Best Actress 1968
Winners: Katharine Hepburn, The Lion in Winter
Barbra Streisand, Funny Girl
Nominees: Patricia Neal, The Subject Was Roses
Vanessa Redgrave, Isadora
Joanne Woodward, Rachel, Rachel

The Field: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★


Ranking Oscar's Ballot
 
 My Pick:
Barbra Streisand, Funny Girl ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

From There:
Joanne Woodward, Rachel, Rachel ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Don't worry: despite the title, there's only one Rachel. This isn't The Three Faces of Eve all over again, and in fact, Woodward is immeasurably more subtle and interesting here than she was in that Oscar-winning part. Rachel, Rachel is certainly of its era, with ostentatious distances between foreground and background and some New Wave-inspired flashbacks of two or three seconds apiece. And yet, unlike most of the plaintive character-driven dramas for which Oscar falls so regularly—represented in 1968 by the likes of Charly, The Fixer, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, and The Subject Was Roses—Rachel, Rachel is persuasively cinematic, trusting that its cool, almost abrasive intelligence will yield more sensitive insights than the gloppiest sentimentality could ever achieve, and making greater headway into the worldview of a chilled, watchful, suffocated character than movies with these objectives usually achieve. Woodward tempers the theatrical size of her work in films as early as Eve and as late as Mr. and Mrs. Bridge and opts for stern but incisive line-readings, small but eloquent gestures, that would never fly on a stage, but which cooperate marvelously with Newman's roving camera and questing curiosity. She's not afraid to be funny or energetic, as when she bounds naked out of a shower to take a suitor's telephone call and then makes a silly, schoolmarmish hash of pretending to her mother that she's talking to a friend. But in general, and in defiance of the movies' usual associations of virginity with either delicacy or hysteria, Woodward endows her Rachel with a subdued but fascinating haughtiness: not as if she's uninterested in men or above sex, which we learn in due course that she isn't, but that she's above explaining herself, even to a camera, and no longer expectant that anyone in her town will unlock any major secret or riddle in her life. Anything she wants to know, she'll have to think through by herself. Woodward's thoughtfulness and severity are bracing, and not only because they're untainted by stereotype or grandiloquence. Indeed, Estelle Parsons is on hand to prove how an inveterate overstater would have ruined this part; the ghastly phantom of Geraldine Page, who turned a similar character into a high-strung grotesque in Summer and Smoke, hangs just off the edge of the screen. But you don't worry about them much because Woodward is so transfixing at the center of every frame, asking pointed questions of her new lover, bridling at the idea of religion and then falling apart in her first service, pondering the crisis of an unexpected pregnancy instead of reeling between stock emotional postures, giving herself over to thoughts from her past without "losing" herself in them. She's too controlled for a verb like that, and though that's a mixed blessing for the character, it's a marvelous feat for her interpreter; if it keeps her from being easily lovable or more obviously "exciting" on screen, it makes for a superb, eminently revisitable performance.

Katharine Hepburn, The Lion in Winter ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Vanessa Redgrave, Isadora ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Patricia Neal, The Subject Was Roses ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Neal's best asset in this role, in almost any role, is the profound weight of disappointment etched into those huge eyes, in perpetual friction with the sexy crook of her brows and the gravelly intelligence in her voice. Neal's features are so large and open they seem ready for everything, but the way she tilts her head and shuts the energy on and off behind her eyes, you realize as soon as she wants you to that she's already been through everything. The Subject Was Roses, which starts on the morning after Neal's son (Martin Sheen) has returned home from World War II, needs its lead actress to telegraph how much she's already been bruised, mere hours after her dearest wish has been granted. Her husband hasn't changed and her son has; it's the opposite of what she's wanted, and Neal's wound is even sharper because she makes her character into a palpable thinker and shrewd manipulator, not just a vessel of hurt feelings. This is a sturdy nomination for a stalwart actress, who is smart and much less sentimental than we'd forgive her for being. But it isn't a great performance, partially because Neal can't always find a way out of the stagy back-and-forth cadences of Frank Gilroy's dialogue (adapting his Tony- and Pulitzer-winning play), and partially because Neal is even more fascinating when her rueful exhaustion and moral alertness are filtered through some countervailing element like erotic hankering (see: Hud) or lustful dollar-chasing (see: A Face in the Crowd). Neal keeps up handily with the shifting dynamics and alliances in this three-hander piece, and she gives them weight and poignancy, but she sticks a little cautiously to the dominant notes of her scenes, and she's rarely invited to be as spontaneous and multifaceted as her best roles allowed.

Who gets your vote in this field, and on my dream ballot below? VOTE HERE!


My Favorites from 1968:

My Pick: Barbra Streisand, Funny Girl
Nominees: Mia Farrow, Rosemary's Baby
Nominees: Katharine Hepburn, The Lion in Winter
Nominees: Liv Ullmann, Shame
Nominees: Joanne Woodward, Rachel, Rachel

Honorable Mentions: Catherine Deneuve, Belle de Jour; Julie Christie, Petulia; Vanessa Redgrave, Isadora; Patricia Neal, The Subject Was Roses; Tuesday Weld, Pretty Poison; Claire Bloom, Charly; Faye Dunaway, The Thomas Crown Affair; Gena Rowlands, Faces; Viva, Lonesome Cowboys


Gourmet Prospects: Mireille Darc, Weekend; Sandy Dennis, The Fox; Anne Heywood, The Fox; Glenda Jackson, Negatives; Jeanne Moreau, The Bride Wore Black; Kim Novak, The Legend of Lylah Clare; Paola Pitagora, Fists in His Pockets; Vanessa Redgrave, The Sea Gull; Leigh Taylor-Young, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!

Further Research: Geneviève Bujold, Isabel; Sandy Dennis, Sweet November; Marianne Faithfull, The Girl on a Motorcycle; Eleanor Fazan, Inadmissible Evidence; Judy Geeson, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush; Anne Jackson, The Secret Life of an American Wife; Nancy Kwan, Nobody's Perfect; Janet Landgard, The Swimmer; Christiane Lang, The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach; Claudine Longet, The Party; Simone Signoret, The Sea Gull; Lee Remick, No Way to Treat a Lady; Elizabeth Taylor, Boom!; Carol White, Poor Cow; Anne Wiazemsky, La Chinoise; Shelley Winters, Wild in the Streets

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