The elegant lady paces restlessly in her neurologist’s consulting room. She repeatedly clenches her right fist and wraps her left hand around it. Her gaze is at once evasive and convincing. She can state with confidence what day it is or what the name of the hospital is. But folding a sheet of yellow paper in half and half again becomes an impossible task. Trembling, her slender fingers try hard but fail to do it. The title character in THE GREAT LILLIAN HALL (2023) has been a Broadway star for decades, but is now suddenly having problems with her memory. An attempt to fool the doctor is doomed to failure. Lillian’s dementia can no longer be denied.

Acting is more than just slipping into a role; it’s creating a living character and communicating through facial expressions, gestures, and language. Reflecting on being a performer has been a recurring theme in Jessica Lange’s career. When she was 20, she moved to Paris to be trained by Étienne Decroux, the master of modern pantomime. Decroux’s focus on nonverbal communication was to have a lasting influence on Lange’s acting.

The Great Lillian Hall

Following her highly symbolic debut in the film industry — as a damsel in distress in the clutches of King Kong — Jessica Lange initially played the part of the Hollywood “dumb” blonde, a role that is all too familiar and that results in both expectation and underappreciation. Alongside Jack Nicholson in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1981), she achieved recognition as a character actress. Her liberation from the simian grasp came, however, in 1982 through her role in FRANCES, a biographical drama about Frances Farmer’s struggles with the merciless studio system in the 1930s.

The true and tragic story of that young actress reflects Jessica Lange’s own aversion to Hollywood. During her youth in rural northern Minnesota, the wider world beckoned, though fame in the dream factory was not a given. Lange shared the emotional tension of the protagonist in FRANCES as well as her artistic ambitions. Farmer was considered stubborn and her political views questionable, but she was also regarded as talented and beautiful. This led to a studio contract with Paramount which ruined her personal life. She ended up spending years in a mental hospital for her alleged hysteria.

This outstanding performance from 1982, Jessica Lange’s portrayal of Frances Farmer, went hand-in-hand with that in TOOTSIE, an international box-office success. TOOTSIE remains one of the 20 most successful comedy movies of all time. Nominated for an Oscar for both FRANCES and TOOTSIE in the same year, Lange earned her first Academy Award for best supporting actress for the latter film.

Jessica Lange earned her second Oscar for her leading role in BLUE SKY (1994). Carly Marshall is the bipolar wife of a US Army major. She believes she’s a glamorous actress who’s being held back and styles herself as a kind of Brigitte Bardot or Marilyn Monroe. Her extroverted personality is at odds with her family life on a military base. In spite of her being a troublemaker, however, the time comes when she must stand by her husband, who unearths a cover-up of hazardous nuclear tests.

Blue Sky
PHOTO: 1994 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.

The hit TV series AMERICAN HORROR STORY brought Jessica Lange into the horror genre — and back to the stage. Four seasons of the hit series, starting in 2011, acquainted entirely new audiences with her work. In her own favorite season, FREAK SHOW, she plays Elsa Mars, the manager of a freak show in the 1950s. Under the twinkling lights of a circus tent, Elsa introduces Siamese twins, a bearded lady, and others. It doesn’t take long for them to be wrongly accused of committing crimes in the village. Elsa’s own secrets are still concealed in the past.

Lillian Hall in Jessica Lange’s latest film often reminisces about bygone days she spent with her late husband. In the present day, however, a production of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” is about to premiere and Hall’s adult daughter has long hoped that Lillian would eventually enjoy having the role of the mother. There are many roles for Jessica Lange to fill in THE GREAT LILLIAN HALL: the star, the performer, the senile woman, the bad mother, and the bluffer. Lange portrays the complex character of Lillian Hall, a woman facing multiple challenges, seemingly without effort, as only a great actress can.

Through Her Lens – Photographs by Jessica Lange

On top of that, the Munich International Film Festival is presenting a lesser-known side of celebrated actress Jessica Lange. For several years, she has also been an accomplished photographer; four books of her photographs have been published to date. She will now be coming to the Deutsches Theatermuseum in Munich’s Hofgarten to present selected black-and-white photographs. The exhibition “Through Her Lens: Photographs by Jessica Lange” is centered around photographs that Lange took during the pandemic in New York City, when the lockdown stripped the Big Apple and its crowded streets of their character. Photographer Jessica Lange captured the rawness and emptiness of Manhattan’s iconic side streets in such motifs as a nearly empty sidewalk, an “open” sign raising false hopes, and a merry-go-round brought to a permanent standstill.

The exhibition will open with a vernissage at the Deutsches Theatermuseum on July 1, 2024 and will run until September 8, 2024.