31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (13) Theresa Russell in BAD TIMING (WITH A GUEST CONTRIBUTION FROM DEREK HILL)

"I'm not ambitious, not an artist, not a poet, not a revolutionary."

Of the most baffling and head-scratching bad reviews Roger Ebert ever gave a great film, few are as perplexing as his panning of Nicolas Roeg's 1980 masterpiece Bad Timing.  Of course, Ebert wasn't the only critic who hated this incredible film but his critique of it was extremely harsh.  Despite his deep hatred of the film, even Ebert couldn't deny the brilliance of Theresa Russell's performance for Roeg and he ended his review with this:

"If there is any reason to see this film, however, it is the performance by Theresa Russell (who was Dustin Hoffman's lover in "Straight Time"). She is only 22 or 23, and yet her performance is astonishingly powerful. She will be in better films, I hope, and is the only participant who need not be ashamed of this one."

Bad Timing finally got its due a few years back when Criterion released their tremendous special edition of it, a move which finally allowed the film to find the audience it had so long deserved.  The film's re-release also served as a reminder to the astonishing talent of Theresa Russell, as daring and provocative as any actor we have had in English film in the past several decades.  While it is quite tragic that Russell has spent most of her career languishing in roles not suited at all for her considerable talents we can celebrate the few filmmakers who recognized just how special she is, with Nicolas Roeg remaining the artist who gave her the most memorable roles of her career.

I was initially going to write more on Theresa here but honestly the guest contribution that my friend, author and film-historian, Derek Hill sums up so much of what I feel and think about her I will just go ahead and leave you with his stirring words.  Hopefully some of you remember the Q&A I did with Derek awhile back here at Moon in the Gutter, and hopefully even more of you have read his marvelous book Charlie Kaufman and Hollywood's Merry Band of Pranksters, Fabulists and Dreamers: An Excursion Into the American New Wave.  Thanks so much to Derek for writing these lovely words for Moon in the Gutter about one of our mutual favorite actors:

Derek Hill on Theresa Russell in Bad Timing, 2012-

Theresa Russell's performance in Bad Timing is as formidable and memorable as anything Brando gave us. Now, bear with me. The two are obviously different in their approaches to acting. Their methodology, technique, and range are wildly dissimilar. Brando was trained and Russell wasn't. She seems awkward in front of the camera at times, unsure of herself and she sparks with naturalistic rawness. She's combustible and we're never sure what she'll do next. That's exciting in a movie like Bad Timing, where she plays a character, Milena, who is pure chaotic attraction. She's the mythic femme fatale, but Russell thoroughly humanizes her, stripping her from the trappings of cliché and making her identifiable to anyone who has ever been consumed by a woman like her or to any woman who is her. Roeg isn't interested in sustaining genre conventions (the story incorporates elements of the spy, mystery, romance, and noir genres) and Russell has no interest portraying Milena as a traditional vixen anyway. Russell is fearless in the role, and in that respect, she's brave. As brave as Brando in Last Tango in Paris. As brave as any actor who risked it all for their craft. She remarkably makes acting heroic, and that's a rare thing because relinquishing one's ego for the good of the movie is easier done in theory than in actuality. 

Bad Timing isn't an easy movie to experience. It shouldn't be. Although it's entrancing to watch, we are ultimately observing a story about an intense sexual relationship fraying and destroying the two people involved in it. We are watching a personal apocalypse. Roeg has quite a few brilliant movies on his resume—Performance (co-directed with Donald Cammell), Walkabout, Don't Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Eureka. For me, however, this one cuts the deepest, the one that has embedded in me with a fierce, mysterious power over the years. Much of that is due to Russell. 

I love to watch actors take a leap into the unknown. I love going into the mystery with them.  

--Derek Hill

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (14) Tuesday Weld in PLAY IT AS IT LAYS (1972)

"I may be self destructive, but I like taking chances with movies. I like challenges and I also like the particular position I've been in all these years, with people wanting to save me from all the awful films I've been in. I'm happy being a legend. I think the Tuesday Weld cult is a very nice thing."

