Small Scenes - Big Actors | Geraldine Page

The Pope of Greenwich Village

You’d be hard-pressed to find a better character actress than Geraldine Page. In this small scene from The Pope of Greenwich Village, she offers up a masterclass in acting, showing power and gravity with very little effort.

In the film, she plays Mrs. Ritter, a widowed New York ball-breaker whose son, an NYPD detective, is found dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft. She doesn’t actually know what corrupt shenanigans her son was into, but her instinct to protect him takes center stage.

In my life as a lover of film, this scene (and movie) has come up countless times. Aside from the well-written dialogue, she uses everything at her disposal for dramatic effect. I can only imagine what the director must have thought after the scene was done.

Born in Kirksville, Missouri, she was the farthest thing from a tough NYC broad. Although she had a long, storied career and was nominated eight times, her only Oscar came in 1986 for the film The Trip to Bountiful, about an elderly woman with a heart condition who yearns to return to her childhood home in the small, rural town called Bountiful before she dies.