in the theater between her and De Niro and it all comes into focus. The conversation between the two of them on the houseboat, when she’s flirting back while so obviously in danger, barely makes sense, but she has that combination of teenage interest in and terror of sex that manages to stand out even in a movie with so much else going on. ♥♥♥♥
Nick Westrate: Juliette Lewis gives a spontaneous, precocious and deeply real turn as Danielle Bowden. One of greatest teen performances Oscar ever nominated and I will admit this is one of my all time favorite movies. She carries almost as much danger as DeNiro as she explores her sexuality, yearns for freedom from her parents and still maintains a vast childlike curiosity. Also, Illeanna Douglas is so good in this movie, and should have a nomination for something in a more just business. How Juliette Lewis could so perfectly portray the complications of innocence, while completely in them is a marvel. She is one of the true originals in cinema. ♥♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: One of my top five Scorseses and a huge part of that is due to the haunting provocative spell Juliette Lewis initially casts (that voiceover prologue) and then delivers on in this absolute knockout of a performance. Hollywood may never have quite understood where, when, and how to deploy her thereafter but Lewis knew herself from the jump; she was in full command of her gift at just 18. Her disturbing centerpiece duet with DeNiro surely prompted the nomination but she's alive with choices in every scene (watch her eyes and hands and just marvel). This busy and ruthlessly edited thriller slows down for no one (save De Niro's showboating) but Juliette never fails to keep up and carves out an iconic place for herself in the chaos. ♥♥♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "Astonishingly charismatic, but she doesn’t rely on it; Danielle is the finest portrait of the confusing mixture of teenage sexual intrigue and sheltered suburban innocence committed to screen." - David (Reader average: ♥♥♥♥¼)
Actress earns 30¼ ❤s
Kate Nelligan as "Lila Wingo" in The Prince of Tides
Synopsis: An unhappy southern woman wishes her children would just shut up about their difficult childhoods and stay quiet about the family secrets.
Stats: Then 41 yrs old, 11th film, 4th billed. First (and only) nomination. 12 minutes of screen time (or 9% of the running time).
Mark Harris: At 41, Nelligan, who is Canadian, played a brittle, coiffed, bigoted old Southerner without a lot of makeup, effectively using her deep, frayed voice. It’s not her fault that she’s in a different movie from the main one, or that she’s such odd casting. What she brings to the part is an understanding of how toughness and abuse can hollow you out. The script is savage to Lila Wingo; she isn’t. She understands that the character’s humanity needs to be apparent for her monstrosity to mean anything. I’m not sure, given the role’s limitations, that she could have done better. ♥♥♥
Nikki M James: For me, this performance is just a bit over the top. It might be age makeup, or the terrible costumes, or the fact that the character is a mostly lousy person. Her soap opera-esque delivery in the present-day scenes is grating. The flashbacks are slightly more successful, but even they feel pitched just a bit hot. Except for the harrowing rape scene, I can't remember a moment where I thought, "Now that's an award-worthy performance." The performance, and frankly the film itself, hasn't aged well. ♥♥
Rory O'Malley: Maybe they gave her a nomination because she had to play her character young and old, but other than that I’m not sure. She most definitely gives a good performance but I guess I feel like her character is lost by the end of the movie and doesn’t really land anywhere. It feels like there must be a scene on the cutting room floor that gives her a full journey. ♥♥
Katey Rich: This nomination seems much more about the context of the Oscar year, and the desire to reward The Prince of Tides, than anything about the performance itself, which is perfectly fine but so immaterial to the movie itself it’s difficult to even remember it. The flashbacks to childhood are so truncated it’s hard to get a sense of her beyond the childish idealization that Tom Wingo admits to, and while she’s far more interesting as the wealthy, older woman, that transformation happens entirely offscreen, making her mostly feel like an entirely new character. I just don’t get it! ♥♥
Nick Westrate: While her transformation from the manipulative brassy Lila of her youth to the manipulative rich Lila of old age- the performance is broad and builds a monster rather than a mother. Streisand doesn’t do her any favors by undervaluing her character’s experience of the violent rape in favor of focusing on the children. I am stunned that she was not nominated for Frankie & Jonny, for which she won the BAFTA. I also wish this spot was taken up by Alfre Woodard for Grand Canyon. ♥♥
Nathaniel R: Frankie & Johnny was right there if they wanted to honor her! They just can't resist 'monster moms' in this category, can they? I'd argue that her overkill in the flashbacks works for the movie -- it's all a little too much, but that's the (unintentional) tone! -- so I bought that this woman would truly damage her children even if not exactly in this way. But it's a reductive role and though she tries valiantly to redeem and explain the character with her old age showdown with her son (Oscar clip!) it's just not going to work with this ridiculous text. ♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "As the movie is distinctly presented from Nolte's perspective, the other characters suffer. However, Nelligan admirably fills in her performance with little details to make up for this with her physicality (I was struck by her rigid posture) and inspired line readings." - Aditya (Reader average: ♥♥¾)
Actress earns 15¾ ❤s
Mercedes Ruehl as "Anne" in The Fisher King
Synopsis: A video store owner struggles to make a relationship work with a self-absorbed radio jockey while advising an awkward woman on dating.