-Tuesday Weld, 1971-

Tuesday Weld was the best damn American actress of the sixties and seventies.  She had everything that her more acclaimed peers like Dunaway, Fonda, Burstyn and Streep had, and more, but she was wildly unpredictable and was finally just not very interested in playing the game.  Glancing at the roles Tuesday Weld turned down throughout her career reads like a list of someone hell bent on not succeeding. She was quoted as saying that she turned down Bonnie and Clyde because, "I don't ever want to be a huge star, do you think I want to be a success?", other roles she turned down included Lolita, Rosemary's Baby, True Grit, The Thomas Crown Affair, Bob Carole Ted and Alice, Cactus Flower, Performance, The Stepford Wives, The Great Gatsby, Chinatown and Frances. Rumor has it that one of the reasons that Truffaut didn't direct Bonnie and Clyde was because she wouldn't play Bonnie.  Beatty would continue to pursue Weld before finally settling on Faye Dunaway, who built her entire career from that role. 

I found out about Tuesday Weld as a young boy after seeing her with Elvis in 1961's Wild In The Country and I would become pretty much obsessed by her in my twenties after viewing Lord Love a Duck (1966) and Pretty Poison (1968).  There has just never been anyone else like her...

Had she not gotten fed up with Hollywood by the late sixties Tuesday Weld could have probably all but dominated the seventies but she just wasn't interested.  Weld's final great starring role would come in Frank Perry's Joan Didion adaption Play It As It Lays, one of the early seventies more difficult to see great American films. She would receive a Golden Globe nomination but was controversially ignored come Oscar time. It's a difficult film to watch and it's probably the best portrayal of someone having a complete mental breakdown ever filmed. Weld seems to bring all of her personal demons out for this role.  This is cinema as deep therapy with the audience ultimately becoming as exhausted as the cast by the end of it. 

Play It As It Lays would act as Tuesday Weld's Raging Bull. Like De Niro she would never again be as beautiful or as transcendent in a role. There would be great work after, her Oscar nominated turn in Looking For Mr Goodbar, Michael Mann's Thief opposite James Caan and especially Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In America with De Niro himself but she would never again open that window she had early in her career. Much like her character Noah at the end of A Safe Place, she would seemingly just disappear...and we haven't found anyone else quite like her again.

-Jeremy Richey, 2012-

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (15) Jamie Gillis in THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN

Calling Dr. Love...

I have an absolutely massive post on Radley Metzger's masterpiece The Opening of Misty Beethoven coming in January, where I will go into great detail on the the late Jamie Gillis' iconic performance as Dr. Seymore Love, so this will be one of the shortest posts of this series.  This list would be unthinkable without Gillis though...who was one of our great undervalued actors.  

One of the most charismatic and talented actors to come out of the seventies, the late Jamie Gillis had many, many great under the radar performances that I could have highlighted here but, due to Distribpix's stunning recent collector's edition of Metzger's mesmerizing classic, The Opening of Misty Beethoven seemed like the ideal choice.  Gillis is certainly captured at the peak of his powers as Dr. Love...relaxed, sexy and witty, Gillis (opposite gorgeous Constance Money) radiates star-power and intelligence for Metzger.  It's hard to comprehend that such a great and finely-tuned performance has been all but ignored by most major film-studies.  Never mind the mainstream though, The Opening of Misty Beethoven is one of the very best films of the seventies and much of its success is due to Jamie Gillis in what is perhaps his defining role.  

More information on the stunning DVD and Blu-Ray releases of The Opening of Misty Beethoven can be found here.  My long look at the film will arrive here in the early part of January.  

-Jeremy Richey, 2012-

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (16) Emmanuelle Seigner in BITTER MOON

"I have a perfect memory...when I feel like it."

The first time I saw Emmanuelle Seigner almost twenty-five years ago I thought she was the coolest girl I had ever seen.  The year was 1988, the film was Frantic and I was 15.  Emmanuelle was 21 when she shot Frantic and she seemed like a supernatural cool breeze in the midst of a particularly tacky time...like a post-punk vision in a Cinema du Look dream.  Seigner reminded me of a young Elvis in Frantic (I wasn't at all surprised later when I found out that Presley was indeed her biggest influence) in the way she moved and carried herself...there was a defining rawness in Seigner that she has never lost.  I still think she is the coolest girl I have ever seen.  

