"From the Journals of Jean Seberg" A film review by Linda Lopez McAlister on "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM (88.5), Tampa, FL May 4, 1996 I'm in Philadelphia this weekend and am looking forward to seeing some of the entries by women filmmakers in the Philadelphia International Film Festival that's in full sway. Yesterday, however, I went to see a film that's not part of the festival but struck me as one of the most fascinating and original films I've seen in a long time. It's called "From the Journals of Jean Seberg" and was written and directed by Mark Rappaport. I gather that what struck me as so original, the idea of doing a fictional documentary, Rappaport has done before in his earlier "Rock Hudson's Home Movies." That one sounded like a pure exploitation flick so I didn't go see it, but I may have to track it down now to see if it's as insightful as this Jean Seberg sequel. What Rappaport does is imagine that actor Jean Seberg, who burst upon the world's consciousness in 1957 when she was selected by Otto Preminger to play the lead in his filming of "St. Joan," has kept a journal all these years--form 1957 until now, even though she committed suicide in 1978 at age 40. And what he puts on film is Jean Seberg (as she would appear in 1996 had she lived) looking back and commenting on her life and death, on what it was like to be a woman movie star in the '50s, '60s and '70s. He uses the lives and careers of two of her contemporaries, Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave as points of comparison. They are particularly apt choices since they, like Seberg, both starred in films made by their director husbands, and were later outspokenly active in leftist political "causes" that won them the ire of the general public. Mary Beth Hurt plays Jean Seberg and tells her story, interspersed with miles of film footage from Seberg's and other films. Hurt is immensely credible as Seberg; we can really believe that this is what she mighthave looked like if she hadn't died. Coincidentally, Hurt also hails from Marshalltown, Iowa where Seberg was discovered, and studied with the same high school drama teacher. Seberg's instant celebrity in 1957 came crashing down about her ears in 1958 when the disastrous "Saint Joan" came out. Publicity hound Preminger got a lot of press from his talent hunt and his idea to cast an actor of the same age of Joan of Arc, but, as the fictionalized Jean says of her young girlish image on the screen: who would follow that cheerleader into battle? Let's just say she wasn't quite up to the role. Rather than going back to Iowa in disgrace, Seberg was cast next in the film version of Francoise Sagan's "Bountour Tristesse" and then by Jean Luc Goddard as the young American woman in his film "Breathless." Here began her trademark returning the gaze of the camera, though it seems more the vacant stare of an actor who isn't doing anything than a conscious subversion of film codes. Seberg did have one of those faces that the camera loves and the French seemed to like her a lot, she remained in Paris, marrying first a young actor/filmmaker and later the much older novelist Romain Gary, He,then, began writing and then directing films all of which seemed to feature a younger wife and an older husband with highly missogynistic themes. The older, wiser, Seberg/Hurt points out how at that point neither Seberg nor Fonda nor Redgrave would have even uttered the word "feminism" or known what it meant had they heard it. They were, instead, intent on playing whatever nymphomaniac, whore, or space bimbo their respective husbands at the time, chose to show off to the ogling eyes of the male public. What with Seberg's return to American and her involvement with the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and '70s, she earned the rage of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, who apparently started rumors about her and engaged in all sorts of chicanery to discredit her. After the death of a premature baby Seberg attempted suicide and continued to do so every year on the anniversary of the baby's death. In 1978 she succeeded. I want this film to show to my Women and Film class. I've never seen anything quite like it for galvanizing attention on the way women are exploited--and eagerly conspire in their own exploitation--in the film industry. Only once or twice in the last five years have I put a film by a male filmmaker on my annual 10 best feminist films list, but I think Michael Rappaport is going to make it this year. I don't know when or if it's coming to Tampa, but I'm sure it will be out on video at some point. So make a mental note to go see "From the Journals of Jean Seberg" for the feminist film history you don't get in the film history books. For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film. . Copyright 1996 by Linda Lopez McAlister. All rights reserved. Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the author.