The only movie Jane Fonda had to make: “If I didn’t do the film, it would never be done”
For Jane Fonda, being an artist has always meant much more than being a Hollywood star.
Alongside critically acclaimed hits like Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – which made Oscar history and cemented her status as one of the best in the business – Fonda has always chased projects that meant something to her personally. She famously used her platform to protest the Vietnam War (much to the fury of conservative America, who absolutely lost the plot), and during that time, she got involved in some pretty fascinating films, too.
One lesser-known example is Sois belle et tais-toi (Be Pretty and Shut Up), an important feminist documentary shot in 1976, which explores the unrealistic and fundamentally misogynistic expectations that the people in power hold women in the industry to. She also worked with Jean-Luc Godard on Tout Va Bien, one of the last things Godard ever made during his Dziga Vertov phase that spirals into characteristically fucking chaotic sociopolitical tangents.
However, among all the films that Fonda put her name to, be it the big Hollywood productions or her more experimental forays, the project that always stood out to her was actually a TV movie called The Dollmaker. Based on a novel by Harriette Arnow, Fonda plays a woman named Gertie Nevels in a moving family drama about a mother of five who holds onto life despite all the goddamn shit that is constantly thrown at her.
During an interview with The New York Times, Fonda revealed that her being on the cast was one of the major reasons that the movie went ahead. Explaining her own motivation to tackle a complex subject, she said: “It’s real hard for me to back off from something once I’ve set my mind to it. Gertie challenged my heart and my mind, and I just knew if I didn’t do the film, it would never be done.”
At that point in her career, Fonda had already been in multiple high-profile projects like The China Syndrome, but there was something about he character of Gertie that just convinced her that The Dollmaker needed to be made for audiences everywhere to see. The fact that it had the “made-for-television” label attached to it, something that puts many viewers and critics off as soon as they hear it, didn’t matter to her at all because she knew its inherent artistic value.
Analysing the character and how it was different from other iconic parts she was known for, Fonda added: “I loved Gertie’s courage in the face of bone-and-soul-crushing experiences. I also loved her humility and her capacity for mothering. It’s very rare to find a project that shows a woman doing the things that women do – raising children, nurturing, serving as the backbone of the family – without condescension or false feminisation.”
Those who have seen The Dollmaker know that it contains one of the greatest performances Fonda ever produced, but it just goes to show how the TV association is brutal, since very few people bring it up whenever Fonda’s legacy is discussed. Hopefully, that won’t be the case for much longer, and I’m sure Fonda herself shares that same belief as well.
