# 11: Travels with My Aunt (1972)

Maggie Smith

as Aunt Augusta Bertram

in

Travels with My Aunt (1972)

 Screentime: 74 minutes and 2 seconds (68.2% of the film)

Maggie Smith plays the aging, odd and eccentric Augusta Bertram who meets her estranged nephew Henry at her sister/his mother’s funeral and cremation. From there Augusta introduces and welcomes her nephew into her extravagant and rather crazy lifestyle and Henry begins to learn of her illegal dealings as she decides to go overseas and chase after an old lover she met while she was young. The film is flawed and can be bizarre and stupid in places, but is still a fun ride with engaging performances enhancing the absurd screenplay. Interestingly the film’s humour/ type of comedy was something of a rarity of 1972 with gags among others about severed human limbs, marijuana and (my favourite) Augusta trying to sing the church hymn at the beginning.

FILM:

 

Maggie plays an elderly (with significant makeup), middle aged and even a teenage version of Augusta (with the latter looking quite ridiculous as a 40 year old Maggie stands next to actual 13 year old girls wearing the same uniform). Nonetheless she is a riot and so engaging in all aspects of her performances, she wears fabulous outfits (the film won the Oscar for best costume design) and she sports a grating accent. Fun ride, don’t take it too seriously. Surprisingly Maggie got a nomination for Best Actress here (amongst Cicely Tyson and Liv Ullman in much more Academy genre fare), and I think she deserves it!

MAGGIE-METER: 
 

 

"It's the best way to win a woman, Henry, to make her laugh."

# 8: Death on the Nile (1978)

Maggie Smith

as Miss Bowers

in

Death on the Nile (1978)

Screentime: 15 minutes and 55 seconds (12.0% of the film)*
* Includes the short flaskback sequences which is repeated footage.

Death on the Nile is the 1930s Agatha Christie mystery focusing on a group of mainly English tourists visiting Egypt. The story mainly focuses on the young English couple Simon and Linnet and the ex-girlfriend Jacqueline. While travelling down the Nile one night, Simon is shot and injured by Jacqueline and Linnet is shot and killed in her bedroom within a matter of minutes. The only problem is Jacqueline has an alibi and couldn’t have killed her and the detective Hercule Poirot starts looking at the other passengers on the steam boat as the possible suspects. As it turns out they all have a significant motive for murdering Linnet.

The film is a lot of fun despite lacking the classiness of Murder on the Orient Express and some of the acting performed by in particular Mia Farrow  and Lois Chiles is a little cringe-worthy and melodramatic. The outcome is incredibly over the top but still entertaining and it is fun to see the all star cast ensemble act their respective parts: Peter Ustinov, Jane Birkin, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Olivia Hussey, George Kennedy, Angela Lansbury (who is hilarious in her part), David Niven, Jack Warden and others.

FILM:

Maggie Smith plays Miss Bowers, the nurse and “servant” of the American socialite Mrs. Van Schuyler (Bette Davis). Davis and Smith have wonderful chemistry together and the two quarrel and bicker and deliver some hilarious dialogue such as:

Mrs. Van Schuyler: Come, Bowers, it's time to go, this place is beginning to resemble a mortuary.
Miss Bowers: Thank God you'll be in one yourself before too long you bloody old fossil!

You pick up early on that there is such limited character development for about 80% of the characters in Agatha Christie stories, and unfortunately Miss Bowers is no exception. Alot of her screentime accounts for her just sitting on the side of the screen or in the background as well as the extended revelation sequence which she is silently featured. She really only has a handful of short scenes featuring dialogue and one interrogation scene, but as I have said, the is pure Agatha Christie (remember Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for basically one scene and a bunch of reaction shots in Murder on the Orient Express). It was incredibly chic for an actor in the ‘70s to appear in a rather small part in the huge ensemble mysteries or disaster flick. It usually meant an easy good salary and high box office returns. Here Maggie is funny and excels in her part, even if she and many others in the cast were underused.

MAGGIE-METER:

 

"It has been my experience that men are least attracted to women who treat them well."

# 5: California Suite (1978)

Maggie Smith

as (Oscar nominated!) Diana Barrie

in

California Suite (1978)

 

Screentime: 24 minutes and 15 seconds (24.0% of the film)

Labelled for 1978 movie audiences as the “best two hour vacation in town”, Neil Simon’s California Suite is a film about four separate visitors (from New York, London, Philadelphia and Chicago) and their ‘misadventures’ while staying at the same Beverly Hills hotel. I have to admit that the overall film is pretty awful. The style of comedy is incredibly disjointed and mostly unfunny. Jane Fonda and Alan Alda’s segment is just poorly written, it is essentially the two just continuously arguing and insulting each other as they try and deal with their daughter’s issues (I know this reads hilarious comedy all over!), and then Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby’s segment is even worse; utterly stupid and slapstick. There was a slight improvement when it came to Walter Matthau and the “unconscious prostitute found in his bed while the wife is in the other room” storyline but then came Michael Caine and Maggie Smith's segment "Visitors from London", and all I can say is wow, wow, wow! 

For about 40 minutes, this film gets a 10/10 for the wonderful, heartfelt and humorous chemistry between the two British thespians and their story of a British actress Diana Barrie (Smith) preparing for the Academy Awards with her sexually ambiguous husband Sidney (Caine) and their antics, bickering and worries before the event as well as the drunk and forward confrontations they encounter in the aftermath of the evening. 

So when determining a score for the film:

Fonda/Alda: 1/5

Smith/Caine: 5/5

Matthau: 2.5/5

Cosby/Pryor: 1/5

Gives an overall average of:

FILM:

As for Maggie Smith, she is luminous and stunning as Diana Barrie. The part just seems to be written for Maggie 100% and she just pulls it off perfectly, balancing out both her comedic and light moments with rather hard hitting poignant and dramatic moments in her final minutes on screen. You kind of wish the whole film was just Michael and Maggie, and it really is a shame that such a wonderful performance was stuck in such a dead average film. The whole segment is memorable but highlights include Diana’s growing nerves and paranoia of a supposed hump on her back and her attempts of trying to get answers out of her husband’s closed off life (okay basically the entire final 10 minute scene). Their British presence I feel was just such a nice fresh breath of air, for an otherwise very American film.

MAGGIE-METER: (No hesitations)

"Screw the Oscars. Screw the Academy Awards. Screw me, Sidney. Please. Please"

EXTRA ADDITION:

Smith and Caine filmed their Oscar ceremony scenes during the red-carpet show at the 1978 Academy Awards, they also attended the event and presented Jason Robards with the Oscar for Julia. As for the following ceremony, Smith was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and her competition was:

Dyan Cannon in Heaven Can Wait

Penelope Milford in Coming Home

Maureen Stapleton in Interiors

Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter

... and who won?

Maggie Smith of course!

(standing with presenter Brooke Shields)