Frances (film)

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Frances
Francesfilm.jpg
Theatrical film poster
Directed by Graeme Clifford
Written by
Produced by Jonathan Sanger
Starring
Cinematography László Kovács
Edited by John Wright
Music by John Barry
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release date
  • December 3, 1982 (1982-12-03)
Running time
140 minutes
CountryUnited States [1] [2]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$8 million [3]
Box office$5 million

Frances is a 1982 American biographical tragedy film directed by Graeme Clifford and written by Eric Bergren, Christopher De Vore, and Nicholas Kazan. The film stars Jessica Lange as Frances Farmer, a troubled actress during the 1930s whose career suffered as a result of her mental illness. It also features Kim Stanley, Sam Shepard, Bart Burns, Christopher Pennock, Jonathan Banks, and Jeffrey DeMunn in supporting roles. The film chronicles Farmer's life from her days as a high school student, her turbulent relationship with her emotionally abusive mother, her short lived film career in the 1930s, her institutionalization for alleged mental illness in the 1940s, her deinstitutionalization in the 1950s and her appearance on This Is Your Life .

Contents

Frances was released theatrically on December 3, 1982, by Universal Pictures. Lange's performance was unanimously praised and has been cited by many (including herself) as her best performance. At the 55th Academy Awards, it received two nominations for Lange and Stanley as Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress respectively.

Plot

Born in Seattle, Washington, Frances Elena Farmer is a rebel from a young age, winning $100 in 1931 from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards for a high school essay called God Dies. In 1935, Frances becomes controversial again when she wins (and accepts) an all-expenses-paid trip to the USSR to visit its Moscow Art Theatre. Determined to become an actress, Frances is equally determined not to play the Hollywood game: she refuses to acquiesce to publicity stunts, and insists upon appearing on screen without makeup.

Frances marries her first husband, Dwayne Steele, despite being advised not to, but cheats on him with alleged Communist Harry York on the night of her hometown's premiere of Come and Get It . Her defiance attracts the attention of Broadway playwright Clifford Odets, who convinces Frances that her future rests with the Group Theatre. After leaving Hollywood for New York City and appearing in the Group Theatre play Golden Boy , Frances learns, much to her chagrin, that the Group Theatre exploited her fame only to draw in more customers, replacing her with a wealthy actress for her family's needed financial backing for the play's London tour, and Odets ends their affair upon his wife's upcoming return from Europe. Her desperate attempts to restart her film career upon returning to Hollywood results in being cast in unchallenging roles in forgettable B-films.

Frances' increased dependence on alcohol and amphetamines in the 1940s and the pressures brought on her by Lillian, her estranged mother who becomes her legal guardian after multiple legal problems, result in a complete nervous breakdown. After her first hospitalization at Kimball Sanitarium in La Crescenta where she is forced to undergo insulin shock therapy and hydrotherapy, Frances tells her mother that she doesn't want to return to Hollywood but instead wants to live alone in the countryside, assaulting and threatening Lillian in the resulting argument. While institutionalized at Western State Hospital, Frances is abused by the powers that be: she is subjected to electroconvulsive shock therapy, is cruelly beaten, periodically raped by the male orderlies and visiting soldiers from a nearby military base and involuntarily lobotomized before her release by the 1950s.

Eight-years later, Frances is paid honor on Ralph Edwards' This Is Your Life television program, which Harry watches from his home. When asked about alcoholism, illegal drugs and mental illness, Farmer denies them all and says, "If you're treated like a patient, you're apt to act like one". After a party honoring her at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Farmer walks down a street with Harry, talking about her parents' deaths, how she sold their house and that she's a "faceless sinner" with a slower-paced lifestyle ahead of her in the future. Closing titles state that she moved to Indianapolis shortly afterwards, hosting a local daytime TV program ( Frances Farmer Presents ) from 1958 to 1964 before dying alone, just as she had lived, on August 1, 1970, at the age of 56.

