Maggie Smith as Diana Barrie in California Suite
Best Supporting Actress at the 51st Annual Oscars (1978)
Notable Quote:
“I look as though I was hit by a fully-loaded, guided tour bus.”
Synopsis:
Four intersecting arcs tell the stories of visitors to Los Angeles, played by stars like Jane Fonda, Maggie Smith, Richard Pryor, and Walter Matthau. Nominally a comedy, it’s a movie that’s best enjoyed if you like find yourself laughing at the couple seething at one another in the aisle next to you at the grocery store.
The character:
Diana Barrie is one of the most meta characters that we’ll encounter in this column: an actress who is up for an Academy Award! I’m willing to bet that Maggie Smith is the only person to win an Oscar for a performance in which she says, “Goddamn the Oscars!” Diana is a longtime theater performer who is now nominated for a silly role in a minor comedy. I’m mixed on the humor in this movie, but I love all the commentary that Diana gets to deliver on the Oscars, whether noting that she’s obviously going to lose because she doesn’t have a narrative, or making fun of the Sound Editing awards.
I love Diana because she’s so badly behaved, and you get the sense that it’s mostly about this stressful situation. She’s probably a bit of a diva, but the Oscars have made her fully lose her mind. She desperately doesn’t want to be there, but also secretly wants to win, and this conflict spills out into anxiety over everything else. At one point, Diana decides that her shoulder has a hump that everyone can see, so she’s existentially spiraling about her age and appearance. She’s so absorbed in her own stress that she’s completely ungrateful that the whole trip is paid for, and she also rips into her poor gay husband. And yet, she still seems like a great person to go out for drinks with.
The performance:
California Suite is a movie in which a lot of “witty banter” between couples and friends is actually just nasty name-calling. The one exception is the relationship between the characters played by Maggie Smith and Michael Caine: occasionally they’re too cruel for my tastes, but mostly, their barbs actually land as funny. There are a few reasons. One, they have a great dynamic: their interplay is endearing, and both feel teasing, rather than actually mean. Maybe it’s the British accent, honestly? But also, Maggie Smith has made a career of playing tough or caustic woman who we still love. It’s a perfect role for her.
I like that we also get to see a lot of sides of Smith that are new to me. I mean, we literally get several scenes of Maggie Smith drunk, munching on leftover fried chicken and chucking apples at Michael Caine, it’s everything I never knew that I wanted. But she also imparts a vulnerability to Diana. Even as she’s saying horrendous things, we understand that beneath it lies a woman who feels anxious and threatened, and she’s spiraling out.
The movie:
As I discussed above, this movie is often mean-spirited in an attempt to be funny, which really doesn’t work. It’s not insane enough to be Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? cruelty but it’s also not sweet enough to be, say, Erin Brockovich level snark either. It’s also a movie that struggles to arrange its main stories in an order that makes sense. We see so much Jane Fonda and Alan Alda early, and then basically move on from then, and end with most of the screentime given to the most inessential tale, Walter Matthau cheating on his wife and then trying to cover it up. It all makes me want to tell the cast, shh, it’s okay, time for bed now.
Was the Oscar deserved?
Yes, Maggie Smith is delightful.