'Last great performance you saw' thread

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I came here to do two things, drink some beer and kick some ass, looks like we are almost outta beer - Dazed and Confused

101 Favorite Movies (2019)

Jessica Lange in Frances (1982) - This took half an hour to get going, but pass the 30-minutes mark where it slows the pace, Frances becomes one acting showcase scene after another for Jessica Lange in what the online crowd says is her signature role, at least in movies (and not TV where it's arguably "a.h.s")...

She acts and reacts to her scene partners (most of them solid themselves - especially a monsterous Kim Stanley - and somewhat more interesting; because they're against *her*) all the way through with defiance, bursts of anger and emotional vulnerability. My favourites might be earlier on where she receives bad news - in more than one instance - and where she's being stubborn at a police guard asking for her name... Young sister Jude energy.

And Jeeze, what a tragic life Frances Farmer had...

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HEI guys.

Tom Courtenay and Michael Redgrave in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) - Poverty, hopelessness, your mama's new boyfriend, having no trust in authority, doing stupid shit to kill the days, a forced romance... typical kitchen-sink stuff.

You won't forget these two though, and their interactions. Courtenay plays the often reserved but self-destructive young man, never fitting anywhere ("I'm nobody's favourite" he says) and always ready to pick up a fight. Redgrave as the headmaster wants to channel his inner anger into becoming a running champion and to win a victory for their institution. He's the devil to Courtenay's eyes that shall be outsmarted... yet Redgrave plays him with his usual soft-spokenness and flexibility. We're not on his side, but recognize his humanity.

I can't say I enjoyed the film all the way through (films of this style and period from the UK always lose me with their meanderment at some point... the (very) psychologically-tense This Sporting Life has been the only exception)... but the ending of this is very engaging, and in no small part thanks to these two blokes.

Orson Welles in Touch of Evil.
Magnificent.

This has not much to do with his performance but his writing: I hated how he left his cane behind.

Like brother I know you're "drunk" or whatever but to forget your cane which you carry with yourself all day in the scene of the crime?!... the only bad thing in an otherwise masterpiece.

Albert Fienny in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) - A performance that slowly grows over the course of the film. You think you know all there is to this charming (working) man with the measured-yet-effortless way Fienny wins everyone's heart over... until things get out of hand and he can't keep his affairs in order (literally)... That's when his strengths get tested. It's with the latter scenes which I think I'll remember this work.

And I'm loving how similiar and different these "angry young men" of Britain are. Explosive like Burton (with whom this thread was started!), sleazy like Bates, brutal like Harris, reserved like Courtenay, child-like as this one...all frustrated with the system, if not life itself.