FX's "FEUD: Bette and Joan" starring JESSICA LANGE and SUSAN SARANDON (March 5th @ 10PM)- Page 6

[Mark-Alexis]

Posted: 3/28/17 at 3:34am

This scene was everything.

 

[Mark-Alexis]

Posted: 3/28/17 at 6:10pm

We've reached the halfway point of "Feud" and I'm genuinely floored.  I predict it is only going to get better with each subsequent episode.  I am truly surprised by how graceful and heartbreaking this production is despite pointed moments of camp and humor, which are also wonderfully executed.

Lange and Sarandon have not only managed to possess their subjects but have also been fully possessed by them, giving transcendent performances of rare, indelible power and vulnerability.

Sarandon has hit her stride as Bette Davis and though her performance may not be as volatile as Lange's, the wit, grace and humor she brings to Davis whilst echoing the great star's famous voice and gestures is exquisite to behold.  I think it's safe to say that this and "The Meddler" are her best work in years.  She’s a lock for nominations across the board.

Lange is doing something astonishing here.  She's managed to both transcend Faye Dunaway's wonderful and unfairly lambasted performance in [I]Mommie Dearest[/I] whilst allowing the spirit of Joan Crawford to possess her in a way that is both eerie and transfixing.

Perusing through Joan Crawford interviews on YouTube, I was taken aback by how sweet and sensitive Crawford could come across.  I was expecting a woman with eyebrows constantly and menacingly arched, lips pursed in a perpetual smug smirk, her hands permanently fixed on either side of her waist.  What I found instead was a woman whose voice could jump octaves depending on her mood and insecurities, of which she always had many, and who could go from serene to charming to steely in an instant.  She could be witty and ballsy, but overall what she showed the public was her gentle, proper, graceful and vulnerable side. Then, of course, there are the drunken interviews - Crawford at the airport, her voice jumping octaves again and accents, from mid-Atlantic to Texan; Crawford in someone’s living room, slurring and cursing.

Lange captures Crawford's mercurial nature beautifully.  We're halfway through the series and I still don't think I've seen all the sides of Crawford Lange has to reveal.  As it is, I already feel as if I've witnessed 5-10 facets of Crawford in the four episodes we've seen.  It’s a full-bodied and fully integrated performance that relies on every ounce of Lange’s talent – from her vocal genius to her physical brilliance.  When simultaneously set-up against Joan Crawford AND Faye Dunaway, that’s truly no easy feat.  Her performance here reaches and surpasses the wondrous heights of her Emmy winning work in “Grey Gardens”, and “American Horror Story”.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this garners Lange the Emmy for Lead Actress in a Limited Series/Movie.

Together, Lange and Sarandon bring out the best in each other.  The metaphor of dancers has often been used by critics when reviewing their work together here.  I’ll use it again.  They are like two dancers taking turns being the lead, completely in sync with one another, always forcing the other to up their game but never striving to overshadow one another.  They are electric together.

Judy Davis, Jackie Hoffman, Stanley Tucci, Alison Wright and Alfred Molina lead the exquisite supporting cast.  Each has moments of brilliance, helping transport us to a Hollywood of yore, both as brutal as it was glamorous and enticing. 

I see Davis, Hoffman and Wright all being contenders in supporting actress.  Hoffman’s understated brilliance has been especially surprising and wonderful to behold.

I’m torn between Tucci and Molina who I feel are both giving amazing, if different, performances.  Tucci is sexy and electric, whilst Molina is charming and touching.

I must admit, this series has totally exceeded my expectations.  I knew I would like and love it, but I didn’t think I would be so moved and [b]IN LOVE[/b] with it.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 3/28/17 at 6:25pm

darreyl102 said: "^^ I agree- and also I'm a stickler for details- why would they put Susan in flats when Bette was wearing heels for the Andy Williams appearance.....

I have heard elsewhere that Lange had hurt her foot pretty badly during filming. This might be the reason.

