Henry Fonda was emblematic of the big-screen American everyman. Fonda’s contributions to cinema are legendary from his many collaborations with director John Ford to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (1956) and Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men (1957).
Yet when interviewed away from the set, Fonda was revealed to be an intensely private and complex man who claimed to have “No good answers to anything”. In this intriguing and experimental cinematic essay, Fonda’s screen persona and career is used a conduit to interrogate the very fabric of the American landscape.
Leading film historian and archivist Alexander Horwath uses archive audio from Fonda’s final interview in 1981 along with his on-screen roles to guide us on a unique journey. The film takes us on a road trip from the village of Fonda, New York, across the Midwest to the Pacific, from 1651 to the 1980s and the presidency of another movie actor, culminating in an invisible republic, the United States of Fonda.
By fusing the actor’s real-life iconography with a sense of heightened fantasy, we’re guided through America’s past and present before we’re left questioning the nature of America’s future. And to imagine an invisible republic – the United States of Fonda.
With an introduction by Cinema Rediscovered founder Mark Cosgrove.
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