Nuns, of the Lusty Variety

Prolific Oscar nominee Meryl Streep, who turned sixty last month, was the last woman to be nominated for portraying a nun. Along with Amy Adams she's the latest in a long line of women to wear the habit, to name but a few: Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's, Susan Sarandon's victorious turn in Dead Man Walking, and possibly most famously Whoopi Goldberg as showgirl-turned-saint Sister Mary Clarence in the Sister Act series. Deborah Kerr famously played two on-screen nuns, first in Black Narcissus (1947) and secondly opposite Robert Mitchum in Heaven Knows, Mr Allison (1957)(for the latter she received an Oscar nomination and both performances earned her the top prize from the New York Film Critics).

Despite both roles requiring Deborah to express an introspective grapple with the constraints of each nun's commitment to God the two roles require much different work from her. John Huston's Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison initially bothered me rather a lot; Mitchum as a WWII navy Corporal gets washed up on a desert island (presumably somewhere near Japan) where he meets the sole inhabitant, Kerr's Sister Angela. She appears indifferent towards his arrival, perplexed even, yet the following weeks see them engage in what is some heavily intense interaction for people who have just met each other, allbeit in what becomes a quest for survival against Japanese attack. Questions are begged: What was Sister Angela doing before his arrival? Making cups of green tea and playing Patience? How has the solitude affected her? How does she react to no longer being alone?

This is another African Queen, breezy and bright, treading lightly over old ground in the culture clash/missionary propaganda/opposites attract fun of its predecessor, but it is rather maddening that Huston's film seems so unconcerned with its characters adaptation into a wild unknown. Instead we're treated to a kind of moral compromise (one that takes way too long), whereby Allison learns to think carefully and have faith and Angela is encouraged to let loose and pay more attention to what's going on around her. Kerr demonstrates the naivety of Angela with silly Irish broad that articulates either her worrisome distress -- "Ohhhh, Mister Aaaaaalison" -- or the kind of uptight matronly banter she's stripped of by the time the closing credits roll.

The film's killer scene occurs fairly late on, and is the closest thing that Heaven Knows gets to displaying the primal nakedness of the characters' desires and frustrations. Responding to Mitchum's drunken petulance over a draughts game, which is blatantly leading to darker and more sinister advances, Kerr's hesitant mustering of the line "You don't want to play draughts?" is both blackly hilarious and scarily resilient. Despite previously denying any feeling for Allison her desperation to preserve his integrity in her mind is rather astounding, and Kerr completely nails this part of Angela, and in the process helps to make Heaven Knows a much more fluid, natural and worthwhile exercise.

Aside from this scene, Kerr is given an altogether fluffier arc than she was in Black Narcissus (a decade earlier) where Sister Clodagh, and her feelings for the local totty Mr. Dean, are decidedly less lucid. Clodagh (a much more impersonal and mysterious moniker as it is) sums up the relative inpenatrability of the woman herself, who uses her habit as more of a hiding place, a reserved place of judgement. Given a quest to set up a nunnery up in the cloudy peaks of the Himalayas, Clodagh's Mother Superior voices her concerns over whether the young nun is emotionally secure and selfless enough to succeed.

Black Narcissus is gorgeous; eery, mythical, alien, and its estrangement from civilisation re-enforces the idea of this place as independent of 'life', free of context, suspended in time. It is Clodagh's job to stay grounded and remind her nuns that they are still under God's watchful eye, even though she too is becoming more enamoured with the place and less reliant upon religion. Her main focus is upon reforming the "ill" Sister Ruth, who it has presumed has been questioning her commitment to the cause before the journey through the mountains. Told to "spare her some of your own importance... if you can" by the Mother Superior (yes, the film is rather bitchy) you can see Kerr trying to maintain the immovable composure and morality in a way of regressing to a default state of mind. But as familiarity and rigid practice make Clodagh an unpopular figure in the mountains (particularly among a certain man) she has to rethink her methods.

Kerr never really explodes emotively but depicts the bubbling pot through irksome discomfort, and confirms without ever admitting so that she isn't enough of an evolved person to cope with her own desire for freedom, never mind the wandering outlook of her cloaked clan. This reaches a messy head with the elemental Sister Ruth (played fiercely and brilliantly by Kathleen Byron), who seeks to make Clodagh pay for her loosening affections for Mr. Dean, whom she also has an eye for. Ruth is treated as a mental basket case but ends up being the most valuable and emotionally in-touch member of the film, angry of attempts to suppress her, clear in her love for Dean, aware of her leader's hypocrisy and fatefully jealous of it. Kerr is more wise to this than one might first think, and as Narcissus reaches a bitter climax she understands Clodagh's relief at exiting the situation with her authority intact, however compromised her moral position has become.

