2023-08-20 07:43:14
In the Fonda family, there is first the father, Henry. Huge star and great actor in theater and cinema. Intense blue gaze, impassive face, he is the hero par excellence of the golden age of Hollywood. As reserved in life as he is charismatic on screen.
Then there is Jane, a pure product of the Actors Studio, twice Oscar-winning actress and activist, muse of the American counter-culture in life and on screen. Finally, there is Peter, the rebellious son and hippie, dilettante and non-conformist actor, who had his moment of glory with Easy Rider which he co-wrote and produced and in which all young people who wanted to challenge the established order recognized themselves.
A dialogue by interposed roles
A dynasty that “occupies a special place in the history of cinema”, according to Charles-Antoine de Rouvre, who devotes an unpublished documentary to him broadcast on Arte on Sunday. Between these three, relations have always been difficult.
The father, often absent, finds it difficult to express his feelings. Jane and Peter, traumatized by their mother’s suicide when they were children, never stop looking for recognition in the eyes of their parent. They will become actors in their turn and the dialogue will be established by interposed films. “His game was a mask that allowed him to express his emotions”, Jane would later say about her father.
Rather than dwelling on their respective careers, the film, made up solely of archives, chooses to bring their roles into resonance and all that they were able to say to each other through them. And shows, beyond their family history, the conflict that opposes two generations, two Americas but also the old and the new Hollywood.
Until a movie, The Lake House (broadcast in the first part of the evening), whose scenario merges with their lives, finally reunites the father and the daughter… and brings back to Henry his first Oscar, only a few months before his death.
#Fonda #American #dynasty