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THE
TOP 5
PROJECT

WEEK NO. 21
Main Page (including links to all past Top 5 weeks)

THE TOP 5 PERFORMANCES BY AN ACTOR:

view full results       see how points are awarded
Rank Film Points L #1
#1 Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront 22 6 2
#2 Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleonein The Godfather 18 5 3
#3 Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver 15 5 1
#4 Marlon Brando as Paul in Last Tango in Paris 14 3 2
#5 Robert De Niro as Jake 'Raging Bull' La Motta in Raging Bull 10 4 -
L=How many lists each film appears on             #1=How many number one votes each film recieves

Without the far-and-away winner that last week had, this week was a close race and in the end the Top 5 had just two winners. Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro. The two actors fill out the Top 5 without any room for others. Brando wins with his On the Waterfront role, closly beating out his Godfather role. After that comes De Niro in Taxi Driver, Brando again in Last Tango in Paris and DeNiro again in Raging Bull.

After Brando and De Niro (who also recieved votes for A Streetcar Named Desire and King of Comedy respectively) came James Dean (East of Eden), Walter Huston (Dodsworth), Richard Burton (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), Peter O'Toole (Lawrence of Arabia)and James Stewart (It's A Wonderful Life).

Individual lists:

Albert H. Muth
Auteurophile

  1. Marlon Brando as Paul in Last Tango in Paris

  2. Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront

  3. Richard Burton as George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

  4. Robert De Niro as Jake 'Raging Bull' La Motta in Raging Bull

  5. Marcello Mastroianni as Guido in 8 1/2

others: Brando - The Godfather, Welles - Touch of Evil, Nicholson - Five Easy Pieces, Chaplin - City Lights, Keaton - The General, Gianinni - 7 Beauties, Bogarde - Death in Venice, Quinn - La strada, Sydow - The Virgin Spring


Kent Jones
Editor-at-Large, Film Comment

  1. Walter Huston as Sam Dodsworth in Dodsworth

  2. Cary Grant as T.R. Devlin in Notorious

  3. Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront

  4. James Cagney as T.L. 'Biff' Grimes in The Strawberry Blonde

  5. John Wayne as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers

Others: Warren Oates (Two-Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter), Nick Nolte (Affliction, The Thin Red Line), Robert Ryan (On Dangerous Ground), Robert Forster (Jackie Brown), Daniel Auteuil (Ma Saison préférée, Les Voleurs), James Stewart (The Naked Spur), Frederic March (The Best Years of Our Lives), Robert DeNiro (Mean Streets), Gene Hackman (Night Moves), Al Pacino (The Godfather Trilogy), Robert Duvall (True Confessions), Louis Jouvet (Les Bas-fonds), Hnery Fonda (Young Mr. Lincoln, Fort Apache), Orson Welles (Citizen Kane), Robert Donat (The Citadel, The Winslow Boy), Ralph Richardson (The Fallen Idol, The Heiress), Vittorio Gassman (Il Sorpasso), Jean-Louis Trintignant (Ma Nuit chez Maud), Paul Newman (Slap Shot, The Verdict), Marcello Mastroianni (8 1/2, White Nights), Robert Micthum (The Friends of Eddie Coyle), William Holden (The Wild Bunch), Edward G. Robinson (Double Indemnity), Jack Nicholson (Five Easy Pieces, Ironweed), James Coburn (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid)


David Sterritt
Chairman, National Society of Film Critics

  1. John Wayne as The Ringo Kid in Stagecoach - The quintessence of Wayne's persona. Tied with "The Searchers," natch.

  2. James Mason as Ed Avery in Bigger Than Life - There's more than one Mason performances that might qualify, but this is arguably the greatest, tied with his brilliant work in "Lolita."

  3. Oskar Werner as Jules in Jules et Jim - The greatest performance by an underrated actor.

  4. Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver - Still staggering after all these years.

  5. Ben Gazzara as Cosmo Vitelli in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie - A towering achievement of Method-based movie technique, fascinatingly inflected by John Cassavetes's meticulous directing.



David Ehrenstein
Film Critic & Entertainment Writer
Author, Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-1998

  1. Anton Walbrook as Boris Lermontov in The Red Shoes

  2. Robert Mitchum as Harry Powell in The Night of the Hunter

  3. James Cagney as Cody Jarrett in White Heat

  4. Robert De Niro as Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy

  5. Humphrey Bogart as Billy Dannreuther in Beat the Devil



Jeffrey M. Anderson
Film Critic & Freelance Entertainment Writer
San Francisco Examiner, Las Vegas Weekly, Oakland Tribune

This list is ridiculously incomplete, but here goes...

