Our good friend Robin Write at writeoutofla.com has selected his favorite Best Actor winners at Cannes.
Oh Cannes Film Festival, how we miss you. More so around this time of year, when the Oscars and its end trails are not a long enough distant memory. They to us now, and the whole mirage of the awards season, are the messy house, the dog hairs, the dusty shelves – we want to have a spring clean. And Cannes is returning home, after a short well-earned break from it all, looking forward to letting the clean house smell drift through your nostrils. Open the window, breathe that sea air.
Completely forgotten by AMPAS, and many other critics and awards groups alike, our great Brit Timothy Spall was awarded the Best Actor prize last year for his terrific, quirky, devastating central role in Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner. I know we are not far away geographically, as if this has anything to do with it, but British actors have not done as well as winners at Cannes as they have with the Oscars (I mean, Daniel Day Lewis has three of those bald statuettes). And that is for reasons of a refreshing diversity not many festivals or awards can vouch for. Although the French understandably pop up more often than most nations, when you look back at the Best Actor winners in Cannes over the years you’ll find actors from all over the cinematic planet. Japan, Belgium, Russia, Austria, China, Israel, Turkey. America. Oh, and France.
The following choices (including the upcoming series in other categories) are not necessarily my all-time favorites. But as Best Actor winners at Cannes go, they are close. I admit, I have not seen all the movies that have won prizes at Cannes, but here are five at least that deserve a revisit:
1993 – David Thewlis (Naked)
Worthy Alternatives:
James Spader (The Music of Chance)
Otto Sander (Faraway, So Close)
Mike Leigh again deserves some of the credit, not just for Naked, but for the irredeemable work his does with his actors and actresses. If you tried to pick a favorite Leigh performance you would lose yourself after using all fingers and both thumbs on each hand to tally them. David Thewlis though stands on his own here, a giant of his own making. He rants and implores Leigh’s words on screen like a natural, convincing nut-case. Arrogant declarations and theories of apocalyptic grandeur or the world we live in now. Thewlis gives Johnny a sarcastic, over-bearing presence, whether likeable or not you can not help but watch and listen.
2009 – Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
Worthy Alternatives:
Tahar Rahim (A Prophet)
Steve Evets (Looking For Eric)
I, and many others I am sure, have often wondered if Christoph Waltz would have taken home an Oscar had he been in the Lead Actor category. I would say yes, without much doubt. The voting in Cannes is not really too concerned with this. There was the usual debates of course from the moment Waltz won Best Actor in Cannes right through to the awards season. There was quite simply no performance so grand or glorious that year. Maybe the decade. At least that’s what I think. Waltz’s charismatic, multilingual achievement was certainly a show-stopper. Is this a rare time that both Cannes and Oscar get it right?
2011 – Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
Worthy Alternatives:
Antonio Banderas (The Skin I Live In)
Ryan Gosling (Drive)
Not only was there a heavy revival of the silent cinema days with Michael Hazanavicius’ The Artist, but Cannes was also crammed with some fascinating male leads who did not predominantly rely on the spoken word to be compelling. Ryan Gosling (Drive), Brad Pitt (The Tree of Life), and even Ezra Miller (We Need To Talk About Kevin) are three such popular examples. Eventually going all the way to the Oscar Best Actor award (unlucky Mr Clooney) Jean Dujardin not only has the chiselled looks of an old-time movie star, his performance captured the eccentricities of that classic days of silent cinema, delivering heavy emotion and comedy in equal bursts of success.
1991 – John Turturro (Barton Fink)
Worthy Alternatives:
Joe Mantegna (Homicide)
Michel Piccoli (La Belle Noiseuse)
Even today, Barton Fink is so good, like any of the Coen Brothers’ movies, I still shake my head when many awards groups stayed clear. Cannes, however, have a wonderful habit of embracing the movies of Joel and Ethan – and indeed those film-makers sinfully ignored elsewhere. Once a regular feature in their movies, John Turturro might not have been this magnetic in any of his movies prior, or since. The troubled Barton Fink, the character, was the perfect foil for the somewhat dumbstruck-looking actor (I mean that in the best possible sense) in a movie so odd, but ultimately so original. The movie was also reward with Best Director prize for the Coens, as well as the illustrious Palme d’Or.
1979 – Jack Lemmon (The China Syndrome)
Worthy Alternatives:
Klaus Kinski (Woyzeck)
Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now)
The China Syndrome was one of those movies from the seventies you discover on your own. Nobody really told me about it, nor was I simply aware of it through it’s critical and award success, or the film’s status as instant classic (like, say, The Godfather). I saw this movie quite by accident as a boy, probably a teenager, and it gripped me from start to finish. A young Michael Douglas was a surprise, but the real stars here were Jane Fonda (who I was in love with anyway), and the terrific Jack Lemmon. Back then I was obviously a fan of his famous comedy work, but to see him this impressive in a pure dramatic role was a real eye-opener, as I continued to nurture my passion for cinema.
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Robin Write, longtime fixture at AwardsDaily, runs his own site at writeoutofla.com
You can follow him on twitter too, if you have good sense.
