Geraldine Page as Eve in INTERIORS.

GERALDINE PAGE

GERALDINE PAGE as Eve in INTERIORS

As F. Murray Abraham said when he presented her with her long awaited OSCAR for Best Actress in A Trip to Bountiful “Ladies and Gentlemen I consider this woman to be the greatest actress of all time, Ms. Geraldine Page” – It’s a good argument. Geraldine Page is hardly an acquired taste. She’s probably not on the tip of anyone under forties tongues and that’s a shame. She should be studied in all Master Acting Classes. The fact that young actors, people born after 1980 probably don’t know who she is – is criminal. Yeah, Megan Fox doesn’t know who Geraldine Page is – rest assured. Geraldine Page was a master craftswoman who seemed to bring out the most inner detail of the character she was playing. Her dedication to her craft has earned her the respect of many of today's great actors including Meryl Streep and Michelle Pfeiffer. Like Lange, (Lange would be the Michael Corleone to) Geraldine Page's God-Mother of mental frailty. She always seemed to go south when all roads pointed north. But south turns out to be the right way after all. Her choices seem odd and unusual. Like when she grabs the blouse from the box at her birthday party. The way she flings it out of the box holds it up and feels the fabric. No other actor in the world would have made that choice. They would have held it up and indicated to all the gift. Not Geraldine Page – He gift as an actor was subtly and being piercingly sharp and true – always. And the best listener. All truly great acting is about being open and available to your partner. Even though Geraldine Page was an oddball persona – she listened like the strongest microphone available. Complete dedicated and absorbing the other actors words and physicality. She was affected by each little moment and buried moment – reading what the characters really saying, what’s really happening beneath the line. Observing their body language a responding accordingly. Like the scene in the Church when her husband tells her the marriage is over and that he's meet someone else. You can feel her sense it, hear it finally and then the devastation that come with the acceptance of the inflicting information. Like a laceration. It's the final straw for Eve. Her hope is gone. You know that this is the end for her. And then she thrashes the churches candles and runs out.

Beyond pained, emotionally drained, disturbed characters at the end of their rope were her speciality. But emotionally, even though tossed away, she was always “tough as a bar of iron” but also at the brink of a nervous breakdown. She could play many emotional opposites in the same moment. Her Eve in INTERIORS was in emotional center of the film, the New England life, her well schooled background and cold and empty rooms, “Interiors”, suggested that there was a deep hollowness in her soul that couldn’t give warmth. The tightly coiled hairstyle slowly comes undone and put back up and by the end washed away. Everything Geraldine Page does physically in this movie is terrifying and heart wrenching. Her need to keep it all together even the relationship is long gone - we’ve all been there - is the spine of the film. No one goes further than Geraldine Page. Geraldine goes further than any of them could imagine. Meryl and Lange have gotten there - but Geraldine was the first.

The blank stares-erratically kind, impossibly demanding, pathetic in her loneliness and desperate in her anger.

Her need to reconcile spinning over and over in her head and eyes flutter and her face contorts. We watch Eve melt right before our eyes. It’s an insane performance. True blue acting at it’s best.

She seemed to take great comfort in repressed rage and anguishing depression – crippling depression. That Irish rough and ragged voice. Trained and rumbled across theatres big and small all over the United States. Geraldine Page was an actor’s actor.

And INTERIORS she played another disturbed creature, Eve not your typical Page role, it was written for Ingrid Bergman but Geraldine Page got it and created some of the strongest moments ever on cinema. All of her choices are symbolic and thought provoking as the film itself. The hair comes down and the wine held tight. Every scene and the audience perk up and pay attention. Something is going to happen. Unnerved and dangerous – Page demands attention. People debate over which scene is the most devastating, but all her moments in the film are brilliant. It’s one of the smallest screen times, nominated for Best Actress in the history of the Academy awards and a performance that wasn’t discovered until VHS and DVD’s came of age. It’s a performance to be studied by actors’ years from now- Look here kids this is how it’s done. It’s been over twenty years since her death and she’s still as vital and contemporary as any female actor on screen today.