Alternate Best Supporting Actor 1996: Harry Belafonte in Kansas City

Harry Belafonte did not receive an Oscar nomination, despite winning NYFCC, for portraying Seldom Seen in Kansas City.

Kansas City is a Robert Altman attempt that just doesn't come together (in part due to Jennifer Jason Leigh's Achilles heel being on display, that being hammy attempts at portraying the Golden Age Hollywood style), not that it's terrible or anything, about a woman kidnapping a politician wife attempting to save her criminal husband who has been kidnapped by a gangster.

Well that gangster is played by veteran performer Harry Belafonte, better known when it comes to entertainment for carrying more than a few charming tunes, plays entirely against that type, though oddly enough in type compared to his role in Uptown Saturday Night, where he also played a criminal. This however is one with a far darker intention. The part of the film that works is when Belafonte is onscreen as Seldom Seen, partially due to the sheer power of his work. This in using his scraping voice to great effect as we early on see the man's wrath just bubbling as ponders on the theft in one of his cabs, by a man pretending to be black. Belafonte has such an ease in menace here that is downright startling coming from him. This is evident from his first monologue, as he has captured the foolish thief. This is as Seldom states his distaste for the man's choices though with this certain disturbing manner, as though he almost reciting a poetry as he speaks of it, though ends with pondering what he'll to do the man directly. In just the final few words Belafonte shifts his delivery, and his eyes suddenly, and so effortlessly create a chilling quality as we see the real threat within Seldom. Where the rest of the film kind of meanders around, you just awhile just await the return to Seldom's jazz club, to get what else we have in store from Belafonte, who despite not having nearly enough screentime, steals the film entirely. Belafonte sinks his teeth into every time we come back to Seldom, and get a bit more of Seldom's philosophy. Belafonte is brilliant in that while the scenes are all these philosophizing, that he not only makes sing, he manages to make them less artificial than they're written largely through the virtue of his work. His second speech on losers, directed as basically telling the thief he will die one way or another, again Belafonte manages to combine this certain breezy style as though he might be ready to say something, yet again deteriorates it as his eyes just grant this sinister glint of man essentially playing with his prey. Belafonte carries himself as this almost demonic philosopher that is just incredible work from him. The greatest of these perhaps being his racist joke he tells as a man is being violently beaten. The manner in which Belafonte brings to the tale is disturbing by just how energetic and gleeful he is. Belafonte creating this sense of a man with what is a most nihilistic worldview, that he makes vivid, while also just doing so in being downright captivating in each word he speaks. Even in speaking on the nature of death, it is with an optimistic smile he says as he ponders when it's time, but again with an even greater devious joy when remarking that he gets to decide when the thief dies. My favorite moment of his might be a mostly reactionary one where the thief tries to bargain for his life, through some minor threats. This in Belafonte as he builds in small reactions of disinterest, then slowly bemusement as the man offers to be his slave. Belafonte switch from a bit of joy at the idea of owning the man, then change so slightly into a hellish grin as he notes that he's really just most interested in the man's "guts" being his, and in that moment we see the unnerving determination that gangster has made for his victim. Sadly, to support the pun, Seldom Seen is seldom seen in the film, and the sum total of his screentime is limited. Belafonte makes the most of it creating such a fascinating villain in so well realizing the man's sort of callous philosophy towards life. If only the whole film was about Seldom, as Belafonte's work is worthy of mention with the best of Altman, the rest of the film...not so much.