HYBRID IN-PERSON AND ONLINE PROGRAM

On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981, 109min.) 

Christopher Llewellyn Reed, chair, film & moving image department, Stevenson University

A guaranteed tear-jerker and one of her most popular films, On Golden Pond, is a must-watch for Fonda fans, in part because it marks the first and last screen pairing with her father Henry, who finally won his only Best Actor Oscar in this, his final role. (It won another for co-star Katharine Hepburn, as well.) Although Jane plays a supporting role, the film showcases both her formidable acting talents and her well-toned physique: in a famous scene involving a backflip, Fonda's chiseled body served as a brilliant advertisement for her soon-to-debut workout video. Fonda the elder and Hepburn play Norman and Ethel Thayer, the long-married parents of troubled daughter Chelsea (Jane Fonda), who asks them to babysit her new fiancé's son while the happy couple jets off to Europe. Despite initial friction between the couple and their adolescent charge, all involved learn genuine life lessons and emerge changed by the experience—and the audience emerges from the film with well-earned tear-stained hankies. Screenwriter Ernest Thompson (who also won an Oscar) adapted his eponymous 1979 play for the screen. Dabney Coleman (the villain in the first film of our series, 9 to 5) plays the fiancé with gentle aplomb. The tension between Norman and Chelsea is an obvious mirror of Henry and Jane's own fraught relationship, and the scenes between them shine with bittersweet authenticity.

The summer film series is created in partnership with The Renaissance Institute.

$10 fee for guests or $40 for six films (No fee for ASG/RI members, or ASG subscribers)