Seigner's greatest work on the screen can be found in her husband Roman Polanski's 1992 masterpiece Bitter Moon, one of the nineties truly great works of cinema.  As the troubled and manipulative Mimi, Seigner gives one of the most simultaneous ferocious and vulnerable performances I have ever seen.  All of that cool energy she projected for Polanski less than five years earlier in Frantic is replaced by a live electric charge that feels downright dangerous.  Seigner's work in Bitter Moon is one of the most emotionally and physically naked performances I have ever seen...she's absolutely fearless and her work is both hard to watch and impossible to look away from.  

France produced several of modern cinema's greatest actresses in the eighties and while she has perhaps never gotten the international acclaim as artists like Binoche and Bonnaire, Emmanuelle Seigner has had just as big of an effect on me artistically and personally.  Her career, which has taken her from Godard to rock-stardom, has been incredibly fascinating to watch, even though the acclaim she so often deserved has often alluded her.  The greatest artistic and life muse to one of cinema's most visionary filmmakers, Emmanuelle Seigner is one of my favorite actors and has a number of performances more than ripe for rediscovery but her work as Mimi in Bitter Moon absolutely towers...it's an astonishing performance from one of modern film's most unique icons.

-Jeremy Richey, 2012-

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (17) Holly Woodlawn in TRASH

"Just because people throw it out and don't have any use for it, doesn't mean it's garbage."

Two years before being immortalized in Lou Reed's classic "Walk on the Wild Side", Holly Woodlawn gave one of the defining performances of the seventies in Paul Morrissey's stunning Trash (1970).  Appearing alongside beautiful Joe Dallesandro, Woodlawn is absolutely amazing in the film and gives one of the most endearing, original and moving performances I have ever seen.  

The Puerto Rican born Woodlawn had amazingly never appeared in a feature-length film before Trash, a fact which makes the performance all the more amazing.  The experience Woodlawn had gathered on the stage in the late sixties informed the performance in Trash and the authority and command of the screen Woodlawn shows is quite remarkable.  Legend has it that Woodlawn's role was initially much smaller but Morrissey was so blown away by Holly's talent that he expanded it into a leading part.  

 Holly Woodlawn manages to be funny, tragic and consistently brilliant in Trash. Legendary filmmaker George Cukor was in fact so moved by Woodlawn's performance that he started a campaign to get a Best Actress nomination but, sadly, it wasn't meant to be. It was the Academy's major oversight though as Woodlawn's performance in the film is among the best I have ever seen. Trash garnered a lot of justified critical acclaim upon its release and it remains one of the best and most defining films of the seventies. For me personally  Trash stands as one of the great examples of how truly life altering (and affirming) a film can be. We would be blessed to have more films this honest and raw in our theaters today. 

More information on the life and career of the fabulous Holly Woodlawn can be found here.

-Jeremy Richey, 2012-

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (18) Annabella Sciorra in MR. JEALOUSY

"What would you do if I bit your face right now suddenly?"

You know the way people gush and go on and on about Audrey Hepburn in the sixties?  That's kind of the way I feel about Annabella Sciorra in the nineties.  I always wished that someone like Woody Allen or Nora Ephron would build a series of endearing romantic comedies around her tapping into her incredible warm wit or that Abel Ferrara would finally give her the lead in one of his films instead of just granting her one scene-stealing supporting role after another.  Those cinematic wishes were never granted which is one reason that I am so grateful to Noah Baumbach, because he is one of the few directors who actually gave Annabella the kind of part she so richly deserved, that of the unforgettable Ramona Ray in his sadly often overlooked charmer of a film Mr. Jealousy.  

I fall immediately back in love with Annabella Sciorra every time I watch Mr. Jealously.  From the first time we see her fixing her hair to the strains of Luna's haunting score to the film's final images where we are greeted to her unforgettable smile one final time, I am just totally transfixed with each and every viewing.  There is so much grace and style in Sciorra's work and she's so utterly sublime in Mr. Jealousy. 

The truly great actors can say it all without saying a word and I love the way Sciorra listens in Mr. Jealousy.    Baumback gives most of the film's dialogue to Eric Stoltz's uber neurotic title-character but it is Sciorra who we really hear throughout the film.  Annabella is one of the most expressive actors I have ever seen which is why she could portray both charm and menace (check out her jolting work in Ferrara's The Addiction) so incredibly well...she is an absolute master at showing us what she is thinking and understanding.  

