At over three hours, Alexander Horwath’s brand new personal essay-documentary Henry Fonda for President may sound long, but it goes by in a flash. The film offers a hefty helping of biographical information, film clips, interviews (including one of his final, F-bomb-filled sessions), and bittersweet accounts from his radical offspring (“Hanoi Jane” and Easy Rider’s Captain America Peter Fonda, who all but wrapped up the revolution of the 1960s generation). The director also makes a commendable tour of the important places in the life of the protagonist, who lived from 1905 to 1982, digitally recording the pale changes of the present and the slowly fading touches of history.
Fonda was the sum of his personal contradictions: a shy man in a public profession; an interpreter of great personalities for whom his own identity remained the ultimate mystery; a stern old-world parent who loved to work in his garden; a cold, iron-clad professional who performed on the Broadway stage on the evening of the day his wife slit her throat from ear to ear; Steinbeck’s favourite actor and a rare liberal among the morose right-wing conservatives of his generation. Yet above all, Fonda was presidential material, both for the many roles he played and for the moral backbone they conveyed! Horwath’s excellent compilation film provides ample evidence of this.
Lauri Timonen