Cast

Source

The source material for Frances has been an ongoing subject of confusion, conjecture and controversy from the moment the film was released in 1982. [5]

The film appears to be based on William Arnold’s 1978 book Shadowland , which had been a number-one bestseller and much in the news during the film’s development. [6] [7] [8] Several of the filmmakers—including star Jessica Lange [9] and cinematographer László Kovács [10] —had cited the book in interviews and Universal Studio’s press kit also mentioned it in a way that made it sound as if it was the film’s main source. [11]

Marie Yates, the associate producer of Frances, spoke in interviews promoting the film of how she had “discovered” the book in manuscript, had worked with Arnold on a first-draft screenplay of Shadowland and, acting as his literary agent, had facilitated the sale of its screen rights to Noel Marshall, the executive producer of The Exorcist . [12] [13] [14]

Even more strongly associating the film and the book in the public mind was the fact that they shared the same uniquely horrific climax: a “transorbital” lobotomy performed on Farmer by the pioneering psychosurgeon, Dr. Walter Freeman—a theory that gained much traction in the national media and exists nowhere else but Shadowland. [15] [16] [17]

However, though Brooks tried to acquire the screen rights from Marshall, he failed and, hiring Yates away from the Shadowland project, went ahead with his own Frances Farmer biopic. [12] He and the other Frances filmmakers would thereafter officially maintain that their film was not based on Shadowland, instead was the product of their own independent research. [18]

In May 1981, Arnold and Marshall sued Mel Brooks, Marie Yates and others involved in the production of Frances for unfair competition and plagiarism. [19]

In their defense, the filmmakers pointed out that, despite the similarities inherent in any two versions of a biographical subject, the film was very different from the book. While they share the same theme of psychiatric abuse, Shadowland equally attributes Farmer’s tragedy to McCarthy-era politics and anti-feminist prejudice—neither of which is significantly dramatized in the film. [20]

Even more to their case, they argued Shadowland is a detective story, the first-person account of a journalistic investigation in which Frances Farmer is a remote and mysterious figure whose name does not even appear in the title or on the book's cover. Reviewers compared it to the classic film, Laura, in which the detective falls in love with the dead woman he is investigating. This dynamic is totally missing from their film, which is a straight-forward account of Farmer’s life. [20]

The plaintiffs charged back that the fictional character played by Sam Shepard in the film was a device to steal this dynamic by recreating the love-interest and sympathetic point-of-view provided by the book’s narrator. They charged that Sheperd, in effect, plays Arnold in the film. [5] [21] [12]

Since the lobotomy is not presented in the book as a fact, only a deduction on the author’s part for which no evidence exists, they also contested the Frances filmmakers’ defense that it was a “historical fact” that had no right to copyright protection. [20]    

Because of its many unusual features, the Frances lawsuit became one of the more widely publicized show business disputes of the 1980s. [12] [22] [23] [24] [25] In a May 1982 feature article, American Film predicted a landmark decision for the plaintiffs that would affect all “future rulings in the thorny field of authors’ rights in regard to factual material.” [26] But, though Judge Malcolm Lucas had dismissed two early motions to dismiss the suit and allowed it to go all the way through a lengthy trial in L.A. federal court in July 1983, his summary judgement ultimately ruled for the defendants. [27]

Nonetheless, the film was in its time and has continued to be widely perceived by critics and filmgoers to be an adaptation of the book. [28] Many reviewers mentioned Shadowland in their reviews [29] [30] [31] and one of the more prominent ones, Judy Stone, in her otherwise favorable review in the San Francisco Chronicle , expressed her disfavor that the author “was given no credit” because the film “is clearly based on William Arnold’s Shadowland.” [32]

In a 1983 article in Our Socialism magazine, June Loeffler not only assumed the movie was based on the book but made the pair the prime example of her essay denouncing the film industry’s penchant for homogenizing its subjects:

“Is it any wonder, then, that the book Shadowland, with its suggestions of political repression behind the Frances Farmer story, and its strong condemnation of the establishments of both Hollywood and the medical profession, would be transformed by Hollywood into the movie Frances. Stripped of politics, of historical context, of the measure of condemnation it carried within it, shot through with sexism, the movie is only an accurate reflection of what Hollywood would like us to believe about Frances Farmer and her story.” [33]  

In 1999, also assuming the book Shadowland to be the source of Frances, a Seattle writer named Jeffrey Kauffmann posted an online essay, “Shedding Light on Shadowland,” attacking the movie’s historical accuracy by attempting to discredit the book—particularly the Freeman lobotomy, which, for numerous reasons, he contended never happened. [34] [35]

In 2017, eighteen years later, Arnold sat for an interview that would be published as part of Shadowland Revisited: The Story of a Book and its Aftermath—a book about the book. In it, he answered those charges and, while “hating being put in the position of defending Frances,” he detailed how he felt the weight of the evidence that had emerged in the last thirty years supported the lobotomy theory as it was dramatized in the film, rather than debunked it. [36]