 

 

"

 

[darreyl102]

Posted: 3/29/17 at 12:29am

You mean Sarandon? If that's the reason, I understand that. but the shoes really were glaring out to me as wrong as i was watching the show. LOL. I'm nitpicky but It's the little details that complete the look

[Mark-Alexis]

Posted: 3/31/17 at 5:23pm

Episode 5 - the Oscars episode - is up next.  Most critics site this as their favorite of the five they've seen.

[carnzee]

Posted: 3/31/17 at 5:58pm

Mark-Alexis said: "Episode 5 - the Oscars episode - is up next.  Most critics site this as their favorite of the five they've seen.

 

I am so ready to meet Sarah Paulson as Geraldine Page!  Really interested in what they do with her, because I kind of worry that Murphy just shoehorned one of his favorite actresses into this narrative. 

 

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 3/31/17 at 7:44pm

I was curious today so I looked up who won the Golden Globe best actress - drama that year (especially since one of the first scenes in the series is at the Globes the year before).   Turns out it was Page.  Her second Globe in a row as she'd won the year before for Summer and Smoke.  

Crawford wasn't nominated but Davis was, along with the other Oscar nominees Bancroft, Hepburn, and Remick as well as Susannah York (Freud), Susan Strasberg (Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man), Melina Mercouri (Phaedra), Shelley Winters (Lolita), and Glynis Johns (The Chapman Report).  (Oddly some of these performances - York, Winters, Johns - are clearly supporting.)  I was happy to also read that Angela Lansbury had won the Globe for supporting that year for Manchurian Candidate (not that Patty Duke wasn't great but...).  

[Mark-Alexis]

Posted: 4/1/17 at 12:14am

It's interesting. Both Davis and Crawford were nominated by BAFTA.

[Mark-Alexis]

Posted: 4/2/17 at 11:42pm

omg. Tonight's episode was everything.

 

Lange for ALL THE AWARDS.

[Mark-Alexis]

Posted: 4/3/17 at 3:25am

Spoilers.

New York Times

The scenes in which Crawford swoops into Page’s and Bancroft’s lives with her request are beautifully written: They recognize the absurdity of the situation but also treat Crawford’s desperation with sympathy. The Ryan Murphy regular Sarah Paulson plays Page, who is stunned when Joan Crawford suddenly rings her up and makes her proposal. Page’s annoyed husband, Rip Torn (Cash Black), asks how Page could allow herself to be bossed around like that. Paulson picks up her nearby drink, overwhelmed by the sadness she sensed from Crawford coming through the phone, and says, “Well, she needs it.”

In the second scene, Bancroft (Serinda Swan) is shocked when Crawford enters her dressing room in the New York theater where she is appearing in “Mother Courage.” The scene ends in a similar way, with Bancroft’s interrupting Crawford’s passive-aggressive hints by asking if it would make Crawford happy to accept her Oscar. Lange, in her heartbreaking reaction, shows how unaccustomed Crawford was to generosity, especially from actresses. She is jolted at being “found out” like this, but also jolted by the clear sympathy in the younger actress’s face, sympathy that is not condescension but kindness. “Desperately,” Lange breathes, looking like a child, sitting on a dingy couch, staring up at the rising star. It’s one of Lange’s finest moments in the series.

And so, when she stalks onstage at the Oscars, it is with a renewed sense of her own stature. She’s a vision in silver. You could see her from a block away. Backstage, Davis watches her dream die, her body jolting as though a knife were plunged into her gut. Rage will come later. Sarandon has tapped into Davis’s ambition, drive, confidence. When she says to a reporter, “I want this,” you believe her. (Sarandon is no stranger to Oscar heartbreak. Nominated four times before winning for “Dead Man Walking,” she — and many others — were stunned when she wasn’t nominated for “Bull Durham.” Even Sarandon, who usually adopts a more maverick stance, made a couple of public comments betraying how hurt she was at the snub.)