  1. James Stewart as George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life

  2. Jeremy Irons as Beverly & Elliot Mantle in Dead Ringers

  3. Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert in M

  4. William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo

  5. Bill Murray as Bob Harris in Lost in Translation

5 Runners up: Warren Oates as GTO in Two Lane Blacktop Jack Nicholson as Jerry Black in The Pledge Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood Alec Guinness several members of the family d'Ascoyne in Kind Hearts and Coronets Marlon Brando as Paul in Last Tango in Paris


Christopher Null
Founder, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Filmcritic.com

  1. Ben Kingsley as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Gandhi

  2. Geoffrey Rush as David Helfgott in Shine

  3. Jack Nicholson as Randle Patrick McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

  4. Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood

  5. Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather



Kelley Baker
Filmmaker

  1. Peter O'Toole as Jack the 14th Earl of Gurney in The Ruling Class - Anyone who can go from God to Jack The Ripper in one movie and do it while singing... My number 1

  2. Humphrey Bogart as Rick in Casablanca

  3. Ernest Borgnine as Marty Piletti Marty

  4. Henry Fonda as Frank in Once Upon A Time In The West

  5. Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On The Water Front

Honorable Mentions: Laurence Oliver as Dr Christian Szell in Marathon Man, Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man, The Graduate, and Death of a Salesman, Peter Lorre in M, Jimmy Stewart & Cary Grant in just about everything. The list can go on forever...


Andrew Horbal
Film Enthusiast

  1. Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane - 26 years-old. Good grief!

  2. Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory - Wilder's Wonka has that same perfect mix of sweet and scary as do our oldest myths, legends, stories, fairy tales. Life is beautiful, yes, but also frightening and mysterious...

  3. Roy Scheider as Joe Gideon in All That Jazz - Scheider captures the bravado, the selfishness, the garish embrace of cliché and melodrama that you need to be the "star of the movie of your life." He's brilliantly cast in Bob Fosse's larger-than-life love letter to his own delusions of grandeur...

  4. Zbignew Cybulski as Maciek Chelmicki in Ashes and Diamonds - The "Polish James Dean" did Dean better than Dean ever did!

  5. Enrique Irazoqui as Jesus in The Gospel According to St. Matthew - Irazoqui plays Jesus as a very human angry young man. Is this blasphemous or beautiful? I favor the latter...



David Oppedisano
Film Critic and Researcher

  1. Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

  2. Cary Grant as Walter Burns in His Girl Friday

  3. Walter Matthau as Henry Graham in A New Leaf

  4. Nicolas Cage as Charlie & Donald Kaufman in Adaptation

  5. Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho

    and...

  6. James Stewart as John "Scottie" Ferguson Vertigo

  7. W.C. Fields as Harold Bissonette It's a Gift

  8. Woody Allen as Miles Monroe Sleeper

  9. Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth Blue Velvet

  10. Divine as Dawn Davenport Female Trouble

  11. Mike Myers as Austin Powers/Dr. Evil Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

  12. James Stewart as George Bailey It's a Wonderful Life

  13. Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe The Big Sleep

  14. Monty Woolley as Sheridan Whiteside The Man Who Came to Dinner

  15. Charles Laughton as Sir Wilfrid Robarts Witness for the Prosecution

Not forgetting Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, Alistair Sim, Jacques Tati, George Sanders, Claude Rains, John Barrymore, Marcello Mastroianni, Bill Murray, Kevin Kline, Paul Reubens, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Brad Pitt, Orson Welles, Jim Carrey, Jack Nicholson


Peter Sobczynski
Film Critic, eFilmCritic.com

As with the actresses, I am (with one exception) leaving out actors who have had such an enormous body of work that singling out one would be impossible (In other words, no Brando, Pacino, Bogart, Mitchum, O'Toole, Newman, Olivier or Nicholson) and I am leaving out any performance that won an Academy Award. And as with the actresses, it was still a bitch to whittle them down.

