Alternate Best Actor 1958: Gustaw Holoubek in The Noose

Gustaw Holoubek did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Kuba Kowalski in The Noose. 

The Noose tells the day in the life of an alcoholic. 

Gustaw Holoubek portrays the man who is in a dingy room, and his performance begins as a man quietly despondent as his girlfriend comforts him, telling him she'll be back in at the end of the day. Holoubek's performance wears the history of the man on his face. A man who would be seemingly in a prison of his own as this room is filled only with his own living hell in his way. A kind of Lost Weekend we have here, though shortened in time, and the character of Kowalski is a bit different than Milland's Don Birnam in that film. And I would say the character on the whole is more passive than in that film, even if their life is very similar in going around different areas, often seedy, with their only "solace" being their drink. And Holoubek's performance is much about what isn't said, and often doesn't speak in moments, or at least isn't the first to speak. When he most often speaks is in narration of his thoughts which is that of a near moaning, droning speech of a man who is mired in his existence. 

Where Holoubek's performance excels is creating this state of the man as particularly tangible and even though we don't immediately know everything about him, there is so much that appears to be said by him just in the innate state within his expression. He's suffering even when he isn't as open in his pain. His resting expression is that of exasperation and of a man who has been trudging through his life for some time. We are granted clues, such as his conversation with another woman when he goes out, who seems to speak to him with some sense of affection for him. However that is what breaks his composure more than anything, and that breaks a sharp inflamed anger of a man without comfort. The idea of it seems the opposite and Holoubek's performance displays this kind of paranoia towards the idea of happiness. A suspicion that is immediate in his voice and his eyes of a man who cannot accept seemingly anything that doesn't support the more nihilistic worldview. 

Where we see the man seems to seek more quickly is finding pain, whether that be in the violence of confronting local police. Holoubek doesn't portray a man with any particular stand rather this wretched emotional devastation of man whose violence is strangely without passion, rather it is a depressed anguished state. We see him converse with another alcoholic, where Holoubek's moments of the conversation as much as its giving into his vice, we see this strange ease of the behavior as he takes the drinks in as though they are his medicine. However even this again leads to violence as the conversation turns sour and again Holoubek's performance crafts this unpleasantness of a man who gives into pain and almost seems to strangely seek it. When even being attacked himself, stolen from, there is no objection, just a strange acceptance. 

And what this all leads to is the lonely path back to his room, despite some small promise of something for him, Holoubek presents instead the seething depression as the man speaks to his existence as one unpleasant state after another. Every delivery of his having this accentuation on the negative and his eyes begin to fill more with overt anxiety than before. We have instead this process of essentially a man choosing suicide rather than existence in his state any longer. And what Holoubek's performance does is present the unfortunate and terrible mindset of a man to make this decision. In the moment of the act, choosing to create his noose and ready it, even when there seems to be some hope on the way, Holoubek's eyes fill with mania but also the intention before his tragic action. Holoubek delivers a striking portrayal of an alcoholic here, creating even if seemingly as an often passive character, this state of the depression and the exhaustion of a man. This state that penetrates and acts almost as the reflection of the existence around him, a portrait of decay both inwardly and outwardly all at once.