Heaven Knows Mr. Allison - B-

Deborah Kerr - ***

Black Narcissus - B+

Deborah Kerr - ****

Personal Canon: 90. Separate Tables (1958)

Directed by Delbert Mann
Starring: David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth, Wendy Hiller, Gladys Cooper

Bournemouth hotels should be serene during the off-season; a time where the long-term residents can relish the lack of drunken tourists and screaming kids. The host of characters that inhabit the Bournemouth hotel featured in Delbert Mann's Separate Tables, however, seemingly don't want the drama of the holidays to end, and backstab, bitch, and conduct affairs with barely a second thought. This film isn't so much like Edmund Goulding's delightfully trashy 1932 Best Picture winner though, bleakly satirising its inhabitants to enlighten ever-present social divides and exercising a crisp, cut-throat humour.

Almost vehement that we consign the wild bunch to an array of archetypes (the old maid, the glamourpuss, the stubborn elite, the dirty old man) Separate Tables encourages us to evaluate these assumptions and their easily-concluded nature, and does so by distributing its characters in a thoroughly interesting political spectrum, which helps to highlight the internal struggles of these people to simply move with the times. The middle portion of the film, in which Dame Gladys Cooper's utterly immovable Mrs. Railton-Bell confronts the private life of David Niven's Major, is incredibly telling. Her desire to include everything and everyone in his business, as an act of morally-ingrained manipulation, emphasises the old-guard ethics and hypocritical etiquette of a generation in fear of its place in the world. With war long gone, and marooned in an age of consumerism, the teenager, rock n'roll, Mrs. Railton-Bell exhibits the still-prevalent desperation to live up to perceived class-driven archetypes, and typifies the confusion of Table's erratic, aging community.

A further salute to this is Burt Lancaster's reverence and hatred of the glamorous, man-eating Rita Hayworth, whom he truly loves but views as a riskier prospect than the matronly, traditional Wendy Hiller. When a man's doubting Rita Hayworth as a romantic option, you have to reckon he's got hangups, right? Deborah Kerr's Sibyl is the centre of the film, and the political spectrum, as she's been denied the freedom of thought by her restrictive mother. So too the major: the 'tentative' romance that he and Sibyl engage in culminating in a tremendous, wrenchingly half-spoken scene towards the end, which provides the most genuine and capping element of Mann's rich endeavour. As a term, 'separate tables' may appear harmless enough, but its mild-mannered etiquette is a mask for more insidious insecurities, fears, motivations; seeing yourself through other people is hard to take.

Oscar In Retrospect: Actress in a Leading Role, 1958

Even as I set about writing this delve into a half-century ago I think that it's perhaps a mistake to specify this as an 'Actress in a Leading Role' post. While it's often difficult to get excited about the films that get their women nominated for this, my favourite of Oscar's twenty four categories, 1958 was not your uniform year. No Elizabeth: The Golden Age's, Blue Sky's or Chocolat's plague the year's nominees, and only one of these women are playing a biopic-style character. Unsurprisingly, that's Susan Hayward, who went on to take this award after winning both the NYFCC and the Golden Globe for Drama. The scales were surely tipped even more in her favour by the fact she had lost for four nominations in the previous eleven years.

But back to the films: a self-conscious but well-played and very giving adaptation of a famous play, a brazen woman's quest to escape an ill-fated end, a chronicle of the campest childhood one could ever wish for, an epic melodrama about small-town politics and uncertain romance, and a modest, deliciously dry social satire that captures the changing moral attitudes of a new generation deftly. The final film to which I refer is Delbert Mann's Separate Tables, which is by far my favourite of the five, and is poised to emerge later on in my personal canon, so watch out!

On with the 1958 Actressexuality, which will be ordered in terms of preference. If it looks as if I'm bitching about someone a lot, try not to take it to heart. It isn't forgotten that all of these performances (if not perfect) emerge as really important to their films.

