JUDI DENCH

by Nate Lee 
 

BEST FILM:

Shakespeare in Love...

Certainly Dench’s rack of award-winning performances in award-winning films is impressive, but every single second of her brief appearances as a wise, funny and in-control queen and patron of young Will is just scrumptious. This would be virtually anyone’s best film, but her Oscar for some eight minutes of film time says it all.  

BLOCKBUSTERS:

Henry V (Mistress Quickly)

The Bond Films: (M)

Casino Royale

Die Another Day

Tomorrow Never Dies

GoldenEye

The World is Not Enough 

 

GREAT PERFORMANCES YOU MAY NOT HAVE SEEN:

Shakespeare in Love (Golden Globe-nominated and Oscar-winning performance as QEI)

Notes on a Scandal (Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated performance as a vicious lesbian schoolteacher)

Chocolat (SAG-winning and Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated performance as crotchety landlady turned wise old lady)

Mrs. Brown (Oscar-nominated and Golden Gobe-winning performance as Queen Victoria)

Mrs. Henderson Presents (wealthy British proprietor of a nude musical revue during WWII)

Iris (British author Iris Murdoch)

A Room with a View (feisty novelist)

Tea with Mussolini

Pride and Prejudice

The Importance of Being Earnest (Lady Bracknell)  

THE REAL DENCH:

The Bond Films...

This chick is in charge. Perhaps her role as Mrs. Henderson is more Denchy, but that role isn’t much different than her brilliant handling of “M,” the head of MI6. She uses that bite, authoritarian air and self-actualization to always make us yearn for a few more minutes’ verbal tangling with Bond. 

ACTING STYLE:

Feisty and literally indomitable. A poster child, like Helen Mirren, for the classical training of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Dench, though, is so different from Mirren as to make it impossible to believe they have both been so brilliant as Queen Elizabeth, as well as several of the same Shakespearean roles. Dench seems to literally spit out her words, and her power seems to come from (for the most part) an unknowable, angry place. It’s no accident that her acclaim has come primarily from supporting roles. Except for her brilliant (and, again, almost typecasting) performance as Queen Victoria, she is the best character actress in the business.  

BITS AND QUIRKS:

The squnched-up pruneface, sometimes relaxed into just a squnched-up jaw. The evil squint, sometimes, but not often with an even more evil smile. The staccato delivery, often at jackhammer pace. The quick nod. The various versions of the imperious back-straightened stare.  

GREAT SCENES:

SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE - Every scene (as stated above) >> Presiding over the wager in court > Surprise visit to the theatre and subsequent judgment on the wager

CASINO ROYALE - Walking out of a Whitehall meeting, talking about Bond > Dealing with Bond after he breaks into her house, literally threatening him with his life > the “I knew you were you” lines

MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS - The speech to the soldiers outside of a closed theatre > The picnic with Lord Chamberlain, convincing him of the “art” of a nude revue > Arguments with Bob Hoskins about the theatre

NOTES ON A SCANDAL - Picking up the girl in the park at the end > Betraying Cate Blanchett’s trust > Confrontation with her husband, Bill Nighy

MRS. BROWN - The heart-to-heart with Brown > Supper with the royal family before Brown arrives > The confessional scene > The fight with Brown about returning to public life > The death scene

 

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