DVD: Divine Viewing Diversions – Jane Fonda Movies

Because she’s had more than her share of high-profile identities, different viewers see Jane Fonda in very different ways.

Think, for example, about those moviegoers who still see her as an off-screen, left-wing political opponent.

But as hard as some of her detractors may try to deny the level of accomplishment in her career as an award-winning screen actress, only haters in denial would leave “movie star” off a partial list of her involvements that includes Hollywood royalty, political activist, exercise guru and fashion model.

And you can toss in marriages to French director Roger Vadim, media mogul Ted Turner, and social and political activist Tom Hayden.

Yes, she’s been busy.

But she’s also been recognized by her peers and her fans as an artist who will leave behind a body of work that few other actors or actresses can match.

See if this six-pack of her performances from her formidable filmography doesn’t wildly impress.

THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? (1969, M)

Fonda appeared in approximately a movie per year through the Sixties, many of them ensemble pieces. But she was still largely identified as the daughter of superstar Henry Fonda. She closed out the decade in this Depression-era ensemble drama about a marathon dance contest that treated the grueling competition as an exhausting central metaphor for life as a difficult uphill battle. It was Gig Young who won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his reading of the sleazy promoter, but Fonda was also nominated as a Best Supporting Actress in a film that received nine nominations, including one for Sydney Pollack as Best Director. Absorbing, suspenseful and superbly acted, the powerfully harrowing period piece lingers in the memory as the level of desperation becomes more and more overwhelming. Meanwhile, without a lot of fuss or self-promotion, Fonda finds herself embracing stardom.

KLUTE (1971, R)

As the Sixties turned into the Seventies, Fonda’s stock continued to ascend, although her liberal political involvements – especially her opposition to the Vietnam War – antagonized more than a few moviegoers. But there was no denying her talent on display in this terrific detective thriller/character study based in New York City, in which she plays a stalked and threatened call girl opposite Donald Sutherland’s small-town investigating cop who has come to the Big Apple. You can’t take your eyes off Fonda, who is absolutely mesmerizing in a movie so gripping and suspenseful that off-screen objections more or less float away. And, sure enough, Fonda would take home the Oscar for Best Actress in a film in which she, like the character she plays, has the audience in the palm of her hand. Still early on in her screen career, Fonda dominates the proceedings the way only major stars can.

JULIA (1977, PG)

Later in the decade, Fonda portrays author Lillian Hellman – a case of one icon playing another – in director Fred Zinnemann’s strong, sensitive drama about Hellmann’s involvement with the European resistance movement of the 1930s. Based on Hellman’s fictionalized memoir, “Pentimento,” the film collected an overwhelming 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture, one of which was Fonda’s bid for Best Actress. Although she did not win it, it did not go unnoticed in the industry that three of her co-stars were acknowledged, with Jason Robards winning for Best Supporting Actor as writer Dashiell Hammett, Vanessa Redgrave winning as Best Supporting Actress for her title character, and Maximilian Schell nominated as Best Supporting Actor. And Fonda’s strong showing on the Oscar landscape would soon prove to be far from finished.

COMING HOME (1978, R)

The following year, Fonda would co-star opposite Jon Voight in a Vietnam War-related drama that would walk away with eight Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture, and would win three Oscars: one for Best Original Screenplay, the Best Actor prize for Voight, and the Best Actress statuette for Fonda. Director Hal Ashby’s superb and powerful drama explores the effect of the Vietnam War on Americans at home. Fonda plays a straightlaced and naive Marine’s wife who falls in love with Voight’s paraplegic, wheelchair-bound ex-soldier. Fonda and Voight are so affecting and effective, we respond to them, their relationship, and their predicaments no matter where we are on the political spectrum. As for Fonda’s place on the Oscar trail, the two Academy Awards she already had in her back pocket placed her in august – and very limited – company. Her name on the mall marquee would never again lack credibility. Not that it ever did.

THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979, PG)

Fonda closed out the Seventies with another Movie That Mattered, this time a cautionary thriller about the potential for nuclear catastrophe. She plays a television reporter who discovers an attempted cover-up of an accident at a California nuclear plant. With the incident covered by television news personnel, the values of television news are critiqued as well. Jack Lemmon as a plant executive and producer Michael Douglas as a rebellious cameraman co-star. Director James Bridges works without a music score, a technique that helps the film avoid shallow melodramatic flourishes and maintain an admirable and convincing semi-documentary tone. Fonda was nominated as Best Actress, with Lemmon up for Best Actor, and the script was nominated as Best Original Screenplay. Everyone involved in the film was congratulated on their artistic and political achievement, none more so than Fonda, now acknowledged as an artist of the first rank.

ON GOLDEN POND (1981, PG)

Talk about closure. Just after the decade changed, Jane Fonda got the opportunity to co-star in a film about a relationship between a daughter and her retired-professor father. Jane played the alienated daughter and Henry Fonda the ultimate academic curmudgeon, with Katharine Hepburn as the sensible mother and wife. The film was adapted by Oscar-winning playwright Ernest Thompson from his own play, and earned an Oscar nomination for Jane as Best Supporting Actress, an Oscar for Best Actress for Hepburn, and an Oscar for Thompson for Best Adapted Screenplay. This turned out to be Henry Fonda’s last film, and Jane accepted his Best Actor statuette on his behalf as he was too ill to attend the Academy Awards; he died several months later at the age of 77. An audience-friendly dramedy that offers a wealth of fascinating, arguable insights into the Fonda family that may or may not be definitive. But a fine script about aging set in a lakefront home in Maine and three sparkling performances make it pay off in big ways. Bring Kleenex.