Noah Baumbach has I suppose made better and more accomplished films that Mr. Jealousy but it remains my absolute favorite film he has signed off on and most of that is due to Annabella Sciorra's lovely performance.  The film can be found in many a bargain-bin as it has never found the audience it deserves but I have to believe that I am not the only one who has fallen under the very bewitching spell that Annabella Sciorra casts as Ramona Ray.  

Annabella Sciorra continues to work regularly in film and television, and on the stage, and she continues to haunt my fevered cinematic dreams no matter how small the role.  I kind of adore her...

-Jeremy Richey, 2012-

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (19) Donald Sutherland in INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (WITH A GUEST CONTRIBUTION FROM JOHN LEVY)

"There can't be a conspiracy..."

Wanna hear one of the most insane but true statements in film history?  Donald Sutherland has never been nominated for an Oscar.  Now let me state that again for anyone who thinks they might have misread that sentence...Donald Sutherland has never been nominated for an Oscar.  I can't think of many more oversights in the history of The Academy Awards more shameful than the fact that they have overlooked year after year after year one of our most intelligent and valuable actors.  Sutherland shouldn't even be a candidate for this list (with one of the main rules being no Oscar nominees) but facts are facts and the man who has turned in some of the great performances in screen history has really never been given the due he has so deserved.  

Frankly, there are dozens of Donald Sutherland performances I could have gone with for this list so I just went with my gut and chose my favorite...that of doomed Matthew Bennell in Philip Kaufman's stunning 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, one of my all-time favorite films.  I have written on the film before so I will leave most of the time to my contributor today, but I will just ask that you go back and watch this film again and pay particular attention to Donald Sutherland's performance.  He slips into Bennell completely and projects the character's initial disbelief, questioning and finally terrifying acceptance with astonishing capability.  Most actors might have looked upon a role in a science fiction horror remake as just an excuse to pick up a check, but Sutherland plays this role with all the conviction and power he could muster.  His work makes what would already be a major film into something even more mesmerizing and powerful.  

I am very pleased tonight to offer up a guest contribution on Donald Sutherland from my friend, the award-winning filmmaker John Levy.  I first fell under the spell of John's incredible short-films a couple of years back and he has become one of my best online friends, and I am always amazed by how close our tastes always seem to match up.  After reading John's terrific contribution on Sutherland please visit his La Belle Aurore page where you can read about, and watch, some of his amazing work, including his truly exceptional Tabula Rasa, which just won a much-deserved audience award at the Once a Week Online Film Festival.  

John is a great friend and a great artist and I am honored that he offered up this piece on one of our shared favorite actors.  Thanks so much John!

-John Levy on Donald Sutherland, written for Moon in the Gutter (2012)-

"Donald Sutherland has one of the greatest, and possibly most overlooked, bodies of work of any actor alive today. From the mid 60’s to the early 80’s he has a section of work that rivals the most notable and celebrated actors of all time, with roles both supporting and as lead that are so many distant worlds apart and yet equally impressive. From Kelly’s Heroes to Steelyard Blues. Don’t Look Now to The Disappearance. Klute to Ordinary People. What works for him time and time again is his subtlety and naturalism. No matter how many times you’ve seen him before, he is completely believable and unpredictable. Amazing actors like Deniro and Pacino (so brilliant) always kind of have one thing working against them, which is the audience expectation of always anticipating a performance that will reach to extremes levels of intensity. But Sutherland is kind of the other way. He is so subtle in carrying himself like the subject of a documentary that when he has a moment of vulnerability, or emotional eruption, it is absolutely polarizing to the viewers mind and memory. On the surface there is no ego in his heroics. No suave in his romance. No menace in his evil. Examples that come to mind are him succumbing to Jane Fonda’s manipulative seduction in Klute. And the revelation of his villainy then tenderness, then further villainy in The Eye Of The Needle. Even in later performances like Backdraft, where he plays an arsonist, the madness of his character is all in his eyes. He jolts the viewer’s preconception of character types. But even better, he humanizes all of them just as Deniro or Pacino would. But where some actors are intricate muralists, Sutherland is an ambiguous minimalist. There is a moment in Philip Kaufman’s remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, far into the ongoing chase of the film, when Brooke Adams literally crumbles in Sutherland’s arms. And his reaction is seemingly so void of performance that it pushes the emotional currency of the film to another level, reminding you of the stakes, that at that point in the film, may have fallen a bit to the background. It’s the last cry and whimper for humanity. And without that, it would still be a great film, but it was dramatic gravy that made it an indelible moment. That’s all Sutherland. "

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (20) Elvis Presley in LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE (WITH A SPECIAL GUEST CONTRIBUTION FROM SHEILA O'MALLEY)

"Let's see if we can't double-cross the stars."

