Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Oden by Jessica Frances FRANCES FARMER PLAYED BY JESSICA LANGE. ''FRANCES'' is based on the sad, profoundly troubled life of Frances Farmer, the golden-bright Seattle high-school girl who had some measure of Hollywood fame in the 1930's, in such films as ''Rhythm on the Range'' and ''Come and Get It,'' and one Broadway triumph in the Group Theater's production of Clifford Odets's ''Golden Boy.'' In the early 1940's Frances Farmer went into a physical and emotional tailspin that, according to this film, was arrested by something that can only be described as ice-pick therapy. Apparently with her mother's consent, she was subjected to a transorbital lobotomy that turned a talented but disturbed woman into an eerily calm humanoid who lived on until 1970. At the age of 56, Frances Farmer died of throat cancer in Indianapolis where, she spent her last years as the hostess of an afternoon television program. ''Frances,'' which today begins a one-week engagement at the Cinema 2 to qualify for 1982 film awards, is such a mixed up movie that it still seems to be unfinished, as if Graeme Clifford, the director, and the writers hadn't yet discovered the real point of the Frances Farmer story. It contains too many show-down scenes, too much raw material that hasn't been refined, and more brutality than either the movie or the audience can make dramatic sense of. Yet it also contains a magnificent performance by Jessica Lange in the title role. Here is a performance so unfaltering, so tough, so intelligent and so humane that it seems as if Miss Lange is just now, at long last, making her motion picture debut. After fooling around in things like ''King Kong,'' ''How to Beat the High Cost of Living'' and even the pretentious ''The Postman Always Rings Twice,'' this stunningly beautiful woman emerges as a major film actress. The excitement of watching her in ''Frances'' goes a long way toward transforming the film, which is a colossal downer, into an experience that is, if not exactly uplifting, genuinely memorable. The screenplay by Eric Bergren and Christopher Devore with Nicholas Kazan, picks up the story of Frances when, as a high-school student, she wins a prize for an essay that was pretty inflamatory for the 1930's, the subject being the death of God. The youthful Frances, the apple of the eye of her ambitious mother Lillian (Kim Stanley) and supported meekly by her father (Bart Burns), goes on to win an acting contest sponsored by a left-wing newspaper. The prize is a trip to Russia and a chance to observe the Moscow Art Theater at work. Though Lillian Farmer is ambitious, she is a daughter of her time and has a horror of Communism. When Frances defies her and goes to Moscow, it is the beginning of a series of mother-daughter confrontations that lead eventually to the surgical destruction of a personality. After making such a point of the importance of the Moscow trip, neither the movie nor Frances ever mentions it again. In about 30 seconds of screen time, Frances has returned from Moscow, worked briefly in New York and gone on to Hollywood as a Paramount Pictures contract player. After another few seconds, she is the acclaimed star of Samuel Goldwyn's ''Come and Get It.'' Frances, however, is restless. She wants to act. She leaves Hollywood to work in summer stock, acts in the Group Theater's ''Golden Boy,'' and has a disastrous affair with the playwright Odets (Jeffrey DeMunn). Then it's back to Hollywood, work in a series of B-movies, and an introduction to amphetemines, which, when taken with booze, turn her into a paranoid monster, land her in jail and then in a succession of mental hospitals that make Bedlam look like Grossinger's. Moving in and out of the film is a fictional character named Harry York, a mysterious, one-man Greek chorus played by playwright-actor Sam Shepard. Just who or what Harry York is supposed to be is difficult to understand. When he first becomes Frances's lover during the early years in Seattle, he appears to be a left-wing political organizer. Later, during Frances's Group Theater days, he is a bookie. Still later, when he rescues Frances from a mental hospital in California, he seems to be nothing more than a figment of the writer's desperation, as well as of Frances's imagination. Mr. Clifford a successful film editor (Nicholas Roeg's ''Don't Look Back''), is awfully good with the actors but he never successfully fixes on a method for the film. At times, it is old-fashioned, romantic, biographical melodrama. At other times ''Frances'' looks almost as stylized as ''Pennies From Heaven.'' Wherever Frances goes in Depression-ridden Seattle, New York or Los Angeles, the landscape appears to be decorated with photogenic bums, as if to certify her social conscience. At one point she must ask significantly, ''How can I go on making movies when people are starving?'' More damaging to the coherence of the movie is its failure to take a stand on whether or not Frances's mental breakdowns are real or whether she is the victim of an initially well-meaning, eventually vindictive mother, of the Hollywood establishment and, most provocatively, of the Group Theater's Clifford Odets and Harold Clurman. In spite of the film's very real faults with structure and style, Miss Lange is consistently splendid. She's as fine as the stubborn, sharp-minded teenage girl as she is as the grotesquely misunderstood and frightened woman. One particular highlight: an encounter with a psychiatrist that is so brilliantly over-drawn it could be her own hallucination. It is both funny and heart-breaking. While all of the other actors are good, none of them has a role of any real substance, including Miss Stanley and Mr. Shepard, who are, nevertheless, vivid screen presences. Of special poignancy is the film's penultimate sequence when the now permanently tranquillized Frances is brought out of retirement to appear on Ralph Edwards's ''This Is Your Life.'' Looking still beautiful but removed from all pressures of any sort, she does everything that's required of her. Ralph calls her ''Frances'' and she calls him ''Ralph,'' rather more often than people do in real life, and at the end of the show she is presented with an Edsel. Such is the end of the dream. Bending of a Mind. FRANCES, directed by Graeme Clifford; written by Eric Bergren and Christopher Devore and Nicholas Kazan; director of photography, Laszlo Kovacs; edited by John Wright; music by John Barry; produced by Jonathan Sanger; re- leased by Universal Pictures. At the Cinema 2, Third Avenue and 60th Street. Running time: 139 minutes. This film is rated R. Rakuten Kobo. Not in United States ? Choose your country's store to see books available for purchase. See if you have enough points for this item. Sign in. Synopsis. ODEN (The Invasion Trilogy #3) Mattie: A war is coming. It will not be an Earth bound battle yet humans will have to fight for their survival. This is no longer about fighting to take our planet back, this is a fight for our society, our way of life. However I will not be fighting in this war, I have another I must battle against, to stop him and keep myself, Marduke and our child safe and out of his clutches. I will do anything to protect my family from this evil maniac. Jeprow doesn't know of human’s strengths. He doesn't know how resourceful we are. How brave and cunning and smart we can be. He thinks he’s already won and the battle between us is over, but he has no idea who he’s messing with. Marduke: Oden is under attack and suddenly there is more at risk than just my own life. Mattie and our baby now rely on me and I can’t let them down My new family is trapped in a warzone and I must protect them. But I must still protect my people, my family’s legacy and the leadership that holds it all together. If we lose this war, then the humans lose as well. We are in this fight together and the losses on both sides will be many. Never before have I been under such pressure, never before has the risk of failure been so high. What happens when they end up sacrificing more than they ever intended, if they lose who they are and what they are fighting for? Can they move on from all they have lost, forgive each other for what they have been forced to do? Most importantly, can they ever learn to forgive themselves? Who will win the war and who loses everything? Jessica of "Frances" crossword clue. This crossword clue Jessica of "Frances" was discovered last seen in the July 25 2020 at the Thomas Joseph Crossword. The crossword clue possible answer is available in 5 letters. This answers first letter of which starts with L and can be found at the end of E. We think LANGE is the possible answer on this clue. Crossword clues for Jessica of "Frances" Did you get the correct answer for your Jessica of "Frances" crossword clue? Then check out this Thomas Joseph Crossword July 25 2020 other crossword clue. Recent Post. report this ad Disclaimer. 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