The Dollmaker

Jane Fonda stars in this made-for-TV movie, which uses the backdrop of World War II and urbanization to tell the story of one woman's fight to keep her family together. Gertie Nevels (Fonda), the wife of a Kentucky sharecropper, wants nothing more than to one day own her own farm. Thriftily hiding ...more

This Emmy award-winning literary adaptation is notable for Jane Fonda's fierce lead performance and the unflinching nature of its look at the conflict between rural ideals and urban reality. Although Hume Cronyn and Susan Cooper's script isn't completely faithful to Harriet Arnow's sprawling, depressing tome, it does capture the many facets of the difficult transition from the Kentucky farmlands to the factories of Detroit. The mixture of grim social realism and aspirational gumption may strike ...more