Anyone who has followed Moon in the Gutter for even a small amount of time knows how much I love and value Elvis Presley, so it's probably not a surprise that I am including his work as an actor on this list.  I do hope my choice of performance perhaps is a little surprising as I know that his roles in such dramas as King Creole (1958), Flaming Star and Wild in the Country (both 1960) might indeed be more expected.  When thinking about Elvis on the screen though, perhaps the things that mean the most to me are his warmth and humor and these two qualities were never more apparent than they were in his role as photographer Greg Nolan in Norman Taurog's fantastic chaotic comedy Live a Little, Love a Little...a film which showed Elvis could have been a modern-day Cary Grant had anyone at the time been wise enough to notice.  

Watching Elvis today in Live a Little, Love a Little will prove an eye opening experience for anyone who has long accepted the myth that this great man couldn't act and that all of his films fell under one certain formula.  Taurog's ingenious film not only breaks the 'formula', that had began to fail around 1966 and 1967 with such dreck as Paradise Hawaiian Style, but it smashes it to pieces and it offers Elvis, a wonderfully gifted comedian, the most flexible and engaging role of his career.  As Nolan, Presley is ferociously funny, incredibly natural and unbelievably sexy...it's one of the great comedic performances from the sixties and the real 'tragedy' of Elvis Presley's film career is that hardly anyone seemed to notice just how incredibly funny and charming this man was on the screen.  

The time has come for a serious reevaluation of Elvis Presley's undeniable abilities as an actor and his film career in general.  Today I am pleased to offer an amazing guest-commentary from another writer who agrees with me on this fact, the amazing Sheila O'Malley.  Some of you might remember this chat Sheila and I had regarding Elvis' film career over at her essential Sheila Variations, which I was so honored to take part in.  Sheila's writing has been a constant source of inspiration for me and I think her many articles on Elvis are absolutely essential for not only fans of the man but anyone interested in American culture in general.  I am thrilled and honored to offer up this brand new piece that Sheila has written regarding Live a Little, Love a Little and one of modern cinema's most undervalued great actors.  

-Jeremy Richey, 2012-

-Sheila O'Malley on Elvis Presley in Live a Little, Love a Little-

Great American character actress Mildred Dunnock tells a story about the first days of shooting Love Me Tender (1956), which was 21-year-old Elvis Presley's film debut. He played one of Dunnock's sons. He was totally green as an actor. In one scene, Dunnock had to bark at him, "Put that gun down!" The first time they shot it, her tone of command so threw him (and he was, famously, a boy who did what his Mama told him to do) that he put the gun down, although the scene actually called for him to ignore her order and race out the door. They cut, and director Robert Webb said, "Why on earth did you put the gun down?" And Elvis said, guileless, "Well ... she told me to." This anecdote has been used to mock Elvis' ineptness as an actor, but Dunnock had another take: "For the first time in the whole thing he had heard me, and he believed me. Before, he'd just been thinking what he was doing and how he was going to do it. I think it's a funny story. I also think it's a story about a beginner who had one of the essentials of acting, which is to believe."

This is an extraordinary statement from a woman who knew what she was talking about when it came to acting. Extraordinary because Elvis' gifts as an actor have not just been dismissed, but barely acknowledged. 

One film you never hear anything about is Live a Little, Love a Little (1968), directed by Norman Taurog, a prolific director who had been around since the 1930s, and directed most of the Elvis formula pics that made Elvis and Colonel Parker so much money in the 1960s. By 1968, Elvis was nearing the end of his movie contract, and he was starting to look forward to live performing again. His movies were no longer drawing the audience they had in the early 1960s, and so Live a Little, Love a Little came and went. It is a forgotten film., and what a pity, because it is a stylish, madcap, ridiculous romp, featuring one of Elvis' funniest performances. 

