Letter to Jane France

Colour

16 mm

English Soundtrack

NRC

France 1973

Director:

Jean Luc Godard

50 minutes

Letter to Jane has been widely acclaimed as Jean Luc Godard's most exciting film to date. As in all his films since "Wind from the East' he has again collaborated with Jean Pierre Gorin. Using the barest essentials in terms of images and sound they have created a filmic essay, questioning amongst other things, '. . . . the part intellectuals should play in the revolution.'

Godard and Gorin deal with this question in a strikingly direct manner, stripping away all vestiges of narration, they present us with a series of photographs and provocative questions and statements.

The key image in the film, a photograph of Jane Fonda in North Vietnam, is analysed from political, aesthetic and emotionally evocative points of view.

For the film buff, the sociologist and the student of film criticism, there is an extremely interesting and valuable section where the position of Jane Fonda is studied in the light of an [unclear: Orser] Wells-like rendering of the camera angle. In addition, shots are shown of Jane in 'Klute', as well as those of her father, Henry Fonda, as he appeared in three four films. All the scenes depict exactly the same emotional response being registered on the face, but in each case it is allied to completely different sets of values and circumstances.