Goddesses of the Silver Screen

Leading ladies, character actresses, cult stars, B-movie queens and other interesting women of film and television (PS: this is a side blog so I like/follow from my main :)

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The great Judy Davis in her first Oscar-nominated performance as E.M. Forster’s troubled heroine Adela Quested, a repressed English tourist on a transformative journey, in the lush screen adaptation A Passage to India (1984, David Lean)

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One of our most charming and underappreciated working actresses, Melanie Lynskey

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Glenn Close photographed by Nancy Ellison to promote her screen debut and the first of her six Oscar-nominated performances, in The World According to Garp (1982). 

Will it be seventh time lucky for Glenn this year?!

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In small-town Ontario during World War II, naive teenager Jeannie Dougall (Carol Kane) gets pregnant by rape and beleaguered by her family in the harrowing sociological drama Wedding in White (1972, William Fruet).

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Long Island mafia widow Angela de Marco (Michelle Pfeiffer) seeks out a better life in the goofy screwball comedy Married to the Mob (1988, Jonathan Demme; with Dean Stockwell and Alec Baldwin). Some reviews:

“1988 was a defining year in Pfeiffer’s career, thanks in part to her performance as Angela de Marco, the widow of a Mafia enforcer, in Jonathan Demme’s Married to the Mob. The film is hilarious, sometimes even downright farcical in its approach to mob life. That could easily lead an actress to play Angela too broad, especially as she’s so eager to discard her old life. Pfeiffer has great comedic moments here, particularly in the climax when she licks her lips before throwing an intense punch. But despite her big hair, accent, and haphazard walk, it’s the quiet longing in Angela’s eyes that linger most. It’s a hilarious performance anchored by pathos that transforms the film into something genuinely moving.” — Angelica Jade Bastién, “The 10 Essential Roles of Michelle Pfeiffer”, Vulture (June 2017)

“None of it would work without Michelle Pfeiffer, who gets a few choice line-readings as disgruntled mob wife Angela de Marco — her pouty Long Island inflection on the declaration “I want a divorce!” is a particular highlight — but she’s an essential grounding force for the goofballs in her orbit... Demme reserves a lot of genuine feeling for Angela, whose biographical particulars (raised in Queens, one semester at a beauty academy, great follicles) virtually guaranteed that she would end up with a slickster like “Cucumber” Frank de Marco. As much as Demme surrounds her with tacky nouveau-riche décor and colorful eccentrics, Angela’s shot at a second chance in life is seen as courageous and hard-won. She’s pounded the pavement like the rest of the stiffs who circle the classified ads and trudge from one humiliating job interview to the next; it’s a steep drop from the Valium haze of her suburban life to the humble office of a leering Chicken Lickin’ manager... As single-mother empowerment stories go, Married to the Mob stands up to many more austere treatments, owing to Demme and Pfeiffer’s unironic commitment to the character’s plight.” — Scott Tobias, AV Club (July 2009)

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One of our finest actresses, Miranda Richardson, in a dazzling triple role in the disquieting psychological character study Spider (2002, David Cronenberg; pictured with Gabriel Byrne and Bradley Hall). Some critical context:

“A triumph of both quality and quantity, Richardson gives a nightmarish triptych of performances as, alternately, the mother of Ralph Fiennes’s mentally hollowed protagonist, his father’s mistress and his present-day landlady, vividly embodying an entire, terrorising wall of femininity in his psyche. Favored for the Best Actress award at Cannes, she emerged from the festival with no prize, but a cloud of Oscar buzz that vanished into thin air. A shame; it’s her best screen work.” — Guy Lodge, Hitfix (August 2012)

“This slow but brilliantly sustained journey into madness is fronted by a remarkable performance from Ralph Fiennes and superb backup from Miranda Richardson in a triple role... Richardson shows her range, depicting Mrs. Cleg as a woman sadly hanging onto hope, still trying to pretend she has some kind of satisfying family life despite her errant husband’s surliness; her Yvonne is trashy, vulgar, graceless and totally without morals, in the latter scenes injecting that same brassy sexuality into Mrs. Wilkinson’s cold authoritarian manner.” — David Rooney, Variety (May 2002)

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Terminally sick, sexually frustrated literary translator Ester (Ingrid Thulin), her sensual younger sister Anna (Gunnel Lindblom; bathtub) and Anna’s 10-year-old son Johan (Jörgen Lindström) drift through a fictional Central European country on the brink of war in the chilling psychodrama The Silence (1963, Ingmar Bergman)

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Toni Collette relives the scariest, most intense moments from Hereditary (Vulture, June 2018); photos by Amanda Demme

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Debra Winger looking very classical Hollywood as wartime prostitute Suzy DeSoto in Cannery Row (1982, David S. Ward)

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Kirsten Dunst looking very early 2000s!

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Women in the Films of Robert Altman

Pretentious community theater doyenne Camille Dixon (Glenn Close) and her flaky oddball sister Cora Duvall (Julianne Moore) attempt to camouflage a family scandal in the effervescent Southern Gothic farce Cookie’s Fortune (1999, Robert Altman)

*** see more Altman ladies ***

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Eccentric primatologist and conservationist Dian Fossey (Sigourney Weaver) finds her calling among the endangered mountain gorillas of Rwanda in the wildlife-rich biopic Gorillas in the Mist (1988, Michael Apted). Weaver received an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for her performance. Some original reviews:

“As the anthropologist Dian Fossey, Sigourney Weaver storms into a large hotel restaurant in central Africa, stalks the length of the room, delivers a strident tongue-lashing to a Dutch zoo broker who’s having lunch with his friends, and, cursing loudly, makes her exit — all the while carrying a good-sized baby gorilla in her arms, holding it tenderly, with awe. Weaver’s physical strength alone is inspiring in this movie, and there’s a new freedom in her acting. She’s so vivid that you immediately feel Dian Fossey’s will and drive. Weaver’s Dian is ecstatic when she steps off the plane in Africa, and she’s enraptured when she’s perched high up on a mountain, crouched down opposite a giant gorilla, mimicking his language and gestures from the inside — trying to think the way he does. Weaver is something to see.” — Pauline Kael, Movie Love (1988) 

“Weaver is going for broke these days. A new fearlessness has entered her acting — she’ll inhabit a part if it kills her. In roles that require steeliness, obsession, and a thin skin, she has flourished, and she has held on to her sense of absurdity; she isn’t afraid to look foolish. As Dian Fossey, she is magnificent... Gorillas in the Mist views Fossey as a ferocious saint, martyr, and mad-woman, a sort of Joan of Apes; Weaver gets deep inside Fossey’s obsession — her fury becomes contagious... To make the gorillas comfortable with her, she tries to adopt their mannerisms; watching her lope, scratch, and screech, you sense what makes her special as an actress — she’s game for anything. Fossey and Weaver converge here: This could be how Weaver trains for a part. Eventually, Fossey’s identification with the gorillas becomes total... Weaver’s visage even grows more apelike — the jaw becomes fuller, lumpier. More important, she’s thinking like a gorilla. She adopts their mannerisms because they make sense to her — they’re the most efficient way to express her rage. (It’s lucky that the filmmakers didn’t cast a more technically flamboyant actress, because then the metamorphosis might seem a joke.)” — David Edelstein, Village Voice (October 1988)

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The divine Julie Christie with sunflower

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Effortless star power: Julia Roberts

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The captivating Miranda Richardson

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The ageless Alfre Woodard

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The sublime Glenn Close