Sunday 19 June 2011

Best Actor 1930: Results

7. Wallace Beery in The Big House- Beery's performance just is laughable when he tries to act tough, he gets better later in the film, but never very good.
6. Maurice Chevalier in The Big Pond- Chevalier sure is charming here, but his charm just is not utilized well enough for anything to really come from it.
5. George Arliss in The Green Goddess- Arliss' stiff approach sort of works at times as the cruel Raja, overall it still is a rather boring effort, and really Arliss actually is rather hard to believe as an Indian ruler.
4. George Arliss in Disraeli- Arliss is most certianly more believable as Benjamin Disraeli than as the Raja of Ruhk, but still his performance suffers from similar problems. He is sometimes just frankly boring, there are moments of strength but not enough of them.
3. Maurice Chevalier in The Love Parade- Chevalier, better utilized in this film, gives a nice winning performance actually as the romantic Count. He is very charming, rather humorous, and really brings a great joy to his performance.
2. Ronald Colman in Condemned- Colman gives a good relaxed performance as the suave thief who falls in love with the wrong woman. Not his best, but easy to watch, with charm in every moment.
1. Ronald Colman in Bulldog Drummond- The only performance that could beat Colman in Condemned, is Colman in this. Colman is even better in this because he has even more to do, is even more charming, far more humorous, and this performance just is hard not to watch. Colman's whole performance is one great moment after another, he makes Drummond one character easy to watch all the way through his investigation. He even manages to make the lacking performances work in his favor, he is amazing here.
Deserving Performances:
Lew Ayres in All Quiet on the Western Front

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great, another win for Colman! Great that you acknowledged Ayer's performance in All Quiet on the Western Front!

dinasztie said...

Long ranking. :)

dshultz said...

After I watched All Quiet on the Western Front, I was surprised to see Lew Ayres had not been nominated. What ranking would you have given him?

Anonymous said...

a hint as to which years coming next =)

Louis Morgan said...

dshultz: I have not seen All quiet in awhile so I can't say what I would give him precisely, I just know he certainly was better than more than half of those nominated.

Anonymous: If you are asking for a hint, than examine the whole ranking post and there certainly is a hint there.