Production

Development

Brooks developed the team with collaborators on whom he made The Elephant Man , writers Eric Bergren and Christopher De Vore, and producer Jonathan Sanger. Sanger said there were similarities between Farmer and John Merrick. "With Frances it is rebellious spirit and outspokenness heightened by intelligence and beauty which eventually handicap her." [14]

Brooks was keen for David Lynch, who had directed The Elephant Man, to direct. However, Lynch had signed an agreement with Universal. Sanger then suggested Graeme Clifford, who was well established as an editor, notably having made several films with Robert Altman. "He's very bright and completely in love with the story", said Brooks. [37]

On the commentary of the DVD release, director Clifford stated, "We didn't want to nickel and dime people to death with facts." Mel Brooks was executive producer of the film, but as with The Elephant Man, Brooks intentionally received no credit for his participation as his name had been attributed to parodies or crude comedies.

The filmmakers struggled to gain finance until Britain's EMI Films - who had backed The Elephant Man - stepped in. Barry Spikings was head of production for EMI. [38] [39]

Casting

Many actresses were considered candidates for the role of Frances Farmer including Anne Archer, Susan Blakely, Blythe Danner, Susan Dey, Patty Duke, Mia Farrow, Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton, Liza Minnelli, Susan Sarandon, Cybill Shepherd, Sissy Spacek, Meryl Streep, Natalie Wood and Tuesday Weld.[ citation needed ] Faye Dunaway turned it down. [40]

"This is a role every actress waits all her life for", said Hawn. [3] Susan Blakely went on to portray Farmer in the 1983 CBS television film Will There Really Be a Morning? which was released in February 1983 not long after Frances was released to cinemas. [41]

Jessica Lange had wanted to play the role since reading Farmer's memoirs in the late 1970s. She tried to interest Bob Rafelson and Bob Fosse to make the film but neither was interested. Then she says Clifford called her directly offering the role. (Clifford had edited Lange in The Postman Always Rings Twice.) [42]

"She was very high-strung and had overpowering elements in her personality of self-destruction, but she was a real warrior", said Lange. "It was misguided heroics." [43]

The role of her mother was played by Kim Stanley making her first film in eighteen years. [14] It was the fourth film appearance from Sam Shepherd.

Shooting

"I began to identify with Frances Farmer's anger", said Lange. "She would release it no matter what the consequences were." [3]

Lange found the nude scene of Farmer's arrest with policemen breaking into the Knickerbocker Hotel frustrating and demanding; there was a problem with the bathroom door which stuck each time the actors playing cops on the other side tried to get it open. The entire scene, lasting no more than three minutes of film time, took four days to shoot. Lange was "disgusted" and felt "used, abused, and manipulated", as was Frances herself. [44]

Music

The original music score was composed by John Barry. According to Barry, his idea of carrying the main theme using a harmonica was initially disliked by producers until they heard it fully orchestrated. Along with some popular songs from the period, a notable piece of music was from Mozart's Piano Sonata No.11, K331, and the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony also featured.[ citation needed ]

Editing

The film originally ran for three hours and was cut down. This meant reduction of the amount of screen time dedicated to Frances and her parents, and Frances and her love interest. Clifford would subsequently claim he felt the film was too short. [38]

Reception

Frances holds a 68% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 31 reviews with the consensus: "This sordid biopic emphasizes the indignities visited upon Frances Farmer to the detriment of fleshing her out as a person, but Jessica Lange's towering performance invests the tragic figure with a humanity that the script lacks." [45] Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 48 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. [46]

Roger Ebert rated the film 3+1⁄2 stars out of 4 and praised Lange's performance, writing: "Jessica Lange plays Frances Farmer in a performance that is so driven, that contains so many different facets of a complex personality, that we feel she has an intuitive understanding of this tragic woman." [47] Leonard Maltin rated the film 2+1⁄2 stars out of four. He praised Lange's and Stanley's performances and described the film as "well-crafted, but cold and depressing." [48] Writing for the Guardian , Derek Malcolm stated: "Frances, though palpably overlong... is on the whole well-directed, decently set within its period, and makes the Jessica Lange of King Kong and The Postman Always Ring Twice look an actress of an entirely different class." [49]

