From Page to Screen

Danielle Darrieux

Sprung from the pages of Louise De Vilmorin’s novella, and much like the narrative that she’s enacting, Darrieux’s enchanting work as Madame de…’s eponymous heroine is full of contradictions. She’s precise yet natural; restrained yet impulsive; lugubrious yet frivolous. The Frenchwoman celebrates these inconsistencies whilst reconciling them beneath her sophisti-coquette’s dynamic façade. What subsequently emerges is one of the most intelligent characterizations in screen history: a multifaceted portrait of fractured desire, effortlessly born from an incandescent heart. The actress responds to director Max Ophuls’s elaborate artifice with a minimalist intuitiveness that articulates her tragic Comtesse’s fateful transition from carefree belle to world-weary femme. It is this delicately nuanced approach that breathes life into the archetype of the socially-incarcerated trophy wife, imbuing it with compassion and depth that eventually proves devastating. To watch Madame de… is to experience cinema’s most brilliant love story — and its romanticism lives and dies with this most immortal of performances. SB

Bette Davis

The indomitable Davis might well have been the finest actress in the world during the late 1930s and early 1940s — and Lillian Hellman’s discreetly tyrannical über-bitch from The Little Foxes would afford her the best opportunity to flaunt those credentials. Regina Giddens represents the pinnacle of Davis’s prowess as a physical and intellectual screen force. Her intrinsic volatility has never been more formidable, a result of both the composed restraint that barely conceals its existence and the casual precision with which she verbally executes her victims. Davis reportedly battled with director Wyler over the characterization (she strived for ice queen from Hell, he wanted more warmth). She won out, and her victory is our gain. The Little Foxes is more notable for its deep-focus photography than the close-ups associated with traditional star vehicles — and there’s a reason for that: it’s to prevent the merciless venom in Davis’s eyes from searing right through the screen. SB

Whoopi Goldberg

Perhaps the most talented, underappreciated actresses of her generation, and maybe also one of the most hard-to-cast, Goldberg’s film debut (!) for Steven Speilberg remains her superlative dramatic achievement in a career full of comedy. What casting agents just don’t seem to get about Goldberg is her commanding knowledge of cinema history and pop culture, and her ability to relate it to whatever role she happens to be tackling — her abilities as an intuitive, instinctive actor are unique and sorely missed. Celie, as written by Alice Walker, is not an easy part to play and one that requires the actor playing her to age more than 50 years, and become several different women in that time span, going from beaten-down to radiant. Goldberg is able to conquer all of the challenges the role demands of her in a naturalistic, empathic way and Celie becomes as much Goldberg’s creation as Walker’s or Speilberg’s. If you aren’t bawling during the last ten minutes of this, you must have a heart of stone. This should have been the first Oscar for Whoopi, rather than the one she received a few years later in 1991 for her ace comedic role in Ghost, in the supporting category. It is her depth and her gravitas in Purple that will ensure her place in film history, though. Unless, of course, some brilliant scribe out there provides her with a properly-written new dramatic part. One can dream… MM

Katharine Hepburn

How did a rebelliously eccentric tomboy with an insufferable voice become enshrined as Hollywood’s greatest actress? Hepburn’s career trajectory deserves an essay in its own right, but if ever one sought justification for her gargantuan stature then look no further than Lumet’s adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s classic American tragedy Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Hepburn pours heart and soul into the morphine-addicted matriarch of the troubled Tyrone clan, reveling in her mercurial exploration of the character’s pathetically frayed edges. But she doesn’t simply stop there: the film is as much about her presence as her performance. Thus, Mary Tyrone becomes a riveting synthesis of the actress’s distinguished past, with the hallmarks of her youth (independence, authority, intelligence) often coruscating across her still-radiant but now weather-beaten face. Hepburn courageously throws her own legend into her work, and in doing so amplifies the tragedy of her familial abnegation to cataclysmic proportions. Many of her contemporaries faded with the onset of age, but Hepburn? She delivered her magnum opus. SB

Wendy Hiller

In a story that has been made and remade ad nauseum, Hiller stakes such supreme claim to the iconic character of Eliza Doolittle that film critic Frank S. Nugent, in a New York Times review said “Miss Hiller is a Discovery. (She deserves the capital.)”. Rooted in Greek mythology, the story of Pygmalion is the ultimate female rags to riches story, about a wealthy, cultured genteel-man who makes a bet that he can turn a guttersnipe flower monger from her vulgar origins and turn her into a passable society lady. She complies and then falls for him. Misogyny aside, Hiller’s performance is robust and daffy as the slang-slinging street waif of Henry Higgins’ dreams (Hiller earned the distinction of being the first woman to say “bloody” in a feature!). Personally cast by Socialist playwright George Bernard Shaw in the stage shows of Pygmalion, Major Barbara and Saint Joan, it was only through the great author’s insistence that she was able to act in the film version. Shaw, who is the only person other than Al Gore to have won both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar, saw in Hiller a versatility and ability, that, despite its significance, was largely under-utilized in film. Hiller, who was vocal about her lack of concern with celebrity, preferred to remain primarily on the stage during her 60-plus-year career, which would include an eventual Oscar win for Separate Tables in 1958. MM