best film: JFK is the only top 100 all-time film of Sutherland’s. Don’t Look Now and MASH are up there. Aside from Costner in lead, JFK is a sprawling ensemble with solid work from Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones and yes- Sutherland. His “Mr. X” or “X” and is crucial to the narrative and I love the scenes of Sutherland and Costner together.

best performance:   Don’t Look Now. It’s an eerie performance and film (It’s a Roeg film) and Sutherland gets great moments of both internalized subtlety and externalized high emotion (that slow-motion death sequence). For me it edges out his work in MASH where he gets to show off his skills as a comedian and the highly stylized performance in 1900 where he plays a gloriously over-the-top villain.

stylistic innovations/traits: Sutherland never received an Academy Award nomination (bit of trivia there) but was dedicated to the craft of acting and taking on bold role choices with eccentric auteurs. He had a very successful career in the US and decided to go to Italy at the height of his fame to take on challenging work with Fellini and Bertolucci. I love the films he made with them (Casanova and 1900) even if they didn’t quite turn out to be La Dolce Vita and The Conformist. His 6th, 7th and 8th best performances are in Klute, Ordinary People (where he’s wonderfully understated in both) and Pride and Prejudice where he’s so warm and inviting.

directors worked with:  Nobody more than once but those he did work with include Aldrich, Altman, Pakula, Roeg, Bertolucci, Fellini, Stone and Minghella

Top 5 Performances:

  1. Don’t Look Now
  2. M.A.S.H
  3. 1900
  4. Fellini’s Casanova
  5. JFK

Archiveable films

1967- The Dirty Dozen
1970- M.A.S.H
1971- Klute
1973- Don’t Look Now
1975- The Day of the Locust
1976- 1900
1976- Fellini’s Casanova
1978- Animal House
1978- Invasion of Body Snatchers
1980- Ordinary People
1989- Dry White Season
1991- JFK
1993- Six Degrees of Separation
2003- Cold Mountain
2005- Pride and Prejudice