Stats: Then 43 yrs old, 15th film, 3rd billed. First (and only) nomination. 37 minutes of screentime (or 27% of the running time.)
Mark Harris: Terry Gilliam makes everything very big and shouty, from camera angles to performances, but Ruehl came to play, and there’s something exciting about a supporting actress who absolutely refuses to let herself get lost in a movie defined by exhausting male energy. She’s so flexible here (stage training!)—it’s hard to imagine three scene partners with rhythms as different as Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams, and Amanda Plummer, and she recalibrates to each of them without losing the consistency of her character. Her long, mostly-one-shot Oscar scene, when Bridges dumps her and she explodes in sorrow and anger, is a killer. ♥♥♥♥
Nikki M James: This performance is lovely. It feels like a precursor to the long-suffering, tough New Yorker of Carmella Soprano and My Cousin Vinny's Mona Lisa Vito - the good woman through whose eyes the audience learns to love a not-so-good man. I can't say this would have been my pick to take home the trophy, mostly because I can NOT stop thinking about Amanda Plummer's performance as Lydia! For me, hers is the standout female performance of this film. Maybe Ms. Ruhl needed a dumpling. ♥♥♥
Rory O'Malley: No one could have played this part other than Mercedes Ruehl. When I think that, it usually means the actor has done their job so well I think they are that character. She is an incredible force of nature that goes head to head with Jeff Bridges and nearly steals the movie from Robin Williams. She is the voice of sanity and love in a movie about mental illness and greed. Mercedes balances her characters desperation and power so well and brings much needed comedy to her performance. It seems effortless. ♥♥♥♥
Katey Rich: This movie does not particularly belong to her, but you wish it did every time she shows up— she has such a bracing, no bullshit presence that cuts through so much of the film’s loosey-gooseyness. How could Jeff Bridges be such a mess when he’s already got her on his side? ♥♥♥♥♥
Nick Westrate: Ruehl's mercurial performance gets all the hearts from me. Here’s one the Academy got right. Mercedes brash, wounded, generous and complicated Anne is the most thrilling performance in a cast of virtuosos. A single look or line reading from Ruehl can change the entire temperature of the film: she can drolly deliver: “What do you want, applause?” to undercut Bridges’ return or hear his rejection of her and break her heart wide open to us with a look. She is as open as she is tough, a clever as she is generous, fragile as she is ferocious. She is the human personification of early 90s New York, if Manhattan was a human she would be Anne Napolitano. ♥♥♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: I used to think of this performance as a (blissfully) loud star turn, a firestorm, or a whirling dervish. Revisiting the movie after all these years, I was shocked to discover that Ruehl, for all her innate theatricality, is essentially the straight man in a cast of bananas. Not that she's letting them have all the fun. Her tetchy impatience with the insanity around her is the movie's best recurring joke. She's expert at delineating minor detonations versus major explosions within her lovelife and just as superb at the gentler lower stakes of her slow-burn mentoring of Lydia (Amanda Plummer, who should have absolutely joined her in this lineup). My personal vote goes to Juliette Lewis (by a hair) but I love this Oscar win. The Fisher King has the best ensemble performance of 1991, period; Everyone is delicious in it. ♥♥♥♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "To me this is perfect, she builds a believable character from what could be a cliche, hits every comic note while letting her soft underbelly show. Knocks her big moment ('what did I get?!?') out of the park" - GreyDog (Reader average: ♥♥♥¾)
Actress earns 29¾ ❤s
Jessica Tandy as "Ninny Threadgoode" in Fried Green Tomatoes
Synopsis: An old woman in a nursing home reminisces about a lifelong friendship between two women who ran 'The Whistle Stop Cafe' during the Great Depression.