In Live a Little, Love a Little, Elvis plays Greg Nolan, a photographer who finds himself in the crosshairs of a crazy dame named Bernice (or is it Alice?) (played by Michele Carey) who decides that she will have him, come hell or high water. She drugs him to keep him captive in her beach house. When he wakes up, he has been fired, and also has lost his apartment. Greg then begins a madcap race to get another job, all while trying to ditch the insistent unflappable Bernice. The mood here is reminiscent of the great screwballs of the 1930s, where poor elegant Cary Grant loses his mind trying to maintain his dignity in the face of the adorable onslaught of Irene Dunne or Katharine Hepburn.

The Elvis formula pics like Blue Hawaii, Girl Happy, It Happened at the World's Fair took place in what I call "Elvis Land", with stunning locations but no recognizable real-world issues. The only reason to see many of them is Elvis. With Live a Little, Love a Little, the formula loosens quite a bit. The psychedelic grooviness of the 1960s is allowed some room to express itself (there's a wacky dream sequence), and, startlingly, there are only a couple of songs, one being the unforgettable "A Little Less Conversation".

What makes this performance unique in Elvis' career is that he is allowed to be cranky in the face of some dame chasing after him. He plays a normal man, in other words, who happens to look like Elvis Presley. In most of his films, he is pursued by no less than three women (the Elvis formula pics loved the triangulation of Elvis), and he is open to all of them, which causes much mayhem along the way. But here, he is a solitary man, a workaholic, and he feels nothing for this broad in the bathing suit who has kidnapped him. He just wants to get away. This is a normal reaction. His crankiness is what makes the performance so funny. Watch his facial expressions in the sequence where she has shoved a thermometer in his mouth to check his temperature (she gasps when she sees the reading: "98.6!!!" Elvis barks, "Oh, come ON, that's NORMAL!"), as she babbles on to him about her life and her wacko philosophies. He is undone by this woman. What a refreshing change in Elvis' movie career, where Elvis(TM) wasn't undone by anything. He's hilarious when he feels trapped and annoyed. He runs up and down staircases, he hides behind newspapers in crowded elevators, and at one point he mutters to himself out of the corner of his mouth, a la W.C. Fields, "Ya miserable kid." In the Elvis Formula Pics that dominated in the early to mid 1960s, Elvis was rarely allowed the opportunity to play anything remotely human. He played his own image and myth, and he did that better than anyone, being, as he was, sui generis. But it's such a joy to see him tossed into a chaotic situation, involving demanding bosses, impatient clients, chilly secretaries, a ditzy-eyed dame, and a giant slobbering dog. He is harassed by them all.

It was 1968. Elvis was a new father. In the summer of that year, he had filmed a TV special for NBC which would air close to Christmastime, and is now known as his "comeback special". He was in his absolute prime. Elvis was always a good-looking man, but here he is almost otherworldly in his beauty. But it's not a vain performance. Half the time, he is in a terricloth robe, unshaven, chasing Bernice around her house, shouting up the stairs at her like a lunatic. He is forced to eat dog food at one point. Of course he is, deep down, strangely drawn to this weird woman who can't stop pursuing him, but at the same time he just wants her to leave him alone. 

What an interesting dynamic: To allow the biggest sex symbol in the world to show annoyance at being pursued by a woman. Elvis was always a good sport about the throngs of women who chased him, from his earliest days performing on the Louisiana Hayride out of Shreveport, Louisiana, where he first started making his name. His car was repeatedly demolished. His clothes were torn off. Women would dress up as maids and try to storm the barricades of the hotels where he stayed. His mother worried that the girls would kill him, but he always knew they just wanted to get close to him, it was okay, they didn't mean any harm. In Live a Little, Love a Little, Elvis is allowed to be annoyed by the fact that women pursued him with a single-mindedness bordering on mania. He is allowed to have some feelings about the fact that nobody, ever, left him alone. 

One of the things that Elvis brought to all of his roles was a sense of ease and openness before the camera. Mildred Dunnock saw it in 1956. This young man had the rare ability to believe. The camera picks up honesty and cannot abide phoniness. Elvis never lied, and Elvis was never phony. This was true in King Creole and it was true in Girls! Girls! Girls!. Elvis "showed up" with his honesty intact, regardless of the absurdity of the material. You never feel like he is slumming. This was one of his aces in the hole as a singer and performer, and it is there in his acting roles as well. In Live a Little, Love a Little, he gives a wonderful comedic and realistic performance which is essentially forgotten. 

You can't understand how good Elvis Presley was onscreen, how funny, how human, how real, if you haven't seen Live a Little, Love a Little.

