Take One (Mar-Apr 1973)

photograph. By relating to the Vietnamese with such unmistakeable paternalism, she could be nothing else but the obvious focus for Joseph Kraft’s commercially-attuned lenses. What camera could resist this* famous actress’s magisterial evocation of Tragic Pity at the plight of the people of Hanoi? What could be more photogenic than this tortured, concerned, “‘New Deal Face’? In addition, Fonda made way for the disturbing cutline to the /’Express photo, the absurd claim that the actress is “interrogating” the Hanoi citizenry. She opened herself to this type of distortion by crying publicly for ‘“‘Peace in Viet Nam” while in South East Asia, without knowing ‘‘What peace?”’, and by making bold statements about the internal problems of Viet Nam which were not her prerogative. Godard-Gorin chastize her through the immortal words of Brecht: ‘‘Uncle Bertold said, ‘one must have the courage to say we have nothing to say...’ And they conclude Letter to Jane by lecturing to their former Tout Va Bien star on how she might relate more correctly to the Vietnamese in future visits: ““One must Say, ‘I’m listening to the Vietnamese who are going to tell me what sort of peace they want in their country.’ And one must say as an American, ‘I'll keep my mouth shut because I admit I have got nothing to say about this... I have to listen... because I am not a part of South East Asia.’” In the fall of 1973, Jane Fonda embarked on still another tour, but this time across her native land, the USA, twenty-five cities in thirty days, from San Francisco into the belly of middle America — the Ohio State Fair, Republican dinners, and an occasional liberal stopover, at spots like the University of Wisconsin, to stir up the dormant political juices of the convinced but lethargic. The trip was in behalf of the Indo-China Peace Campaign, a nationwide effort to free Saigon’s estimated 200,000 political prisoners. Each night’s presentation followed a similar pattern, down to the informal chatter, in this tight, well-knit, left-liberal road show: analysis from Tom Hayden, Fonda’s husband and Chicago Seven conspirator, now in his second decade of New Left commitment since helping found SDS; peace songs from folksinger Holly Near; graphic, horrifying details of Thieu government atrocities by Jeanne-Pierre Debris, a young French schoolteacher who spent two-anda-half years as a political prisoner; then lights out for the featured slide presentation, ‘““Women in Viet Nam,” narrated via a scripted, memorized monologue, delivered by Jane Fonda from a seat amidst the audience. If Jane Fonda was wounded by the GodardGorin narration to Letter to Jane, this fact was not obvious from her enthusiastic, almost messianic participation in the Indo-China Campaign. Inevitably thanking her audiences for making her care about Viet Nam “... while I was still floating through the air as Barbarella,” she would explain her current, intense political commitments: “The Vietnamese taught me never to be cynical again.”” Beaming happily from a chair at the back of the stage, she would clap her hands together, and sing along with Holly Near’s musical-political, ‘No More Genocide in My Name.”’ On stage, Jane Fonda has no concerns but her political purposes. Off stage, she continues to be keenly interested in movies, both in performing in the cinema and talking about filmmaking, though not to be quoted directly for the public record. When she converses privately, contradictions probably expected contradictions — immediately separate her aesthetic taste from her politics. She has neither been won over completely to the Cultural Revolution nor to the Godardian Revolution, at least not yet. She smiles in sympathetic understanding when a campus Stalinist turns out to be a John Wayne fan, and they confess their mutual admiration for John Ford. Recently she has been most impressed with Dillinger for revealing the machinations of Hoover’s FBI. She has also liked American Graffiti and even Zeffirelli’s Brother Sun, Sister Moon. As for her acting career, she wishes sometimes that she had accepted the Faye Dunaway role in Oklahoma Crude. The real trauma with Godard-Gorin occurred prior to Letter to Jane in making Tout Va Bien. Fonda feels that she offered her total cooperation without the return courtesy from Godard of explaining to her his unorthodox objectives. Personally she found Godard to be a director without human feelings, somewhat fascistic in his methods, although a great technician. (She also calls Bogdanovich “a good technician” while otherwise disapproving of him — arather odd coupling of directors.) While filming Tout Va Bien, she found it a bit boring and rhetorical; and she finished the project deflated and confused by Godard and skeptical that films ever could be of political value. Yet resting in Italy to recover from Tout Va_ Bien, Fonda encountered some Latin American revolutionary exiles who convinced her that it was important that she continue making “progressive”’ films, especially that told the truth about America. She resumed acting — in Steelyard Blues, and, more recently, in Joseph Losey’s production of A Doll’s House. And she worked on the slide show, ‘‘Women in Viet Nam.” If Tout Va Bien is proving already only the most 25