From the Journals of Jean Seberg

Starring:Mary Beth Hurt, Jean Seberg
Director: Mark Rappaport
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

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Mark Rappaport, best known as the writer-director of Rock Hudson's Home Movies, pushes the envelope once more with a provocative film that defies convention. Part memoir, part cinematic essay, and part social critique, this is slyly disguised as a documentary. A searing Mary Beth Hurt stars as the cynical and witty ghost of actress Jean Seberg. As much about the American value system as Seberg's tragic life, Journals is a little too convoluted in a few too many places. However, Rappaport does bring his stream of consciousness full circle by the film's ending and it earns kudos just for its originality. --Rochelle O'Gorman

Description

Seberg's story, from her Cinderella-like rise to celebrity status in Otto Preminger's "Saint Joan" to her equally precipitous fall after the movie was released, through her resurrection as a star in Godard's "Breathless" to her death in 1979 is examined through a wide range of her films and others of the period. "From the Journals of Jean Seberg" explores the ideological attitudes that commercial films subliminally offer above and beyond the story, the stars and the price of admission--the message and value assumptions that linger on long after the plot is forgotten. This film about film theory--semiology in practice--is a challenging yet immensely entertaining film by Mark Rappaport (Rock Hudson's Home Movies), starring Mary Beth Hurt.

Customer Reviews:

Good documentary; poor subject.......2000-06-19

Mary Beth Hurt appears as the postumous voice of Jean Seberg, an actress best known for her lead role in Jean-Luc Goddard's first film, 'Breathless'. Mark Rappaport's film compares her career and political activities with those of the more famous Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave. Rappaport trys to make a case for Seberg as a naïf done in by men, Hollywood, America, and J. Edgar Hoover. He combines file footage with Hurt's narration to create a complex and thoughtful film, but it's hard to work up any sympathy for his subject, especially in her later years when she's running guns for the Black Panthers. He has Seberg say some caustic things about herself, particularly in her choice of men, but she (or Rappaport) remains unapologetic about her political affiliations. Rappaport also defends Fonda and Redgrave through Seberg's voice. This film doesn't defy any convention that I could detect; it simply follows orthodox Hollywood leftism. I found no information about the sources for the words that Rappaport puts in Seberg's mouth. I assume that they're fabricated. The DVD has no extra materials.

Fascinating.......2000-06-11

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.

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