The Black Stallion (1979)

The Black Stallion

Directed by Carroll Ballard

Starring: Kelly Reno, Mickey Rooney, Teri Garr

Grade: A - [83] 

A picture postcard of early adolescence, “The Black Stallion” is everything Spielberg’s “War Horse” should have been: majestic, effortless, forged with sentiment but rarely overflowing with it. It’s a beautiful story of a boy-horse bond that’s underpinned but, crucially, allowed to breathe, Ballard capturing the shipwrecked duo’s learned mutual trust with a ten-minute wordless sequence alive with grace and profound feeling. This somewhat simple journey takes a different shape when Oscar-nominated Mickey Rooney enters the picture, but in replacing the horse’s temporary purpose as a paternal figure, the film enlightens the adaptability of animals and our use of them to great effect. Despite the obvious similarities to “War Horse” it finds a depth and scope displayed infinitely better in Bresson’s “Au Hasard Balthazar,” and yet can be identified as a wonderful family movie, too.

Bitesize Best Actress Oscar Profiles: Marsha Mason

Marsha Mason in “Chapter Two”

Lost the 1979 Best Actress Oscar to Sally Field in “Norma Rae”

Grade: **

When considering on/off-screen creative cinematic pairings, one’s instinct doesn’t necessarily gravitate towards Neil Simon and Marsha Mason. Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter are the most obvious dissenters of the unwritten “don’t mix business with pleasure” rule in this era, while Woody Allen’s doomed relationship with Mia Farrow led to an intense period of collaboration in the late 1980s. Neither of those partnerships directly resulted in an Oscar nomination for the performer, which makes Simon and Mason’s success with the Academy all the more remarkable. He penned three of her four nominated roles (in “The Goodbye Girl,” “Chapter Two,” and “Only When I Laugh”) in the space of five years, before their divorce in 1983.

Regarded as an actress who had a short shelf-life with audiences and Oscar alike, Mason was at the height of her popularity in 1979 when “Chapter Two” rolled around. Particularly dated, this romance has the early charm of a Simon script, as the courtship of Mason’s divorcee Jennie and James Caan’s widower George unfolds over the space of five snappy telephone calls. In these scenes Mason approaches flirtation with lively hints of wanting promise, but possesses that dose of cynicism associated with a weary singleton, and treats the character as she should do: a woman not inherently expecting anything, but who becomes dependent upon a man for the second time in her life. Mason shies away from telegraphing resistance as hostile or bitter, her wit less acerbic than stately, pronounced, and warmfully combative.

Both actors’ game punch and inherent likeability distract from the essential contrivance of their early exchanges, but the dialogue-heavy staginess eventually prevents them from delving beneath the surface-hangups of their characters. The injection of mawkish angst as a dramatic plot device only serves to emphasise the uneveness of the writing, more representative in George but nevertheless alienating us from both people who we thought we knew. The flaws in their relationship emerge abruptly, feel shallow, and are drawn out for far too long, that it’s no wonder Mason’s performance feels ultimately tiresome. Her tethered reactions to Caan’s muted self-pity, including one particularly epic monologue where she attempts to convince him why they should stay together, are fundamentally well-executed, but she can’t escape the compartmentalisation of her character into a reluctant confrontationalist which considerably hampers her ability to succeed in this production.

Mason is an actress with embedded self-supremacy, but it's far less suited to this role than it is in "The Goodbye Girl" and, particularly, "Only When I Laugh." She needs much more to chew on than is afforded her here, and in a looser narrative, where the occasional dismantling of her somewhat uptight persona translates as more natural than forced. Simon was a screenwriter with wild extremes of success, and as such this falls near the bottom of his hierarchy, and sadly Mason is unable to forge a path from this disadvantaged position much further than second base.

Bitesize Best Actress Oscar Profiles: Bette Midler

Bette Midler in "The Rose"

Lost the 1979 Best Actress Oscar to Sally Field in "Norma Rae"

Grade: *****

I've met so many people that admired Marion Cotillard's dramatic take on Edith Piaf in "La Vie En Rose", but relatively few that liked the film itself. Frantic editing or otherwise, the film and performance feel so knowingly interdependent, that I don't see how one of them can survive without the other. My feelings about "The Rose" and its star Bette Midler are similar; Midler is given so much leway with her character that she basically becomes the film. The things going on around her are relegated to mere distractions, and her performance becomes a showcase for the ages.

Apparently modelled on Janis Joplin, Midler's Mary Rose Foster is a rock star plagued by her dependence on drugs and alcohol. When she meets Houston (dashing co-nominee Frederic Forrest), she appears to have something to live for beyond music and extensive intoxication. The film's strands about Rose's affair with Houston, and her rocky relationship with manager Rudge (Alan Bates), don't really go anywhere, but that doesn't prevent Midler from developing an attachment to these characters, even as she keenly flaunts her own complete estrangement from what or who she is as a person, other than The Rose.

The film romanticises self-destruction in the way that tragic talents are iconised in the media, and Midler is only too happy to play Rose as a bittersweet heroine. She is utterly powerhouse in her stage scenes, affecting in her romantic insecurity, but often frustratingly gung-ho in approaching every element of her life. Midler occasionally blends her goofy persona into Rose's louder moments, for when she meets Houston initially -- and in one particular scene where she berates him for getting them kicked out of a bar -- she feels conscious of herself and too aware of how rash her wild temper is. "The Rose" works well because it portrays Foster as an unsalvagable tearaway, and Midler's energy and magnetism as a presence is essential to the success of this biopic.

But then there are her quieter moments; her feigned ambivalence when a fed-up Rudge puts an end to their time together, a proud glimmer of self-recognition when a drag artist imitates her at a bar, and an incredibly sad late scene in a phone box. By far the most resounding memory of "The Rose", however, lies in Midler's rendition of Joplin's own "Stay With Me". She gives the song such a wrenching emotional force, not even as a love song but as a plea for us, for life, to stay with her and remember her. It's one of those moments in cinema where time just seems to stand still, and it's also the perfect way to end this film.