To celebrate our tenth anniversary, we asked Film Streams staff and board members to pick their top ten from the more than 1,600 films that illuminated the screens of the Ruth Sokolof Theater during its first decade. What emerged was a series that champions some of the finest independent and foreign films released in the last ten years.
If film was similar to stage, Marge Gunderson would probably be one of those coveted roles like Blanche Dubois, Eliza Doolittle, or a Schuyler sister that an actress could use to stretch her repertoire in unusual and exciting ways. Though she had a long career before FARGO, the film was arguably Frances McDormand’s breakthrough role, and remains one of her personal bests.
Frances McDormand spoke to Willem Dafoe in BOMB Magazine about the pivotal role, “With FARGO, I hadn’t read the script, or prepared for an audition. I got the part because I’ve worked with the Coen Brothers, they’ve known my work for 12 years. They were offering me a challenge. It’s interesting, because I’m not sure how I would have felt about that character if I had just read the script. I took it for granted with them. I wanted to work with Joel and Ethan.
Working with Joel and Ethan is a lot more like theater than other films I’ve done. Their movies are theatrical. They’re very stylized, in a way that a company of actors has to be. The screenplay’s like a play script. You’re not trying to fix the holes in the script with improvisation or character development. It’s given to you, it’s there.
When you read the screenplay, and then you see the movie, there’s no alteration of the original idea. Joel and Ethan start making it when they write it. They don’t write screenplays for somebody else to direct, and somebody else to edit. From the minute they get the idea, they’re talking about the dialogue, writing the script, thinking about camera movements and locations. Everything starts at the same time. It’s a really good example of feeling the difference, because for a long time, I was flying by the seat of my pants.”
