Jennifer Jones, The Song of Bernadette

as BERNADETTE SOUBIROUS

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress | Golden Globe - Best Actress

The Role: as a sweet and sickly girl who has visions of the Virgin Mary, this was undoubtedly a "star is born" type of role that shot Jennifer Jones into Hollywood stardom for the duration of the 1940s. I'll say now that my discontent towards religious fare really didn't play into how I feel about The Song of Bernadette and Jones' performance all all (though it does get exhausting after awhile), and in fact, I did like the film/was quite engaged at times. But the role of Bernadette and this over-stressed archetype of saintly womandom is what I found most unsavory here, and while that's no fault of Jones', I think that she's at a crossroads of not being able to do much via the material as well as not possessing the skills to do much with the material either.

 

The Performance: My primary issue with this performance is that I've grown quite tired of overwhelmingly saintly female characters. Where are the flaws? Where are the humanistic qualities that make these women real people as opposed to these robotic Stepfordwife-esque portraits of what a proper woman is and should be? Bernadette Soubirous--bless her really--epitomizes this archetype. I'm aware that my bitching of Bernadette being too saintly is rather stupid, as that's exactly what Bernadette is supposed to be. But I found myself continuously watching Jones and just being utterly bored with what she was doing. What is she doing, really truly? She speaks to all these people in the same soft, sickeningly fragile voice, in the same tone, throughout all the issues and drama that she faces over the course of two and a half hours. It was all a bit one-note for my tastes. When she's not being a softspoken saint to everyone around her, Jones spends what has to be 50%+ of her performance looking up at things. What fun is there in watching someone point her head up and stare off at stuff? Even still, while watching her, I wrote down in my notes that I had a feeling Jones wasn't much of an actress. We're served with shot after shot after shot of her gazing at stuff, and with these frequent opportunities I never got a sense that there was much happening behind her eyes. I would look into those big eyes of hers and I wouldn't be able to read or feel anything. I just saw blank glances in the face of what are supposed to be extraordinary visions. That led me to believe that Jones is more of an amateur and/or David O. Selznick-hyped commodity as opposed to a legitimate thespian, and it's all just kind of disappointing. For what it's worth, I do believe that her embodiment of a saint is committed and well done. And I do think that the last two or so scenes near the film's conclusion are actually nuanced and expertly acted. Definitely a mark of an up-and-coming ingenue for sure, but was it really worth a win? When you've got much more expertly crafted performances by Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca and Ida Lupino in The Hard Way? It's bizarre to me, but I can't hide behind the facts: The Song of Bernadette was a massive hit and the moral values for which Bernadette stood for definitely pandered to the interests of Oscar in the 1940s as a whole. I know that there's a decent sized fanbase for this performance, and while it's good enough for me...I just don't get it.