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of Crawford in her younger days that she was “doubtless the best example of the flapper, the girl you see in smart night clubs, gowned to the apex of sophistication, toying iced glasses with a remote, faintly bitter expression, dancing deliciously, laughing a great deal, with wide, hurt eyes. Young things with a talent for living.” The words still reverberate, especially seeing Lange sweeping onto that stage, a moment that does what it is supposed to do: remind you of who Crawford was, the scope of her career, her pain, her craziness, her dogged refusal to “go gentle” into any night, good or otherwise. Lange makes us understand why. It’s about time.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/02/arts/television/feud-bette-and-joan-and-the-winner-is-the-oscars-of-1963-recap.html?referer=https://www.google.com/

[VIETgrlTerifa]

Posted: 4/3/17 at 2:13pm

I haven't seen the last episode yet, but as someone who was sort of iffy with Lange's portrayal of Crawford, I have to say either Ryan Murphy favors her or she's just that good (or both) because she has killed it in the last few episodes. Susan Sarandon I thought did well early on, but she's not given as much meaty material for her Bette so far. We do have a few episodes to get through so maybe Susan will be given more substantive.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 4/3/17 at 11:03pm

 

Is it just me or does Catherine Zeta-Jones STINK?

[Luscious]

Posted: 4/3/17 at 11:08pm

PalJoey said: "Is it just me or does Catherine Zeta-Jones STINK?"

It's just you.

And are you only watching the scenes that Susan Sarandon isn't in?

 

Updated On: 4/3/17 at 11:08 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 4/3/17 at 11:11pm

 

Her pauses are..................................................endless.

 

 

 

And................................................................................

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

meaningless.

[MoveOnGypsy]

Posted: 4/4/17 at 7:22am

Haha! Isn't she the pits, PalJoey?! You said exactly what I have been thinking through the whole series. Kathy Bates is far more serviceable. 

PalJoey said: " 

Her pauses are..................................................endless.

 

 

 

And................................................................................

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

meaningless.

 

"

 

[PalJoey]

Posted: 4/4/17 at 11:02am

 

A recap of Episode 5 by the wonderful Dan Callahan on nylon.com:

 

nylon.com: ‘Feud: Bette And Joan’ Recap Episode 5: “And the Winner Is ... (The Oscars of 1963)”

 

Somehow Susan Sarandon’s Bette and her own desire for the award gets lost in the shuffle here beside all the fascinatingly contradictory impulses of Lange’s Crawford...

 

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 4/4/17 at 12:06pm

MoveOnGypsy said: "Haha! Isn't she the pits, PalJoey?! You said exactly what I have been thinking through the whole series. Kathy Bates is far more serviceable. 

PalJoey said: " 

Her pauses are..................................................endless.

And...

meaningless."

Endless perhaps but meaningless?

Her Olivia is very tightly wound, never wanting to offend, always wanting to please and to winningly impress as the adult in the room - and certainly 'the great lady."  I don't see meaningless pauses.  I see extreme caution and calculation.  Here's an industry darling who didn't ruffle feathers (her relationship with Fontaine, of course, is a different matter).  Her perpetual caution/discretion may have been exercised at great cost to her psyche.  And it works for the piece because it makes her jungle survival instincts a high-relief foil to both Davis's and Crawford's (and to Page's and Bancroft's personas as well).  There was a big payoff to all of this in the last episode where, when Olivia's optimism rang completely false to Davis and perhaps even a little condescending, Davis snapped at her and then quickly tempered it. 

I can see why it strikes some as overdone, but perhaps Olivia's offscreen navigations of industry politics were as well.  There's a heavy smack of neurosis Zeta-Jones is bringing to this, without which the character might be insufferably goody goody.  

 

 

Updated On: 4/5/17 at 12:06 PM

[javero]

Posted: 4/4/17 at 3:20pm

Borrowing a tennis analogy from Mary Carillo, "champions are greedy".  Olivia was keenly aware of the prospect of Bette eclipsing her with a win in the Best Actress category at the infamous 1963 Oscar award ceremony.  Bette went into the event tied with Olivia at 2-all.

The studio system was still in place then, along with the attendant pressures on the ladies from studio bosses who where universally men.  The ladies' public images were carefully crafted by the studios with few options for major career success off screen or stage at the time.  In some ways, stardom was a zero sum game for film actresses of that era.  The neurosis on display by Zeta-Jones as Olivia was fitting.

And not one of them wanted to land in the cross-hairs of Hedda Hopper who no doubt found a way to be frenemy to all.

