Frances

As played by Jessica Lange, Frances Farmer is a rebel from the word go, winning a high school essay award by writing a piece in defense of Communism. Determining to become an actress, Frances is equally determined not to play the Hollywood game: she refuses to acquiesce to idiotic publicity stunts, ...more

Graeme Clifford's exceedingly mediocre film on the tragic life of actress Frances Farmer provided the breakthrough role for Jessica Lange, who gives one of the finest performances of the decade. Whether one accepts the filmmakers' notion that Farmer was a great actress and the tragic victim of a retrograde Hollywood, incapable of handling a very smart, troubled, and willful woman, there's seems little doubt that her nightmarishly repressive mother and a brutal, benighted mental health system ...more