  1. Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver - for the moment when he zones out in front of the TV, vacantly staring as people blissfully dance away to Jackson Browne's "Late For the Sky"

  2. Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho - for the moment by the swamp waiting anxiously for the car to sink

  3. John Travolta as Jack Terri in Blow Out - for the moment at the end listening to the tape of the scream

  4. Malcolm McDowell as Alex in A Clockwork Orange - for the moment in which he gives us the ultimate version of the Kubrick stare

  5. Dick Miller as Walter Paisley in A Bucket of Blood - because seeing him attempting to be a hepcat--going so far as to kill Bert Convy with a frying pan--cracks me up every time I see it



Eric Enders
Film Critic, Out There in the Dark

  1. Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront

  2. Denzel Washington as Malcolm X in Malcolm X

  3. Humphrey Bogart as Fred C. Dobbs in Treasure of the Sierra Madre

  4. Tom Hanks as Josh in Big

  5. Peter Sellers as Lionel Mandrake/Merkin Muffley/Dr. Strangelove in Dr. Strangelove...

Ben Kingley (Gandhi), Peter O'Toole (Lawrence of Arabia), Montgomery Clift (From Here to Eternity), Jimmy Stewart (It's a Wonderful Life), Buster Keaton (Sherlock Jr.), Ralph Fiennes (Schindler's List), James Dean (East of Eden), Daniel Day-Lewis (My Left Foot), Jack Lemmon (Some Like It Hot), John Wayne (The Searchers), Peter Lorre (M), Joseph Cotten (Shadow of a Doubt), Jack Nicholson (About Schmidt).


Film Prophet
Film Critic, FilmProphet.com

  1. Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump in Forrest Gump

  2. Klaus Kinski as Don Lope de Aguirre in Aguirre, the Wrath of God

  3. Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver

  4. Toshirô Mifune as Taketori Washizu in Throne of Blood

  5. James Stewart as Det. John 'Scottie' Ferguson in Vertigo



Carter Liotta
Filmmaker

  1. Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone in the Godfather

  2. Peter O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia

  3. Peter Sellers as Insp. Jacques Clouseau in Pink Panther [series]

  4. Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs

  5. Humphrey Bogart as Lt. Cmdr. Philip Francis Queeg in The Caine Mutiny



Michael Parent
Film Student

  1. Jack Nicholson as J.J. 'Jake' Gittes in Chinatown

  2. Victor Sjöström as Professor Isak Borg in Wild Strawberries

  3. Toshirô Mifune as Dr. Kyojio 'Akahige' Niide in Red Beard

  4. Harry Dean Stanton as Travis in Paris, Texas

  5. Alec Guinness as Col. Nicholson in The Bridge On The River Kwai

Runners-up: Henry Fonda in Grapes Of Wrath, Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove, Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita, Adrien Brody in The Pianist, Marlon Brando in The Godfather, William Holden in Sunset Blvd., Laurence Olivier in Hamlet, Max Von Sydow in The Seventh Seal, Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands, Peter O'toole in Lawrence Of Arabia, Malcolm McDowel in A Clockwork Orange, James Stewart in Rear Window


Adam Trovillion
Film Enthusiast

  1. Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather

  2. Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs

  3. Robert De Niro as Jake 'Raging Bull' La Motta in Raging Bull

  4. Peter Sellers as Lionel Mandrake/Merkin Muffley/Dr. Strangelove in Dr. Strangelove...

  5. Al Pacino as in The Godfather: Part II

Runner-up: James Stewart as Det. John 'Scottie' Ferguson in Vertigo


Jeff Cardarelli
Film Enthusiast

  1. Al Pacino as Don Michael Corleone in The Godfather: Part II

  2. James Dean as Cal Trask in East of Eden

  3. Kevin Kline as Otto in A Fish Called Wanda

  4. Peter O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia

  5. Robert De Niro as Jake 'Raging Bull' La Motta in Raging Bull



Matt Severson
Film Enthusiast

  1. Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront

  2. Robert De Niro as Jake 'Raging Bull' La Motta in Raging Bull

  3. James Stewart as Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

  4. Klaus Kinski as Don Lope de Aguirre in Aguirre, The Wrath of God

  5. Toshirô Mifune as Kikuchiyo in Seven Samurai



Kevin Cassidy
Film Enthusiast

  1. Chishu Ryu as Shuehi Horikowa in There Was a Father

  2. Chishu Ryu as Shukishi Hirayama in Tokyo Story

  3. John Dall as Bart Tare in Gun Crazy

  4. Tatsuya Nakadai as Kaji in The Human Condition Trilogy

  5. John Barrymore as Gregory Vance in The Great Man Votes



Billy Wilson
Film Enthusiast

  1. Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather

  2. James Caviezel as Jesus in The Passion of the Christ

  3. Tobin Bell as John Kramer/Jigsaw in Saw II

  4. Keanu Reeves as Neo Anderson in The Matrix

  5. George Burns as God in Oh God!



Phil Speary
Film Instructor & Fanatic

  1. Richard Burton as George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - all the hoopla was about Taylor but Burton's subtlety as George is the essence of film acting.

  2. Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront - the scene with Steiger in the cab alone would qualify him for this position.

