Frances (1982)
Country: US
Technical: col 140m
Director: Graeme Clifford
Cast: Jessica Lange, Sam Shepard, Kim Stanley
Synopsis:
A talented girl from Washington State wins an essay competition and gets a screen test in Hollywood. However, despite securing a seven year contract at Paramount, her heart belongs with the theatre, working with Clifford Odets and the Communist-leaning New York Group Theatre. When she is dropped for being too expensive, she returns to Hollywood and rebels at her demeaning treatment at the hands of the studio. This leads to a ten year-long fight with the authorities and her emotionally unstable mother who allows her to be committed to increasingly protracted and inhumane stays in mental institutions.
Review:
Clifford's film owes a great deal to a more or less contemporaneous biography that amps up the more sensational elements in an already gruelling drama of isolation, namely the shock treatment, lobotomy and gang rape at the hands of soldiers allowed entry by unscrupulous warders. A busy, not to say repetitious scenario, together with lurid scenes such as these, destabilise the movie, whose unifying thread has to be the romance with newspaperman Shepard and her inability to have a 'normal' relationship with anyone. Lange's performance, though impressive enough, may have been overestimated by pundits on account of the sheer endurance imposed by the running time, and her martyrdom at the hands of the scriptwriters. Stanley is also allowed too much space, eliciting echoes of Mommie Dearest. Mel Brooks' production is okay on period detail but is clumsily directed and sometimes feels like one of those Corman quickies of the Seventies.
Country: US
Technical: col 140m
Director: Graeme Clifford
Cast: Jessica Lange, Sam Shepard, Kim Stanley
Synopsis:
A talented girl from Washington State wins an essay competition and gets a screen test in Hollywood. However, despite securing a seven year contract at Paramount, her heart belongs with the theatre, working with Clifford Odets and the Communist-leaning New York Group Theatre. When she is dropped for being too expensive, she returns to Hollywood and rebels at her demeaning treatment at the hands of the studio. This leads to a ten year-long fight with the authorities and her emotionally unstable mother who allows her to be committed to increasingly protracted and inhumane stays in mental institutions.
Review:
Clifford's film owes a great deal to a more or less contemporaneous biography that amps up the more sensational elements in an already gruelling drama of isolation, namely the shock treatment, lobotomy and gang rape at the hands of soldiers allowed entry by unscrupulous warders. A busy, not to say repetitious scenario, together with lurid scenes such as these, destabilise the movie, whose unifying thread has to be the romance with newspaperman Shepard and her inability to have a 'normal' relationship with anyone. Lange's performance, though impressive enough, may have been overestimated by pundits on account of the sheer endurance imposed by the running time, and her martyrdom at the hands of the scriptwriters. Stanley is also allowed too much space, eliciting echoes of Mommie Dearest. Mel Brooks' production is okay on period detail but is clumsily directed and sometimes feels like one of those Corman quickies of the Seventies.
Country: US
Technical: col 140m
Director: Graeme Clifford
Cast: Jessica Lange, Sam Shepard, Kim Stanley
Synopsis:
A talented girl from Washington State wins an essay competition and gets a screen test in Hollywood. However, despite securing a seven year contract at Paramount, her heart belongs with the theatre, working with Clifford Odets and the Communist-leaning New York Group Theatre. When she is dropped for being too expensive, she returns to Hollywood and rebels at her demeaning treatment at the hands of the studio. This leads to a ten year-long fight with the authorities and her emotionally unstable mother who allows her to be committed to increasingly protracted and inhumane stays in mental institutions.
Review:
Clifford's film owes a great deal to a more or less contemporaneous biography that amps up the more sensational elements in an already gruelling drama of isolation, namely the shock treatment, lobotomy and gang rape at the hands of soldiers allowed entry by unscrupulous warders. A busy, not to say repetitious scenario, together with lurid scenes such as these, destabilise the movie, whose unifying thread has to be the romance with newspaperman Shepard and her inability to have a 'normal' relationship with anyone. Lange's performance, though impressive enough, may have been overestimated by pundits on account of the sheer endurance imposed by the running time, and her martyrdom at the hands of the scriptwriters. Stanley is also allowed too much space, eliciting echoes of Mommie Dearest. Mel Brooks' production is okay on period detail but is clumsily directed and sometimes feels like one of those Corman quickies of the Seventies.