Jessica Lange gives a career performance in a role she was born to play: the talented and troubled Frances Farmer. Farmer's awful trajectory travels from bright Seattle girl to 1930s Hollywood starlet to degraded (eventually lobotomized) mental patient. Lange, who has the blond, clean look of Farmer's heyday, goes into these places with the fierce abandon of a true believer. Her performance, the lush John Barry score, and the period re-creation are all worth applauding; almost everything else fails. Everyone except Farmer is grotesquely caricatured to fit the movie's thesis, which is that if you are intelligent and nonconformist, the system will resolutely destroy you. (The medical establishment is evil incarnate.) This simple conclusion seems inadequate and disrespectful of Frances Farmer's tragic problems. For a radiant glimpse of what the real Farmer had to offer, see Howard Hawks's Come and Get It, which bristles with excitement over a new discovery. --Robert Horton
From the Back Cover Jessica Lange delivers the performance of her career as Frances Farmer, the notorious 1930's movie star whose impassioned opinions and outspoken behavior created scandal throughout the industry. But when she was betrayed by the studio system and committed to an insane asylum by her domineering mother, Frances descended into a madness that revealed the most horrific abuses of mental illness and exposed the cruelest consequences of Hollywood fame. Kim Stanley and San Shephard co-star in this tragic true story that shocked the world. Frances is now presented in a stunning new transfer from original film materials and is packed with startling new bonus features exclusive to this edition.
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"Frances" tells the life story of independent, strong-willed actress Frances Farmer, whose beauty, talent, and intelligence lead to a successful stage and film career in the 1930s and 1940s. Tragically, her mental health soon began to deteriorate due to substance abuse, poor psychiatric care, a controlling stage mother, and her own radical and unyielding beliefs.
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Her Story Is Shocking, Disturbing, Compelling And True.
At 16 she was an award-winning high school student in Seattle; at 23, a rising and provocative star of stage and screen, admired for her beauty and talent. At 27, a chain of relatively insignificant events led to her arrest and eventual involuntary committal to a mental institution.
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Frances Farmer was a notorious 1930's movie star whose impassioned opinions and outspoken behavior created scandal through-out the industry. But when she was betrayed by the studio system and committed to an insane asylum by her domineering mother, Frances descended into a madness that revealed the most horrific abuses of mental illness and exposed the cruelest consequences of Hollywood fame.
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