Elizabeth Taylor - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Rating: ****

I can certainly see where Montgomery Clift was coming from when he singled out Taylor as the only woman to turn him on. Her posture; graceful, glamourous, but often forward and dangerous, is surely capable of turning a few, and so Paul Newman's Brick (a stud himself) and the utter repellence he has for Taylor's Maggie, is initially difficult to understand or accept. Of course, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has a lot up its sleeve with which to besiege us, in the way that really only theatre-born productions can, and it can often feel like a persistent waiter, dishing out information like a ten-course dinner, whether you've exhausted your appetite or not.

But there's an awful lot to take from the film, the titular 'cat' in question being Maggie's middle-nickname, of the sort you're accustomed to seeing attached to turn-of-the-century gangsters, post-war boxers, and modern-day wrestling stars. Maggie's in a tight spot; not least because her husband can't stand the sight of her, but it's somehow fitting to talk of her in the same breath as these bustling physical brutes. She doesn't dropkick Paul Newman off the bedpost, or anything that brutishly severe (although wouldn't that have made for wonderful viewing?), but it's the tenacity she exhibits as a wife that marks her as a real force to be reckoned with, both scared of what lurks beneath her husband's strange behaviour and yet determined to get to the bottom of it.

Maggie's pressing begins with the kind of throwaway nagging that you'd expect of someone that looks like her; middle class, well-brought-up, materialistic. But Taylor soon makes you forget about these first impressions (Jennifer Garner similarly did in last year's Juno), as the film and us quickly lean towards wondering just why the blazes Brick is so damn angry. Unlike Garner's Vanessa though, Maggie's intentions are often selfish, and in the most extreme, confrontational elements of Roof Taylor lets these ingrained, underhand, ambitious (particularly in terms of class and finance) moments slip out of her framed composure and feel like something rather treacherous. That her ambition doesn't temper, even while her husband is drinking himself into a stupor, feels like we we aren't justified in giving her a chance in the first place. But looking back, Maggie never promises anything to anyone, and it soon becomes apparent that she really only flourishes while others are weak and conciliatory. A hesitant leader. Fascinating character work.

Deborah Kerr - Separate Tables

Rating: ****

I keep comparing these women to others, but I just can't help it. Sibyl, the frumpy, inhibited weakling Deborah Kerr plays in Separate Tables is a near clone of Bette Davis' Charlotte Vale in 1942's Now Voyager. Both have dastardly mothers played by Gladys Cooper (can anyone do that role better?!) but where Davis had bigger obstacles to overcome -- her trademark voraciousness in particular -- Kerr, you feel, is a lot less restricted in what she can bring to the role. But Sibyl, even as a woman who finds herself, does so to a lesser extent and in an incredibly compact setting; as well as without the impetus of a passionate, easy love interest such as Paul Henreid. Her Major (David Niven in his deserved Oscar-winning performance) is a lost soul in himself, and together with her stringent mother really ensure Kerr's mousy daughter is well and truly alone.

"B-b-b-b-but mummy" she stutters and stammers on more than one occasion. It's sympathetic but limited, and one wonders, at first, if someone like her, that sheltered and socially awkward, would be as exaggerated, unaware, defensive as she appears to be early on. But such is the brilliant understanding of people (from British stalwarts, to military men, to Americans, to cosmopolitans, to carers, and to the epitome of transatlantic glamour herself, Rita Hayworth) that Sibyl's crust of concession begins to question itself; a cultural enlightenment on a minute, claustrophobic scale. In retrospect it's a touching performance, reaching its height and drama with her shell-shocked reaction to the central event in the film, and her confrontation with David Niven's Major near the end.

A leading performance? I'm not so sure. Such is the nature of Separate Tables that everyone in it feels to be supporting each other and the themes of the film. Nevertheless, Kerr got her place, and personally I wouldn't demote her.

Rosalind Russell - Auntie Mame

Rating: ***

Few films lend their Leading Actress such a valuable amount of screen-time and silly theatrics, but Auntie Mame, as frivolous as it is, needn't purport to be about anything much more than madcap antics, efervescent dresses, and camp behaviour. Two weeks ago, a screening of Travels With My Aunt proved disappointing, the unbearable performance of Maggie Smith (whom I usually thoroughly appreciate by the way) half-channeling Russell's eccentric relative but too conscious of herself and the role that she doesn't really interact with the Actors around her, and is certainly neither as generous nor precious as an Actress. But chiefly, the reason I really wanted to see Travels With My Aunt is Russell's memorable performance in Auntie Mame, which sets a pinnacle for all those eccentric literary Aunts out there. A plea: come out, come out, wherever you are eccentric Aunts. We need you!