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (21) Kristen Stewart in ADVENTURELAND (WITH A SPECIAL GUEST CONTRIBUTION FROM ERICH KUERSTEN)

When I first wrote about Adventureland back in the spring of 2009 I compared Kristen Stewart's remarkable performance in it to Jennifer Jason Leigh's work in Fast Times in Ridgemont High (1982).  Like Leigh, Stewart managed to capture both the fragility and exuberance of youth in a performance of startling depth and emotion, two qualities that Stewart's many critics claim that are lacking from her work...a fact that makes me think that I have been watching someone else's filmography play out in front of me.  

There probably isn't a more polarizing young American actress in cinema today than Kristen Stewart.  For those, like myself, who have followed and greatly admired her work since seeing Panic Room a decade ago we see an incredibly original and distinct young talent who has been able to slip into roles as varied as Bella Swan, Joan Jett and even Snow White.  Whether the film has called for romantic yearning, gritty realism or ferocious physicality, Stewart has been able to essay each with a sharp sense of authority and purpose.  To her many critics though, who can't seem to step away from their hatred of Twilight and the media's unbelievably sexist view of her personal life, she is a vacuum and an emotionless void without a ounce of talent...again have we been watching a different filmography play out this past decade?

While Bella Swan remains the chief role that 22 year old Kristen Stewart is known for it is Adventureland's Em Lewin than has the biggest emotional pull for me.  Perhaps because in some ways it tells my own story, I remain totally perplexed by anyone who isn't at least the slightest bit moved by Greg Mottola's heartfelt coming of age story and specifically Stewart's work as Em.  As Jesse Eisenberg's character's first true-love, Stewart is unbelievably captivating, moving and unforgettable...like the well-worn grooves of the Big Star, Replacements and Velvet Underground albums that Em keeps in her room. 

I originally wasn't going to feature any performances from the past several years on this list (which mostly covers roughly the late sixties up to the late nineties) but when I recently read Erich Kuersten's incredibly eloquent and passionate defense of Kristen Stewart (linked below) at his Acidemic I knew that I had to make an exception and include a more recent performance.  Recognizing that Erich and I shared the same admiration for Stewart, and the same perplexed attitude towards her harshest critics, I invited him to submit a  few thoughts for this series.  Erich kindly put together this incredibly spot-on and moving section from his recent piece on Stewart for Moon in the Gutter and I am very excited to present it here.  Do yourself a favor and be sure to visit Acidemic and read his original complete piece on Kristen Stewart, which is one of the most insightful, thoughtful and necessary cinema articles I have read in quite some time.  

-Jeremy Richey, 2012-

Erich Kuersten on Kristen Stewart, edited for Moon in the Gutter from his incredible piece "Kristen Stewart in the Snow With Poison", which can be read here at Acidemic.

"In playing young, vulnerable, awkwardly beautiful women, Kristen Stewart draws continual fire from critics and Twilight fans alike. It's not her looks they object to, but the direction in which she herself looks outward from the screen and weighs and judges and forgives the hearts of those watching, and those who think themselves impure, beyond saving, recoil from her absolving gaze. They are expecting perhaps a girl who will wince and smooth her hair back when they leer at her, a shy dove on display. Instead she's disheveled and pale and her body is never put on display for the camera, at least not the leering way the shirtless bodies of her male co-stars are. It's the reverse of the usual dichotomy.

But that forgiving tenderness in her eyes for even the ugly toads is a rare thing, it's what Stewart shares with Marilyn Monroe. Both of them love, or at least 'feel sorry for' the creatures most of us have cast off. MM felt compassion for the Creature from the Black Lagoon in Seven Year Itch, and didn't even mind flirting with Tom Ewell if it got her some air conditioning. Hey, princesses have kissed worse frogs for far less, and that's what Stewart as Bella provides, she is the princess who sees the beauty in the beast a priori to getting to know him. She's Julia Adams choosing the creature over Richard Carlson. Our pitchfork and torch hands tremble with the instinctual desire to burn her at the stake for this transgression. When her lip trembles and her eyes cross looking up at her current love object, waiting for that slow kiss, it becomes a delirious swooning moment perfect for a Rohmer film, but in the US, this kind of liberated outward gazer--the woman daring to see instead of just being seen --is an unforgivable offense."