  3. Laurence Olivier as Arthur Rice in The Entertainer - the greatest classical film actor in his most contemporary performance.

  4. Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver - no one has ever captured madness in such a captivating way.

  5. James Stewart as Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - the undeniable sentimental favorite.



Mathew Viola
Film Fanatic

  1. Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire - Nobody can touch Brando. His honed naturalistic acting style coupled with his immense natural charisma gave him a commanding screen presence of unparalleled power. It all started with Streetcar, first on Broadway, then in the 1951 film, and his electrifying, sexually charged performance, which revolutionized screen acting and influenced countless future actors, remains as potent today as it was half a century ago. Legendary.

  2. Marlon Brando as Paul in Last Tango in Paris - Two decades after he astonished audiences with the raw sexuality of Stanley Kowalski, he did it again, this time in far more sexually liberated times, with this devastating portrayal of middle-aged angst and sexual rage. Alas, Brando would never again play a part with as much conviction and commitment. Thereafter, he pretty much coasted. It’s as if this emotionally shattering portrayal expended him. Perhaps he felt he laid himself bare and had nothing left to say.

  3. Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver - Rarely has an actor inhabited his characters’ skin so completely; it’s as if De Niro weren’t so much acting as manifesting an alternate, deeply disturbed personality. It’s the quintessential portrayal of alienation and loneliness.

  4. James Stewart as George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life - Stewart’s astonishingly rich, multi-layered performance conclusively demonstrates the full measure of his immense acting talent. Whether sharing a joyous romantic evening with his beloved or contemplating suicide in a dingy bar, Stewart is never less than wholly convincing. As George Bailey, he expresses the full range of human emotion, from giddy optimism to abject despair, resulting in one of the most emotionally complex, fully realized characterizations in screen history.

  5. Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho - The genius of Perkins’ performance, at once creepy and blackly funny, lies in the way he subtly suggests, with a stutter or an awkward smile or a strange comment, the abnormality lurking beneath Bates’ boyish appearance and polite mama’s boy demeanor. He brilliantly conveys the duality residing in poor Norman’s twisted mind. Perkins was never as good before or after Psycho, but when an actor gives just one performance in his career as marvelous as this, it is enough.



Doug Pratt
DVD Critic, DVDLaser.com

  1. James Dean as Cal Trask in East of Eden

  2. Walter Huston as Sam Dodsworth in Dodsworth

  3. Charles Chaplin as The Tramp in City Lights

  4. Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather

  5. Peter O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia



Kevyn Knox
Film Critic, Essayist + Historian

This week may have even been harder than last week with the ladies. I originally came up with a list of 60 and had to whittle that down to just five. WOW!!! But I did it, and I suppose it did not hurt that much. Giving myself the rule of only one film/character per actor (leaving out many great performances from Brando, De Niro, Stewart and Cassel in their other roles).

With that said, here are my Top 5 Actors:

  1. Marlon Brando as Paul in Last Tango in Paris

  2. Robert De Niro as Rupert Pupkin in King of Comedy

  3. James Stewart as Det. John 'Scottie' Ferguson in Vertigo

  4. Victor Sjöström as Professor Isak Borg in Wild Strawberries

  5. Seymour Cassel as Chet in Faces

Special Jury Prize: Marcello Mastroianni as Marcello/Guido in La Dolce Vita/8 1/2

Runners-Up: Bogart (in anything), Grant (His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby, North by Northwest, Notorious), Dean (Rebel & Eden), Perkins (in Psycho), Wayne (in The Searchers and/or The Shootist), Bridges (in anything, even the bad ones), Penn (in anything, but not the bad ones), Mifune (High and Low, Throne of Blood, Kagemusha, Burton (Woolf?), Pacino (except for that annoying Scent of a Woman), Kline (Silverado, Wanda, Prairie Home Companion), Norton (in anything!!), Malkovich (as Malkovich in Malkovich), Washington (in any of his Spike Lee performances), Chaplin (in anything), Welles (in Touch of Evil), Cotten (Ambersons, Third Man, Shadow of a Doubt), Murray (fucking droll!!), Walken (in Deer Hunter and on SNL), Kinski (anything), (early) Nicholson and too many more to think of right now.

*points are given as follows: for numbered lists, first place recieves 5 points, second place recieves 4, third place 3, fourth place 2 and fifth place gets 1 point; for unumbered lists, each film will recieve 3 points; total points are then tallied up and a comprehensive Top 5 list is created


The Next Topic is:
Name The Top 5 War and/or Anti-War Films

e-mail me at kevynknox@thecinematheque.com with your picks for week #22,
no later than 4pm on Sunday, September 10, 2006.

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