The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

An unsparing portrait of a lonely spinster with nothing to go on but her own ever-weakening faith. All the performances are wonderful, but Maggie Smith in the title role is revelatory. One of the best performances by an actress that I've ever seen.

This is a mediocre movie containing one performance so brilliant and so powerful and so beautiful that it deserves ten stars all by itself. Obviously I'm talking about Maggie Smith as Judith Hearne. The other actors - Hoskins, Kean, McNiece and the rest - are fine, but beside Smith in THIS role they come off as amateurs.

The story is so annoyingly melodramatic and manipulative that I would have turned it off if Smith hadn't been there in almost every scene, transforming a cheap soap opera into a vehicle for the finest, smartest, rawest, most moving and most exhilarating acting performance I have ever seen in the thousands of movies I've watched in the past 60+ years.

Thank God this performance was not made tawdry and commonplace by winning an Oscar. It is much too good for so sleazy an award.

This ranks with Agnes Moorehead in The Magnificent Ambersons and Katherine Hepburn in Long Day's Journey Into Night as the single greatest performance recorded on film by a woman. Maggie Smith will rip your heart out!

As Judith Maggie Smith turns in the performance of a lifetime and one of the best and most complete portrayals by any actor on film. This is an astonishing film, full of bleak Irish heartbreak, yet with the promise of hope.

Smith is a no less than a revelation in the title role and one cannot help but route for this desperate character even when all looks hopeless. The screenplay had been fought over for years by actresses of every stripe, with, for a while, Jane Fonda, leading the pack of actresses trying to get Judith onto the screen. It's a good thing Maggie Smith won out.

The ensemble cast of actors led by Bob Hoskins is fully up to Smith's standard and the emotional wallops this movie packs are big ones indeed.

George Delarue's score is simply perfect underlying with the exact weight and gravity - and sweetness - of every situation.

When is this thing coming out on DVD? It's simply ridiculous it hasn't yet appeared.

Highest recommendation.

Only 21 reviews? The film may be a bit flawed on some levels, but is still a masterpiece. Because of her; La Smith. I don't think Maggie Smith has ever failed in a role. And Judith Hearne is one of her finest moments, as she didn't have to rely on an sophisticated, aristocratic charism. I love the Hearne character, even as I wanted to slap her sometimes.

Dame Maggie is at the top of her career right now, due to the Downton Abby craze and it's cinema version. I guess that if Maggie kicked Elizabeth II out of Buckingham palace and sat herself down in the royal chair, no one in England would protest....everybody, EVERYBODY loves the indestructible Dowager!

This movie is very touching and Maggie is truly royalty, a delightful woman, a unique actress, and her Judith won her numerous awards, but the film is mostly forgotten these days. And I will never forget that fire red 1950's spinster coat of hers....