Jane Fonda is now 85 years old, a two-time Oscar-winning icon, and has seemingly reached the stage of her life where the filter between brain and mouth has been permanently removed.
At the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, she gave a blunt, no-holds-barred talk about working with French director Jean-Luc Godard. She broke five decades of silence about their toxic relationship. She said the problem was not about art, it was about humiliation.
Jane Fonda’s Honest Take on ‘Letter to Jane’
For years, this story was buried under Fonda’s ‘Barbarella‘ image and her “Hanoi Jane” activism. The trouble started with the 1972 film ‘Tout va bien‘ and a weird, cruel follow-up called ‘Letter to Jane‘. According to Fonda, she went from being a muse to a punching bag for two of the most pretentious male directors of that time.
Related: The Hollywood Clash That Ended Alfred Hitchcock’s Perfect Partnership with Cary Grant
Back in 1972, Fonda was very active in protesting against the Vietnam War. She wanted to mix her politics with her acting, so she signed on with Godard and his partner Jean-Pierre Gorin for ‘Tout va bien‘. It was a radical Marxist critique of consumer society, and it also starred Yves Montand.
But the real damage happened after they finished the film. Godard and Gorin seemed embarrassed that a Hollywood star had slipped into their smart, intellectual group. So they made ‘Letter to Jane‘. This film is 52 minutes long. It is not a normal movie, but an angry, static lecture. Godard took a single magazine photo of Fonda visiting Hanoi. Then he spent nearly an hour deconstructing her image and accused her of using her fame to water down serious politics. He even tried to break down her “bourgeois” gaze.
For decades, critics made excuses for Godard. They called it a “political analysis,” but modern scholars and Fonda herself see it differently. “I thought it was a big pile of bullshit,” Fonda told the Cannes audience, according to Vulture. “It was narcissistic.”
Jane Fonda on Jean-Luc Godard
Fonda does say Godard was a brilliant technician, but when it comes to his character, she is clear. This is not a bitter actress complaining about a bad review. This is a woman watching old footage of a man putting her down while pretending to be intellectual. “He was a great filmmaker. I take my hat off. A great filmmaker,” Fonda said at Cannes. “But as a man? I’m sorry. No, no.”
In case you missed it: The Untold Truth About Alfred Hitchcock and His Troubling Views on Women
She talked more about ‘Letter to Jane‘ and pointed out the sexism in it. Critics like Jonathan Rosenbaum have since agreed with her. “Godard is a good example: We always ask ourselves, ‘How much does who someone is in their private life affect their art?’” she said.
For Fonda, the art does not make the man okay. While she was risking her whole career to protest a war and getting called “Hanoi Jane” and put on a government watchlist, Godard was sitting in a studio zooming in on a magazine cutout of her face. He was telling her she was not radical enough. Some historical reviews of ‘Letter to Jane‘ say the directors analyzed Fonda as if she were a hated figure for the American right. But they did it from a different angle, one that was maybe even more snobby.
How Jean-Luc Godard Pushed Jane Fonda Out of Hollywood
Fonda’s story from Cannes changes how we see her leaving Hollywood in the early 1970s. People thought it was just the political heat that drove her away, but it was also the betrayal by artists she had admired.
She moved to France to get away from Hollywood. But then she found that the European “intellectuals” were just as happy to use her and throw her away. “I can’t say I was blacklisted,” she once said, “but I was greylisted.” After the mess with Godard, she went back to the United States and started making her own films. She founded the Indo-China Peace Campaign because she “couldn’t get a job” anywhere else.
Years later, someone asked if she ever wanted to go back to French cinema. Fonda laughed as she came back briefly for ‘Tout va bien‘. However, emotionally, she checked out for good the moment Godard hit play on ‘Letter to Jane‘.
“He was a great filmmaker,” she said again, wearing a soft gray suit as the sun went down at Cannes. “But as a man? I’m sorry. No.”
You might also want to read: Audrey Hepburn Ended Her Secret Affair With William Holden Over One Devastating Truth
