Revisiting "The Wings of the Dove"

by Cláudio Alves

In 1997, Eduardo Serra became the first Portuguese person to be nominated for an Academy Award. This honor came thanks to his work in The Wings of the Dove, a Henry James adaptation directed by Iain Softley. This piece of trivia was one of the reasons I was so eager to watch the film as I first started to fall in love with movie awards. The other point of interest was Helena Bonham Carter, for whom I had a raging fandom in my early teens. After all, this was also the picture that had earned the actress her first nomination. It should have also won her the statuette. This was the first film I remember looking for with such avidness, going into international sites so I could order a DVD from abroad. 

I fell in love with The Wings of the Dove when I was thirteen, and that passion has only strengthened in the years since. Indeed, every time I revisit it, I find new details worthy of admiration…

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25th Anniversary: "The Portrait of a Lady"

by Nick Taylor

Happy Holidays! We are celebrating a very dear, tumultuous season - awards season - and the current wave of critics prizes has left us with some very exciting developments. It’s perhaps not the biggest shock that Jane Campion’s austere, sensual Western The Power of the Dog has become such a critical darling. It’s the first time in nearly two decades that one of Campion’s phone is in serious consideration but the film’s remarkable showing with awards bodies and the sheer number of Best Director wins she’s accrued are both tremendously deserved and, given the overall trajectory of her career, something of a surprise. 

Releasing her first film since 2009’s Bright Star (and after showrunning the acclaimed series Top of the Lake for two seasons), Campion’s favor with the Academy and critics at large has shifted wildly over the years. As rapturously as The Piano was received, her 1996 bold, purposefully hard-edged adaptation of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady scuttered a lot of that goodwill, and as abrasive as that film is, I can’t for the life of me understand why this torpedoed her prestige reputation so badly...

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Deborah Kerr @ 100: The legend, the legacy, "The Innocents"

by Cláudio Alves

For decades she held the record of being the most Oscar-nominated actress never to have won the statuette, with six unsuccessful nominations. In a piteous gesture, the Academy granted her an honorary award in 1994. How fitting that Deborah Kerr received such tribute from the hands of Glenn Close, the current holder of the older actress' erstwhile record. Considering this trivia, it'd be easy to remember Kerr's legacy through the prism of Oscar history. That would be a mistake. I state it as someone who first encountered the British thespian through her nominated roles, constructing a mental image limited by AMPAS' taste. As it turns out, despite her numerous nods, the most outstanding Kerr performances weren't so highly celebrated by the Academy. Simply told, that Oscar-y sextet doesn't do her justice. 

To celebrate Deborah Kerr's centennial, let's remember her range beyond golden laurels, her incandescent talent, the power she brought to her films. Let's honor her by reflecting on the actress' greatest work - the nightmare that is The Innocents…

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1947: Agnes Moorehead in "Dark Passage" and "The Lost Moment"

by Nick Taylor

One way to search for great performances outside of Oscar's history books is merely to check in on what the great character actresses of their day were busy doing besides not getting their due. In 1947 just to cite a few examples, You couldn’t go wrong with Mary Astor, warm and sympathetic as the mother of sickly Liz Taylor in Cynthia, and even better at nimbly flipping through the morally compromised history of a saloon-owner afraid her daughter will run away with a dangerous man in Desert Fury. There’s also Elsa Lanchester as the housemaid in The Bishop’s Wife, so piquantly observant in a role that often invites stooging. But if we’re talking supporting actresses, surely the first stop for anyone seeking out the heavies of Classic Hollywood is Agnes Moorehead. Moorehead’s performances n Dark Passage and The Lost Moment were my first stops after completing Oscar’s lineup in preparation for the Smackdown. 

The more famous of Moorehead’s two films in 1947 was Dark Passage, best known as the third of four films Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made together...

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