Bruce Dern Steals The Show: Six Overlooked Performances
Earlier this month, 76 year old Bruce Dern became the front runner for the 2014 Oscars when he won best actor at Cannes (beating favored Oscar Isaac of Inside Llewyn Davis and Michael Douglas of Behind the Candelabra) for Alexander Payne’s Nebraska. Not only did he impress at the festival, he was a favorite of interviewers, gleefully calling his costar the best screen partner he’s had since Jack Nicholson. He also got favorable press trying to play matchmaker with his daughter Laura Dern who joined him, and calling director Alexander Payne one of the six geniuses he’s ever worked with. One of the questions which got the most attention was when he was asked the last time he had a starring role, which led to the biggest laugh “You mean lead in a movie witnessed by actual human beings? About 25 years.”
Sad but true, Dern’s had several good roles which have been somewhat overlooked. Here are 6 of the best performances he’s given in his 50 plus career.
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The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)
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Dern costars with Jack Nicholson as brothers looking to strike it rich with a half-baked real-estate scam. Jack Nicholson plays the depressed brother and Dern an almost manic extrovert who is all laughs until things start to go wrong. His girlfriend (Ellen Burstyn) is a former beauty queen who is both charmed by Dern and sick and tired of his conman lifestyle and jealous of the attention he gives her younger sister. Dern, in a role which ordinarily would have gone to Nicholson, is magnetic as the con artist who loves the brother who can’t stand to be around him, and real-life friends Nicholson and Dern have a chemistry rarely captured on screen.
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Smile (1975)
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One of funniest satires of the 70s, this Nashville-esque comedy takes on California suburbs and beauty pageants. Dern plays the most oblivious guy in America who thinks he’s living the American dream with a Stepford-esque wife (who’s almost a Stepford wife), son (who is so sex obsessed he becomes a peeping-tom), and a successful business selling RVs. Big Bob is almost an idiot, especially when tallking with his cynical, depressed best friend Andy (Nicholas Pryor) who can’t stand life in the suburbs with his hyper critical wife Brenda (Barbara Feldon).
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Family Plot (1976)
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It was one of the few true comedies Alfred Hitchcock made in Hollywood– he ended his career with a parody of his own films (one year before Mel Brooks made High Anxiety). Costarring Karen Black and William Devane as jewel thieves sought out by phony medium Barbara Harris and her live-in actor boyfriend, played by Dern. Dern’s character drives a taxi when he isn’t pretending to be a detective, but he has real talent as a gumshoe. Dern takes on the romantic lead which in a typical Hitchcock film would have been given to Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart (Dern’s previous Hitchcock film Marnie even featured Sean Connery playing an amatuer detective). He turns his average guy character into a clever, funny charmer who has real chemistry with the equally atypical Hitchcock leading lady Harris.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVazwgLDFvI]. . .
That Championship Season (1982)
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It’s almost unfair to focus on Dern in this film because all five actors in this adaption of a play by Jason Miller give great performances. Costarring with Martin Sheen, Stacey Keach, Paul Sorvino, and Robert Mitchum, the film tells the story of four former basketball teammates who reunite to spend the day with their coach (Mitchum). Essentially the anti-The Best of Times, the attempts made by the men to relive their glory days is seen as pathetic. Like his overly optimistic character in Smile, his world starts to crumble around him. The range of emotions he (and all the skilled actors) have to go through is like a masterclass in acting, and there is something haunting about the way his dreams come crashing down around him in one bad night.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIai3UlKAoE]. . .
Drive, He Said (1971)
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This little seen black comedy marks another colaboration with Jack Nicholson (who also directed the film) and earned Dern an award for best supporting actor from the National Society of Film Critics. Unfortunately it was a little behind the times with the political subject matter (the novel was written during the Vietnam draft) and a bit ahead of the times with its commentary on the business of collegiate sports. But despite being criticized, Dern’s performance was universally praised as one of the most nuanced and intelligent of his career, playing a character who could have been a villian if he weren’t so earnest in his belief that the pressure he puts on his players was for their own good.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pybHd_hO57A]* * *
Posse (1975)
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Dern appeared in several westerns, usually as villians with terrible teeth (see The Cowboys). But his best performance of any in the genre is as a charismatic bank robber Jack Strawhorn caught by a politically minded US Marshall (director Kirk Douglas). When the Marshall tries to use the high profile capture of Stawhorn to publicize his run for US Senate, Dern hatches a plan to turn the posse of Marshalls into criminals. Their scenes together are some of the best two-man scenes in a western film.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHqqgfjJQsw]* * *
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