Quantity And Quality

Michael Fassbender seems ready to break out big.  After his memorable work in Inglourious Basterds a couple years back he's been starring in an awful lot of films.  Just this year he was in Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class and is now in both A Dangerous Method and Shame.  (He'll soon follow this with Steven Soderbergh's Haywire.)

I thought he was good in Eyre and X-Men and haven't seen the others yet.  But it reminded me of the studio era when actors would regularly appear in a handful of films each year.  And every now and then one would do it just right.  My favorite examples would have to include--

--Claudette Colbert, 1934: she had the lead in two major productions, Cleopatra and Imitation Of Life, either one of which could make a career, and topped them both with a loan-out to poverty stricken Columbia, It Happened One Night, for which she won her Oscar.

--William Powell, 1936: the most suave man on screen, he made his best film this year--My Man Godfrey (loan-out to Universal)--along with two others not far behind--Libeled Lady, After The Thin Man--and also had the title role in The Great Ziegfeld which won the Oscar for Best Picture.

--Thomas Mitchell, 1939: the popular character actor outdid himself doing great work in five classics--Gone With The Wind, Stagecoach (for which he won the Oscar), Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Only Angeles Have Wings and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame.

It's nice to see actors today trying to repeat these achievements.  Though with fewer films being made these days their fellow actors may wish they'd step aside and let others in.