The Three Perfect Maggie Smith Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

Dame Maggie Smith passed away today at the age of 89, after giving the world decades' worth of indelible, beloved performances. A star of stage and screen since the 1950s, the highly decorated actress was best-known to a generation as Hogwarts' stern but heroic Professor McGonagall, while others loved her best as the Dowager Countess of "Downton Abbey."

Smith may have only become a household name to younger generations in the past two decades, but she did much of her best work in the 20th century, winning Oscars for "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and "California Suite" in the '60s and '70s and a Tony Award for her role in the satirical play "Lettice and Lovage" in 1990. While her TV, film, and stage work was prolific and wide-ranging, only three Smith movies were ever universally embraced by critics, according to Rotten Tomatoes. One is a James Ivory classic, while the other two are British productions that could be considered hidden gems roughly 40 years after their release. All three movies demonstrate the total hot streak Smith was on in the '80s, a streak that she arguably never broke.

The earliest of the trio is "The Missionary," a 1982 comedy written by and co-starring English actor Michael Palin. Palin stars as a missionary reverend who, fresh off a boat from Africa, is tasked with trying to save the souls of the sex workers of London. Smith plays Lady Isabel Ames, Reverend Charles' love interest who funds his missionary work. The film might sound stuffy, but the reverend basically tries to uplift the ladies of the night by hooking up with them, a bold strategy with unexpected results. Like plenty of other films with technically perfect Rotten Tomatoes scores, "The Missionary" benefits from being underseen: only five RT-approved critics have reviewed it, while audiences apparently didn't like it nearly as much as the journalists who gave it a stamp of approval.

"The Missionary" might not actually be one of Smith's best movies, but the film she made two years later, Ivory's period romance "A Room With a View," certainly is. The adaptation of E.M. Forster's classic book of the same name was heralded as a cinematic achievement upon release, earning eight Oscar nominations (it won three) including one for Smith's performance. In the film, the actress plays Charlotte, the buttoned-up chaperone to our improper young heroine Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter, in her film debut). Reviews at the time singled out Smith's performance and the ensemble as a whole, with The New York Times' Vincent Canby writing that Smith and costar Denholm Elliott "seem to keep getting better and better with time."

Canby was right, as Smith would continue putting in fantastic work for decades to come. But her third and final universally acclaimed film would come just two years after "A Room With A View." It was "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne," a film that, like "The Missionary," counted former Beatle George Harrison among its executive producers. Directed by frequent literary adapter Jack Clayton ("Something Wicked This Way Comes," 1974's "The Great Gatsby"), the film was based on Brian Moore's book "Judith Hearne." Smith starred as Judith, a solitary, alcoholic spinster who finds herself enamored with a widower (Bob Hoskins) who has ulterior motives.

Like "The Missionary," this film's critical score on the aggregate site benefits from the apparent lack of attention it got upon release. RT lists just six critics who reviewed the film, but all of them took a liking to it. Pauline Kael, in a review taken from her book "For Keeps," wrote about her urge to look away from Smith's performance as a "self-exposing" character. "Maggie Smith, who plays the part, lets you read every shade of feeling in Judy's face; she makes you feel the ghastliness of knowing you're a figure of fun," she explained. The movie sounds sincere and surprisingly painful, but according to critics like Kael and Roger Ebert (who called it "a triumph" in Smith's career), it's also very good. That's no surprise: everything with Maggie Smith is.

While "The Missionary" is not currently available to stream, you can watch "A Room With A View" now on The Criterion Channel, Britbox, and Max. You can also find "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne" on The Criterion Channel.