The role of Auntie Mame doesn't call for mountain-conquering ability but Russell does all she's asked. You never doubt that her nephew is the most important thing in her life, even as she goes off in tangents where you can't really guage what's motivating her and making her tick. It's interesting to watch Russell evolve in the film from being the whirlwind that enters your life and turns your world upside-down (allbeit a gratuitous one), to a rather tragic leading lady of life. It's of the same ilk as her Gypsy turn, except she doesn't have as much to do here, and the character is only half-heartedly three-dimensional.

I suppose it all depends on what you hold a "Leading Actress" to account for. If you're looking for a driving force Russell is it; if you're looking for a woman that fulfills expectations, she's it and more, but if you're looking for an Actress that can change perceptions of her film, I'm not sure her box is the one to tick on your '58 ballot.

Susan Hayward - I Want To Live!

Rating: ***

For better or worse, Robert Wise's I Want To Live! is a naive piece of Oscar Bait. While modern Leading Actress vehicles are no less upfront in their demands, it's an altogether more insidious, interdependent, media-centric circus that exists now. From the get-go it's fairly obvious where the film's going right up to its conclusion, with a few curve balls and about-turns meandering their way through the dull middle-portion. It's funny that Hayward owes probably as much to her film as any of these other Actresses, since it showcases the pitfalls of being a woman "with attitude" fairly ably itself. Minus the overt comedy, Katharine Hepburn's jailbird shtick in Bringing Up Baby feels almost like Hayward; gutsy, brash, over-powering, ballsy, and a la Hepburn just as likely to annoy, though less with incessance than the fact she's willing to believe that she's worth ten times that of your average con, or indeed your average cop, or crucially, your average man. Hayward's Barbara Graham is on nobody's side, but eminently easy to root for.

Laughing it off at first Hayward is still our charismatic leading lady for way past the halfway-mark, but as the realisation of the consequences of being convicted of this crime (which we're told she didnt commit, even though the real-life Barbara Graham was supposedly guilty) takes its ivy-grip, I Want To Live! turns into something quite harrowing. Her charm fades quickly, just as it's supposed to, but one wonders if this charm (endearing and revealing as it occasionally proves) is one of the few things Hayward is required to turn on and off. She carries your gaze for chunks of the film but nary improves upon what we know or heightens what we feel.

Shirley MaClaine - Some Came Running

Rating: ***

It's only been a week since I watched Some Came Running but I still had to IMDB the film for the name of MaClaine's character, who's called Ginnie. It still doesn't ring that much of a bell, and shouldn't really, since Ginnie lingers in the background of the film for long periods. This is typified by the film's early abandonment of her, introducing Ginnie as the dumb tart that follows Sinatra's Dave to his home town in Indiana, and neglecting her character for a good forty minutes while we figure out the leading man. It proves a good move, both for her and the 137-minute melodrama.

The lasting memory of Some Came Running is the image of Dave and Ginnie marrying, each for essentially different reasons, and their distance as a couple in this moment is all too evident. The two stand committed but far from united, and wholly unsure of what their marriage will mean for their future. It's the part of the film that makes the most sense, anchored by the excellent Sinatra and an assured performance from MaClaine. There isn't an awful lot to her ditzy, impetuous Ginnie, but while we're sometimes encouraged to see her through Dave's eyes, as a tiresome nuisance, it almost feels like she's fighting to vindicate her position in the film and in Dave's life.

It's almost an anti-MaClaine performance in that she doesn't have the intelligence, decision or bite we're treated to in her later creations in Terms of Endearment, Postcards of the Edge etc. but this was very early in her career, and so her naive, child-like affectations and needy, attention-seeking demeanor come across as genuine of the babyface Actress. A girl that needs to clamp on to anything and anyone; funny, loveable, but obvious, blatant and unable to draw the line. I heavily suspect that her nomination is for the eventual fate of her character, but no matter, this is lovely work.

My Ballot

Deborah Kerr - Separate Tables

Kim Novak - Vertigo

Rosalind Russell - Auntie Mame

*Elizabeth Taylor - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof*

Mary Ure - Look Back In Anger