Despite its ambitious and promising premise, Henry Fonda for President turns out to be a pretentious documentary at best and an unnecessary one at worst.
Director: Alexander Horwath
Genre: Documentary
Run Time: 77′
Open City Documentary Festival Screening: May 10, 2025
Release Date: TBA
As the title suggests, Henry Fonda for President is a documentary on the American actor Henry Fonda. Through clips of his movies, mostly in chronological order, director Alexander Horwarth attempts to map the history of the United States.
When we see scenes from his most famous roles, such as The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), and 12 Angry Men (1957), the audience ends up witnessing a much bigger picture – the reality of the constant systemic injustice of the United States of America – through the lens of Hollywood films. But the film is also a very personal story, that of the contemporary world’s – and primarily the director’s – relationship with Fonda and his legacy.
Horwath’s documentary is ambitious, but can it sustain such an enormous scope with such an extensive runtime as well? Initially, it starts well. The use of different types of moving images to tell this story – from interview footage to film clips – is fascinating to watch. But Henry Fonda for President is at its best when it lets Fonda speak for himself. The interview footage allows us to see the man behind the characters, with his strong political opinion, especially on Reagan, and a unique sense of humour.
But the interview footage is not nearly as present as I would have liked. The film, instead, seems to turn into a personal story after the opening sequence, when the director’s voice retraces his own connection to the actor and his movies. The voiceover may very well be the weakest aspect of this film. It is often too expositionary, explaining to the audience exactly what we are watching on screen, and it’s far too present. With the constant repetitive structure of voiceover explanation followed by a film clip, Henry Fonda for President quickly becomes more reminiscent of a very long lecture rather than a film. While the information itself is interesting, that is not enough to sustain a 185-minute-long documentary about one singular figure.
I also kept wondering what type of documentary Henry Fonda for President was trying to be. Is it a biographical reflection on Fonda’s life? Is it an essay film on the actor’s movies? Or is it an attempt to relate all of this to the history of the United States? Whatever it is trying to achieve, it remains too unclear for the audience to even grasp the subject matter, despite such a long runtime. Its scope remains very broad, which prevents the documentary from actually examining any of its themes in depth.
Ultimately, Henry Fonda for President doesn’t do anything particularly interesting or new. Its structure has been used, and possibly with much better results, in films that combine older movie footage in order to examine an actor’s life in much more original ways. When it comes to this type of documentary, Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992) by Mark Rappaport is a much more successful example of how revisiting classic Hollywood films with a new perspective can actually bring something new to the discussion.
Overall, Henry Fonda for President adds very little to whatever niche of documentary filmmaking it wants to contribute to. It also quickly becomes too repetitive and predictable to actually justify 3 hours of runtime. The documentary could have definitely benefited from further editing and finding a tighter focus on the story it actually wanted to tell.
Henry Fonda for President (Open City Documentary Festival): Movie Plot & Recap
Synopsis:
Henry Fonda for President looks at the history of the United States through the story of one man: the widely acclaimed American actor Henry Fonda. In his directorial debut, Alexander Horwath puts together snippets of Fonda’s most famous role, his own experience with these films, interviews with the actors, and reflections on his legacy to tell the story of his life and work.
Pros:
- The documentary seems to find its feet when it allows Henry Fonda himself to speak through the interview footage that starts the film.
Cons:
- The structure, with voiceover narration followed by a film clip, easily gets repetitive across the documentary’s overly long runtime.
- The voiceover falls into the trap of becoming too expository by overexplaining the film clip the audience is about to see, or is seeing presented on the screen.
- The documentary struggles to find its focus between personal stories, national history, and the actor’s life.
Henry Fonda for President was screened at the 2025 Open City Documentary Festival on May 10, 2025. The film had a limited theatrical release in the U.S. on April 3, 2025.