Awards and nominations

AwardCategoryNominee(s)ResultRef.
Academy Awards Best Actress Jessica Lange Nominated [50]
Best Supporting Actress Kim Stanley Nominated
Golden Globe Awards Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama Jessica LangeNominated [51]
Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture Kim StanleyNominated
Huabiao Awards Outstanding Translated Foreign FilmWon
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards Best Actress Jessica LangeRunner-up [52]
Moscow International Film Festival Golden Prize Graeme Clifford Nominated [53]
Best ActressJessica LangeWon
Nastro d'Argento Best Foreign ActressNominated
National Society of Film Critics Awards Best Actress 2nd Place [54]
New York Film Critics Circle Awards Best Actress Runner-up [55]

References

  1. ↑ "Frances (1982)". British Film Institute . Retrieved March 6, 2024.
  2. ↑ "Frances (1982)". AFI Catalog of Feature Films . Retrieved March 6, 2024.
  3. 1 2 3 Mills, Bart (September 23, 1982). "Fame rings for Lange". The Guardian . p. 17.
  4. ↑ Shelley, Peter (2008). Frances Farmer: The Life and Films of a Troubled Star . Jefferson, NC: MacFarland & Company. p. 208. ISBN   978-0-7864-4745-9. "Teda Bracci, Jan Burrell, Flo di Re, Dodds Frank, Patricia Gaul, Robin Ginsburg, Pamela Gordon, Angelica Huston, Jamie Johnston, Ola Kaufman, Donna LaMana, Sharmagne Leland-St, John, Jane Lillig, Alexandra Melchi, Patricia Post, Zelda Rubinstein, Nina Schneider, Marlen Silvers, Vicki Williams, Susan Wolf (Hospital Sequence Mental Patients);"
  5. 1 2 McGilligan, Patrick (2019). Funny Man. HarperCollins. pp. 428–434, 426. ISBN   978-0-06-256099-5.
  6. ↑ "Local Best Sellers". The (Seattle) Weekly's Reader. October 1978. p. 11.
  7. ↑ Swindell, Larry (August 27, 1978). "The Great Might-Have-Been". The Washington Post. pp. G-1, G-9.
  8. ↑ "Shadowland". Good Morning America. August 9, 1978. ABC-TV.
  9. ↑ Hodenfield, Chris (January 1983). "Jessica Lange as Frances". The Movie Magazine. pp. 11, 13.
  10. ↑ Patterson, Richard (March 1983). "Cinematography for Frances". American Cinematographer. p. 26.
  11. ↑ "Production Notes". Frances (Universal Press Department). September 16, 1982. p. 2.
  12. 1 2 3 4 Hammer, Joshua (March 21, 1983). "A Shadowy Figure Says He Was Frances Farmer's Lover But a Lawsuit Claims Different". People (magazine). pp. 38–40.
  13. ↑ Estrin, Eric (December 1982). "The Curse of Frances Farmer". Los Angeles Magazine. pp. 167–176.
  14. 1 2 3 "Film star's life on film at last". Sunday News. January 23, 1983. p. F10.
  15. ↑ Bessie, Alvah (June 28, 1978). "The Ordeal of Frances Farmer". In These Times.
  16. ↑ Herman, Edith (June 28, 1978). "Did the Star Rebel of Hollywood Really Have a Cause?". The Chicago Tribune. p. 15.
  17. ↑ Trost, Cathy (June 11, 1978). "Frances Farmer a Lobotomy Victim?". The Detroit Free Press. pp. F-19.
  18. ↑ Carter, Don (January 28, 1983). "As 'Frances' Plays Across the Land, $20 million Suit Against the Filmmakers Waits in Wings". The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. pp. D26 –D27.
  19. ↑ Corr, O. Casey (March 24, 1983). "'Shadowland' Author Sues". The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. pp. H-3.
  20. 1 2 3 “Noel Marshall and William Arnold vs. Marie Yates, Mel Brooks and Brooksfilms Limited.” United States District Court Central District of California. No. CV 81 1850 MML. Filed Oct. 26, 1983.
  21. ↑ Kilday, Gregg (January 2, 1983). "Frances Farmers' life detailed in new film". Sunday News. p. F2.
  22. ↑ Brady, James (June 3, 1981). "Mel Brooks: Legal Battle". The New York Post. p. 6.
  23. ↑ "Untwisting the Frances Farmer Film Flap". New York Magazine. November 22, 1982. p. 14.