A glimpse into Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood

  

[VIETgrlTerifa]

Posted: 4/5/17 at 10:22am

I thought CZJ was actually better as Olivia in the last episode than she previously when all she was doing was that fake documentary retrospective. She seemed a lot more comfortable playing a real character with something to do other than comment on past actions. Kathy Bates always seems like herself.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 4/5/17 at 11:36am

VIETgrlTerifa said: "I thought CZJ was actually better as Olivia in the last episode than she previously when all she was doing was that fake documentary retrospective. She seemed a lot more comfortable playing a real character with something to do other than comment on past actions. Kathy Bates always seems like herself."

With rare if any exceptions, great actors bring much of themselves to their roles (that's an integral part of acting), but are you really suggesting that Annie Wilkes, Dolores Claiborne, Evelyn Couch, Gertrude Stein, and Libbie Holden strike you as the same person?

 

"

 

Updated On: 4/5/17 at 11:36 AM

[carnzee]

Posted: 4/5/17 at 12:17pm

To Henrik : I'm fascinated by your take on CZJ's Olivia. I'm having fun watching her.

My initial reaction after the Oscars episode was "can someone check on Mark-Alexis?  Lol! It's just that I read his reaction every week, and while I obviously like this show, I never share his degree of enthusiasm. 

Until Sunday night. Wow. This exceeded my wildest expectation for this show. 

Jessica Lange is breaking my heart. I could write an essay  on her reaction shots alone. 

And Susan played Bette's stunned reaction to losing the Oscar to perfection. 

Ryan Murphy : all is forgiven for your past excess and lapses in taste in AHS and Glee, etc. You knocked it out the park. 

If the whole series were at this level, it would be one of the finest ever made. 

[Mark-Alexis]

Posted: 4/5/17 at 12:30pm

carnzee said: "To Henrik : I'm fascinated by your take on CZJ's Olivia. I'm having fun watching her.

My initial reaction after the Oscars episode was "can someone check on Mark-Alexis?  Lol! It's just that I read his reaction every week, and while I obviously like this show, I never share his degree of enthusiasm. 

Until Sunday night. Wow. This exceeded my wildest expectation for this show. 

Jessica Lange is breaking my heart. I could write an essay  on her reaction shots alone. 

And Susan played Bette's stunned reaction to losing the Oscar to perfection. 

Ryan Murphy : all is forgiven for your past excess and lapses in taste in AHS and Glee, etc. You knocked it out the park. 

If the whole series were at this level, it would be one of the finest ever made. 

 

"

lol.  I'm glad you enjoyed episode 5.  I was floored.

 

 

[Theater_Nerd]

Posted: 4/5/17 at 12:47pm

This last episode was great. I'm not only impressed with Lange - who in my book can do anything but with Sarandon who I have to admit I was a bit skeptical about. She's doing great work in this. So, so good. I am also impressed by the care and attention to detail. 

That last scene - Crawford alone in her bedroom - slumped. Heartbreaking.

 

[VIETgrlTerifa]

Posted: 4/5/17 at 1:53pm

henrikegerman said: "VIETgrlTerifa said: "I thought CZJ was actually better as Olivia in the last episode than she previously when all she was doing was that fake documentary retrospective. She seemed a lot more comfortable playing a real character with something to do other than comment on past actions. Kathy Bates always seems like herself."

With rare if any exceptions, great actors bring much of themselves to their roles (that's an integral part of acting), but are you really suggesting that Annie Wilkes, Dolores Claiborne, Evelyn Couch, Gertrude Stein, and Libbie Holden strike you as the same person?

 

"

 

 

"

Sorry, I should have added "when she's not really trying" or "lately". She wasn't like that before About Schmidt. I just felt she wasn't really trying in Feud.

I was iffy about CZJ as Olivia but that one line she had about "you can still do it." and with Bette losing her temper at her with CZJ's reaction made me think there's real potential there. Also the whole bit about how to Bette she was always Melanie Wilkes..."and I was." was perfect.

[Mark-Alexis]

Posted: 4/9/17 at 10:27pm

That Strait Jacket opening was everything.  I'm in a puddle.

 

Lange is winning the Emmy.