Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating, June 11, 2000
This is a quantam leap for Mark Rappaport from the execrable Rock Hudson's Home Movies. I particularly liked the parallels he makes between Jean, and Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave as political activists. Mary Beth Hurt is an actress I haven't seen enough of so I relished her role here. I remember seeing a documentary about the mystery surrounding Jean's death which included footage I was anticipating, however it's absence is a quibble.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
masterful essay on Seberg's career and the men who influenced and often controlled it and her, November 13, 2009
This review is from: From the Journals of Jean Seberg (DVD)
I rewatched this video essay because I was recently reminded of its great independent American director, Mark Rappaport, many of whose works I saw a decade ago and loved; sadly very few of them are at all available, so I "settled" for this great film as I could get hold of it easily - I've since tried to start discussions about him on a couple of forums, but not gotten anywhere. He might as well not even exist, even as far as a lot of die-hard film buffs are concerned, so obscure are he and his works.
I don't know if this film would change matters even if I could magically get a bunch of people to see it. Basically, it's a 100-minute deconstruction of the late American actress Jean Seberg's career, with Seberg "played by" narrator Mary Beth Hurt, who (as stand in for both author/director Rappaport and the dead actress) offers a withering feminist critique of the roles, both on and offscreen, that naive small-town Iowa girl Seberg found herself thrust into from the moment she first auditioned for Otto Preminger's film of Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan in 1955 at the age of 17. Questioning the way in which male directors dominate and abuse female stars, the casting by so many men of their wives as whores and cheats, the pornography of suffering in every rendition of Joan and the choices that women - but not men - get pushed into making as they age, this is a wide-ranging look at both Hollywood and European morality in the film industry, at the politics of the late 60s and how they impacted Seberg and other star actresses like Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave, and much more.
A provoking and pointedly subversive and subjective document, rather than a "documentary", this is I think essential viewing for anyone interested in the politics and sociology of stardom, and for fans of Seberg, Preminger, Jean-Luc Godard and Clint Eastwood in particular. Those interested in Seberg's films and who care about "spoilers" should be warned that the endings of "À bout de soufflé", "Lilith" and "Bonjour Tristesse" are given away. I can imagine that many would find the approach here irritating and even offensive, particularly those more wedded to traditional documentary styles, but to me it is a masterpiece and not far off the level of Chris Marker ("Sans Soleil") and Orson Welles ("Filming 'Othello'") in this fairly rare cinematic form. Mark Rappaport is not after - and probably doesn't believe in - some kind of absolute "truth", some specific answer as to why Seberg's career and life ended the way they did, indeed he is willing to place some of the blame on the actress herself; he is interested in provoking discussion and thought, and in that he succeeds entirely.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting for Seberg Buffs, July 7, 2008
This review is from: From the Journals of Jean Seberg (DVD)
This studied and sophomoric film comes to life only when it cuts from drastically-miscast Mary Beth Hurt as dead Jean Seberg (narrating from beyond the grave) to excerpts from Jean's movies. If Rappaport couldn't find an actress that evoked Jean's presence, he would have done better to dispense with the narration bit entirely and just make a straight doc instead.
Rappaport's effort is not done any favors by having been shot on videotape instead of film, which gives it a hard, unattractive look while further amplifying its amateurishness. In addition, "Journals" seems confused as to who its subject is. In spite of the title, which would lead one to expect a study of Jean Seberg's life and/or career, there are a number of tangential segments which go on far too long that attempt, awkwardly, to draw parallels to other actress/activists like Jane Fonda & Vanessa Redgrave. Might have been interesting--but do we need to stay on shots from "Klute" for 5 minutes, or on freeze frames for 30 seconds? Do we need to see clips from every actress who ever played Joan of Arc in order to understand Jean's portrayal of the character? It reeks of filler, perhaps from an attempt to round out the running time to a feature length, but Rappaport doesn't have meat and potatoes enough for anything more than a short.
Still, I give it three stars because some of it works, and the movie excerpts are rare and from titles not available on VHS or DVD and hence, can be seen nowhere else (Birds of Peru, The Wild Duck, etc). But in light of its limitations, and considering the price that this is being offered for on DVD, I'd stick with an inexpensive VHS copy and save the big bucks for Jean's films when they appear.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