  24. ↑ "Mel Brooks is Sued for $20 million: Best-selling Seattle Writer Charges His Ideas Were 'Copied' for Movie". Asociated Press. May 23, 1981.
  25. ↑ "Trial Begins in 'Frances' Lawsuit". Associated Press. July 1, 1983.
  26. ↑ Farber, Stephen (May 1982). "Whose Life is it Anyway?". American Film (magazine). pp. 38–41.
  27. ↑ Judgment. “Noel Marshall and William Arnold vs. Marie Yates, Mel Brooks and Brooksfilms Limited.” United States District Court Central District of California. No. CV 81 1850 MML. Filed Oct. 26, 1983.
  28. ↑ Winfrey, Lee (February 22, 1983). "TV Movie on Frances Farmer is Film Version's Equal". The Philadelphia Inquirer. pp. D-7.
  29. ↑ Rickey, Carrie (November 30, 1982). "Frances Farmer's Dark Victory: The Actress Who Wrote Her Own Script". The Village Voice. p. 77.
  30. ↑ Corliss, Richard (February 15, 1982). "Morning Comes For Frances". Time (magazine). p. 62. Retrieved November 6, 2025.
  31. ↑ Ringel, Eleanor (February 11, 1983). "'Frances' on Film". The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. pp. B-1, B-6.
  32. ↑ Stone, Judy (January 28, 1983). "Dazzling Portrayal of 'Frances'". The San Francisco Chronicle. p. 14.
  33. ↑ Loeffler, June (April 1983). "Frances Farmer: A Strong Woman Destroyed for a Second Time". Our Socialism. pp. 65–69.
  34. ↑ Shelley, Peter, 'Frances Farmer: The Life and Films of a Troubled Star', pp. 5, 60-64
  35. ↑ Kauffman, Jeffrey (2004) [1999]. "Frances Farmer: Shedding Light on Shadowland". Shadowland. Archived from the original on July 21, 2015. Retrieved January 4, 2013.
  36. ↑ Arnold, William (2017). Shadowland Revisited: The Story of a Book and Its Aftermath. ASIN   BO6XNJF25D.
  37. ↑ "Mel Brooks and the sad Seattle cinema usherette". The Guardian . October 10, 1981. p. 11.
  38. 1 2 Pollock, Dale (December 2, 1982). "Clifford Gets First Shot as Director in 'Frances'". Los Angeles Times .
  39. ↑ Vagg, Stephen (October 26, 2025). "Forgotten British Moguls: Barry Spikings". Filmink. Retrieved October 26, 2025.
  40. ↑ Live with Regis and Kathie Lee . November 27, 1990. ABC.
  41. ↑ "Susan Blakely". AllMovie. Archived from the original on April 4, 2009.
  42. ↑ Mann, Roderick (January 17, 1982). "Lange's Role: The Insanity of It All...". Los Angeles Times. p. L 27.
  43. ↑ Harmetz, Aljean (December 21, 1982). "'I was so incredibly naive about... Hollywood': Lange's star grows ever brighter". The Globe and Mail . p. 15.
  44. ↑ "The Making of Frances". oocities.org. Retrieved January 28, 2022.
  45. ↑ "Frances". Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved February 18, 2025.
  46. ↑ "Frances Reviews". www.metacritic.com. Retrieved August 20, 2025.
  47. ↑ Ebert, Roger (January 28, 1983). "Frances". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  48. ↑ Maltin, Leonard. 2012 Movie Guide. Penguin Books. p. 491. ISBN   978-0-451-23447-6.
  49. ↑ Malcolm, Derek (February 24, 1983). "The Evil Dead/The Verdict/My Favorite Year/Frances". Newspapers.com. Retrieved March 29, 2025.
  50. ↑ "The 55th Academy Awards (1983) Nominees and Winners". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on September 5, 2012. Retrieved October 9, 2011.
  51. ↑ "Frances". Golden Globe Awards . Retrieved August 13, 2021.
  52. ↑ "The 8th Annual Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards". Los Angeles Film Critics Association . Retrieved August 13, 2021.
  53. ↑ "13th Moscow International Film Festival (1983)". Moscow International Film Festival. Archived from the original on November 7, 2013. Retrieved February 6, 2013.
  54. ↑ "Past Awards". National Society of Film Critics. December 19, 2009. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
  55. ↑ "1982 New York Film Critics Circle Awards". Mubi . Retrieved August 13, 2021.
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