The 25th Best Actor of All-Time: Burt Lancaster

best film:  The Leopard  and The Sweet Smell of Success are 1-2 in both of the big categories. I ended up, untentionally splitting them. Lancaster is very close to equal in both, but Mackendrick’s wonderfully atmospheric New York City potboiler (and Tony Curtis performance) can’t trump Visctoni’s pictorial brilliance and achievement of mise-en-scene. Those are Lancaster’s top two films but 1900 is underrated by critics—that would come in third.

best performance: The Sweet Smell of Success. Lancaster’s J.J. Hunsecker is one of Hollywood’s great characters in the 50’s. Tony Curtis’ immoral rogue is our worldview here and narrative vehicle but it’s Lancaster that eats the screen every time he’s on it as the autocratic bully.   Lancaster is fanatical and intellectual—an overbearing figure. He’s a tour-de-force.

stylistic innovations/traits:  Lancaster had a whopping 26 archiveable films over his 44 year career. He was no Ward Bond (supporting character in everything- 35 archiveable films). He’s lead in at least 20 of these films. Lancaster’s first film, his very first film, is The Killers– a magnificent noir in which Lancaster steals the show. His last archiveable film (and overall film)- is Field of Dreams where Lancaster chews the scenes he’s in up, and spits them out—I love him in it. He was a dominant Hollywood actor for 20 years (1946-1966) and also was adventurous enough to lend himself to foreign auteurs (Visconti, Bertolucci, Malle). If he had done one or the other (Hollywood or foreign auteurs) he would’ve ended up on this list—but he did both so he managed to crack the top 25.

directors worked with:   Aldrich (3), Visconti (2), Frankenheimer (2), and then once with Bertolucci, Malle, Altman and Preminger

Top 10 Performances:

1. The Sweet Smell of Success
2. The Leopard
3. Brute Force
4. From Here to Eternity
5. Elmer Gantry
6. 1900
7. The Killers
8. Atlantic City
9. The Train
10. The Birdman of Alcatraz

Archiveable films