Number 05: Lila Kedrova as Madame Hortense in "Zorba, the Greek" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

Like Josephine Hull in Harvey, Lila Kedrova received the Oscar for enjoying a very eccentric and uncommon character – but whilst Josephine Hull was hilariously funny, Lila Kedrova is immensely heartbreaking as Madame Hortense, the ill-fated owner of a minor hotel on a Greek island.

Correct from the commence, Lila Kedrova utilizes her unique visual appeal and voice to craft Madame Hortense as a very peculiar and unusual girl – she’s very eccentric, she loves to chat about her ‘four admirals’ with whom she affairs in the previous (sometimes at the very same time) and she will come throughout as instead laughable due to the fact there is anything so ridiculous about her. And so it is  no shock when Alan Bates’s character secretly begins to chuckle about her. But then, in a single next, Lila Kedrova turns her whole character about when she catches him and states, with disbelief in her voice, ‘You are laughing…at me’. In this minute Madame Hortense becomes one of the most tragic people at any time – never taken severely, always also in excess of-the-best but incredibly heartbreaking in her loneliness.

Madame Hortense is a woman who is past her prime and knows it – at a Christmas Get together she has enjoyable with Zorba but then slips and falls and suggests ‘You see…it is also late’, referring to her age. And Lila Kedrova merely says all her line in the most heartbreaking way feasible. When Zorba leaves, she begs to him ‘Don’t overlook me!’ and when Alan Bates attempts to cheer her up, telling her ‘He’ll be back’, she says ‘They all say that…’ with a unhappy voice, contemplating about her four admirals and how they left her.

Lila Kedrova’s most transferring scene comes when Zorba writes a letter, telling Alan Bates that he satisfied one more female – Madame Hortense needs to know what stands in the letter and Alan tells her ‘Read it yourself’. Madame Hortense seems to be as it, but then says ‘I simply cannot go through it…my eyes’. She leaves it open up if she truly did not realize the material of the letter and made the decision to reside in her planet of her own fantasies in which Zorba would like to marry her – but Lila Kedrova actually knows how to break your heart in this second. Later on, she even tops all this when Madame Hortense is lying in her bay, praying quietly and hallucinating.

All round, one of the most haunting and, once more, heartbreaking performances at any time.