22 The Greatest (Classic) Performances by an Actress

This week I'm posting the follow-up to last week's list of the greatest classic performances by an actor. This week it's the turn of the great actresses. As before, I limited myself to sound films made between 1930 and 1980 because that's what I know best. I also limited myself to one performance for each actress, and again it was often difficult to choose one performance for those who might reasonably have been cited for any of a number of films, actresses like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, and Liv Ullmann. On another day I might pick a different performance for some of these, but for now I'm willing to go with the ones I've chosen. The final list underscores the conclusion I drew last week about great film performances: in most cases, they're the result of the perfect conjunction of the actor, the role, and the setting.

10 The Greatest (Classic) Performances by an Actor

Last week Sam Juliano at Wonders in the Dark came out with a surprise post, "The 43 Greatest performances of all-time by an actor in a leading role" (click here to read the post), and invited his readers to submit their own lists. Like a large number of WitD's regular readers, I couldn't resist taking Sam up on his invitation and sent him my own list of the 50+ greatest performances. Because I consider sound films of 1930-1980 my area of knowledge, I stopped at 1980 and for silent performances included only the three great American silent comics. I also limited myself to one performance for each actor, and it was often hard to choose which one. How do you pick just one performance by Keaton, Bogart, Nicholson, or Gabin?