Fonda on Film: The Political Movies of Jane Fonda

Theater critic Pressley (American Playwriting and the Anti-Political Prejudice) delivers a solid analysis of Jane Fonda’s film work within the context of her political activism. Countering the claim of Fonda biographer Patricia Bosworth that Fonda “won’t be remembered for her movies,” Pressley provides a career retrospective with a focus on her overtly political films of the 1970s. He describes Coming Home, in which Fonda plays a Marine wife who volunteers at a veterans’ hospital during the Vietnam War, as “by far the most complete articulation of Jane Fonda that she would ever make as a Hollywood feature.” Elsewhere, he notes that Fonda’s “actor-activist self” arrived in full form in The China Syndrome, where she plays an ambitious TV reporter who discovers a cover-up of safety violations at a nuclear power plant. She capped off the decade by tackling workplace discrimination in the 1980 film 9 to 5, which Pressley calls “an antic farce with political force.” Though the focus is on Fonda’s movies, Pressley also covers the actor’s ongoing political activities, including her viral 2019 BAFTA acceptance speech, which she delivered while being handcuffed during a climate protest. This valuable reassessment will remind film lovers of what makes Fonda a star. (Mar.)