Stats: Then 82 yrs old, 25th film, 4th billed ("and" Jessica Tandy). Second (and final) nomination. 25 minutes of screentime (or 18% of the running time.)
Mark Harris: This was a we-still-love-you nomination, two years after her Best Actress win for Driving Miss Daisy, in a maybe-it’ll-work-again movie, two years after Steel Magnolias. The part of a chatty old nursing-home resident whose role is to represent a very Hollywood notion of Southern quirkiness and indomitability is one that, at 81, she could have done in her sleep. To her credit, she doesn’t—she keeps it small, sweet, and controlled, and she uses her voice as only someone with a lifetime of acquired skill could, but there’s not much more here to play than “magical old dear.” ♥♥
Nikki M James: I have almost no complaints about this film. I loved it the first time I saw it, and I love it every time I revisit The Whistle Stop. What I'm saying is I can't be trusted to be objective. Jessica Tandy is equal parts teenage firecracker and frail elder. One could argue that Tandy could get five hearts just for being alive and remembering her lines, but she delivers a shimmery performance; a love letter to female friendship and grit. Tandy, as Ninny, is a captivating and endearing storyteller; no wonder Evelyn keeps coming back for more. TOWANDA!! ♥♥♥♥♥
Rory O'Malley: I always loved this movie as a kid. A lesbian romance and lots of menopause humor. A gay child’s dream. Jessica gives a sweet and endearing performance but acts primarily as the movie’s narrator. She spends most of her screen time trying to conceal her identity and connection to the story. I think this is why it seems like she and Mary Stuart Masterson never had a conversation about playing the same character. However, she deserves the nomination if only for her read of the line “How many of those hormones have you been taking, honey?!” ♥♥♥
Katey Rich: This is the kind of nomination that only makes sense in the context of Oscar history (one of many reasons I love the Oscars—it’s a constantly evolving narrative about itself!) She is perfectly lovely in this, and appealing enough that you get why she inspires Kathy Bates to change her entire life. But the entire lifeblood of the movie is in the flashbacks, and it’s baffling to imagine choosing Tandy out of a lineup that includes all of those co-stars. ♥♥
Nick Westrate: A heartwarming performance. While she has all the glorious humanity and sharp thinking that make her one of our greatest actors, she has to do so much voice-over and narration that we don’t get to see her do much of her acting. I long for a Mary Stuart Masterson nomination for this film as lesbian icon Idgie Threadegoode. It would have changed the trajectory of her career in a major way. I also think Jessica was criminally overlooked the following year for her next collaboration with Ms. Bates: Used People. But you do have to give Ninny credit as one of the great stunt queens in cinema, she really drew that story along before reveling to ANYONE that she was Idgie- damn she even snuck that by Towanda, Righter of Wrongs, Queen Beyond Compare! ♥♥♥
Nathaniel R: A downshift from her Oscar winning role, primarily because she has so much less to work with. She's merely the sweet storyteller with a sparkle in her eye. The movie is vague about this woman's actual identity but, then, so is Tandy. If she's meant to be Idgie grown old than why isn't there a single attempt at twinning Mary Stuart Masterson's performance? And if she's meant to be an omniscient invisible relative, the movie is even siller. Either way, she and Bates are charming together but both quite broad! It's a shame that it wasn't one of the Marys who walked off with the movie's sole acting nomination since their section of the movie is more engaging. ♥♥
Reader Write-Ins: "Brimming with the zest for life, no other actress could have made Ninny this irresistible and infectious." - Julius (Reader average: ♥♥¾)
Actress earns 19¾ ❤s
Result: Mercedes Ruehl won the Oscar but ties with Juliette Lewis among our talking head panelists. That means the Smackdown is decided by your collective vote as the final panelist. And the winner in this excellent showdown is... Juliette Lewis in Cape Fear
THE FULL PODCAST CONVERSATION
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NEXT UP: There are (deep breath now) four more Smackdowns to come this super-sized season and we're going to space them out a little more now so you can be sure to watch along with us. They are 2005 (August 20th), 1938 (September 14th), 1965 (October 8th), and 1987 (November 12th). [All Previous Smackdowns]