Frances

Despite a lot of errors including one apparently fictional lover for Frances Farmer, the film Frances is a look at on oddball type movie star for her time.

Today Frances Farmer's activities for various causes wouldn't raise a sleepy eyebrow in Hollywood. Never mind being committed to an insane asylum. She'd more at home now in the film industry than in the studio system of the day. The system is personified here by Paramount Pictures executive Allan Rich who is a cross between studio presidents Barney Balaban and Emmanuel Cohen in the day.

But Jessica Lange truly becomes Frances Farmer the girl with a social conscience, truly who did not like the cheesecake image that Paramount wanted her to fill.

She also learned from her experience in the Group Theater that even liberal activists could be snakes. Clifford Odets with whom she had one torrid affair with and Harold Clurman manager of the Group Theater let her down. Odets's wife never seen emerges as a villain of sorts who gets her man back. Not is she mentioned by name, but it was Luise Rainer who was still very much alive and lived to the ripe old age of 104.

So in fact is Farmer's first husband Leif Ericksen never mentioned by name. He's given the fictional name of Dick Steele and he's a minor character and played by Christopher Pennock.

Sam Shepard is not real, he's an amalgam of several left wing activists from the Seattle area where Frances Farmer was from. But he functions as sort of an emotional balance, someone who Farmer could turn to when she was unable to cope with all the lies and promises of show business.

If there is an award for bit parts ever developed for the year 1982 it would go to Darrell Larson. He's a real bottom feeder stringer for gossip columnist Louella Parsons. He has two scenes with Lange and in the second she puts him down severely.

Lange and Kim Stanley got Oscar nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. Stanley who could have done Frances back in her salad days plays her mother, a rather straitlaced woman who thinks her daughter must be crazy after all she and dad Bart Burns are the Ward and June Cleaver of the 30s, how could they raise a left wing radical. Ergo, she must be crazy. And Frances was going to stay in those asylums until she learned the error of her ways.

Jessica Lange fits Frances Farmer so well you forget this is a film biography and think you are peaking in on the life of Frances Farmer. As good as the film is I can't recommend too strongly that you read her autobiography Will There Ever Be A Morning? One of the most honest Hollywood stories ever written.

The spectacular 8 hour limited series "Feud" made me revisit many of Jessica Lange's movies. Her performance is of such perfection that it reminded me how extraordinary she has always been. "Frances" is a shock to the system, unflinchingly so. The beautiful, sad, Francs Farmer in all its contradictions. Jessica Lange is absolutely mesmerizing. The movie suffers from what most biopics suffer from, A chronological succession of events and in the case of Frances Farmer, from bad the worse to much, much worse. The movie will drain you but the performance will keep you alert, alive, transfixed. There is more, Kim Stanley as Frances mother. An acting giant with very few film credits to her name. That alone makes "Frances" a collector's item.

1982 is such a competitive year for actresses, most prominently is Meryl Streep's critics- consensus "the all-time best female performance" and Oscar-crowning SOPHIE'S CHOICE (1982), which shamefully I haven't watched yet. Thus unfairly other contenders didn't stand any chance to beat her for that, but I never doubt that it was a nip-and-tuck between Streep and Lange in her tour-de-force sensation FRANCES.

Frances Farmer is hardly a household name among film boffins, she was a shooting star in the Tinseltown, whose defiant nature is destined for hemming herself as a fair game to the studio persecution, and the inhuman therapeutic treatments she receives in the mental hospitals are fierce indictment of our society's callous depersonalization under the aegis of medical remedy, although whether the lobotomy operation was executed still lacks of conviction.

Farmer exhibits her rebelliousness from the very start with her religion-defying speech "god was gone" when she was simply a high-schooler, a fearless doll under the high-handedness of her control freak mother (Stanley), Lange's rendition is begging description, an almost 30 years age-range and 140-minutes running time thoroughly proffers her an once-in-a-lifetime stretch to embody herself into this anguished persona, she minutely delineates how the life-force has been mercilessly ripped off her inch by inch and a belated and vehement face-off with her mother is the most theatrical moment and is the apotheosis of a heart-wrenching vicariousness, bravo to both Lange and Stanley!

Henry York (Shepard), a fictional character as the only man who truly understands Farmer and loves her unconditionally is the narrator, this concoction is a poetic license to add some solace in Farmer's wretched life and a considerable move for its audiences' sake, but meanwhile it barely serves a slush albeit Shepard and Lange work wonder together, the make-believe default also makes no room to expound why those two lovers could not be together, an over- romanticized tone may counteract the despondency of the film but it is also an untimely reminder of how close itself could be as brave as its leading lady Jessica Lange!

Jessica Lange was robbed of an Academy Award for her mesmerizing performance in the 1982 film, FRANCES, a relatively gripping character study/biography of the late 1930's actress Frances Farmer, who, after being ostracized from Hollywood, ended up being declared insane, institutionalized, and lobotomized, according to this screenplay. Not knowing a lot about the actress before the release of this film, I have never been sure of how factual it is (I always got the feeling that the Harry York character, played by Sam Shepherd, was fictional), but how many screen biographies are big on the facts? Sometimes facts are glossed over and/or ignored for the sake of preserving or igniting drama. Whether or not this is true is for those who knew Farmer to say. I did see an interview once with Farmer's nephew (?) who was very pleased with Lange's interpretation of Farmer and that is exactly why this film is worth seeing. Despite a meandering screenplay, turgid direction, and a feeling the movie is about 30 minutes too long, this movie is worth seeing for one reason and one reason only...the riveting performance by Jessica Lange. She is in virtually every frame of this movie and makes every single moment vivid and striking and achingly real. This film should be shown to acting classes on a daily basis...maybe the best performance by an actress in a leading role during the decade of the 1980's. Not a great film, but an amazing performance by a consummate actress that must be seen to be believed.

I watched Frances because I seemed to remember that Kevin Costner had a tiny part at the start of his career and I'm a big fan. I didn't expect necessarily to see anything startling other than what it said on the tin, a film about the real life movie star from the 40's, Frances Farmer, as played by Jessica Lange. I've always admired Jessica Lange as a really good actress but she's never blown me away like some stars do. At least, not until now. Now watching this 1982 movie in 2014 (a bit late, I know), she's completely reversed my previous thoughts about her. Her performance in this picture has to be one of the most dynamic, hypnotic acting stints I've ever seen by an actress. It reminded me a bit of Faye Dunaway in Network (where she won the Oscar). Looking this movie up I saw that Jessica was beaten in 1982 by Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice, but if ever an actress was robbed of the Oscar, this performance was it. I'd urge anyone who loves acting at the highest level to watch this movie, just for Jessica Lange's performance, although there is also a very strong backup show by Kim Stanley as her mother. Very long at two and half hours, but I couldn't take my eyes off Jessica Lange's face. It's hard to detect between when she's being charming and when she might suddenly explode. Mesmerizing.