THE FEMININE psyche’s ability to develop the vanity of the female self-image, and to interest men with its seductive mannerisms, established by Jane Fonda’s role in ‘WALK ON THE WILD SIDE’, is an underlying theme she would pursue and develop, consciously or unconsciously, in a variety of ways in cinematic art right through her career.
Not all of these films are able to grasp this value effectively, or offer her the needed material to pursue its dormant qualities, yet, in retrospect, her presence in other early films like ‘THE CHAPMAN REPORT’, ‘PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT’ and ‘IN THE COOL OF THE DAY’, also done around 1962, merit seeing.

Screen ‘language’

Fonda’s acting, from the start, hinted at that unique artistic quality found in thoughtful fiction, poetry, and creative film, a quality far more definitive than literal conversation, and which projects an individual’s identity in its abstract totality, where ‘speech’ is connected to the true definition of ‘language’, involving body postures, gestures, look, fashion style, focus, and interest, where literal words and vocal sounds are not supreme or the only ‘real’ possessors of communicated values.
Art’s lasting value concerns such a comprehensive definition of ‘language’. In 1963, Fonda made ‘SUNDAY IN NEW YORK’, co-starring Rod Taylor in a delightfully comedic rascal’s role as a potential ideal man for her. It is here that Fonda got her chance to expand her demonstration of feminine power in a hesitant, prudish, clumsy way that is an about-face to her loose, whorish role in ‘WALK ON THE WILD SIDE’.
What makes ‘SUNDAY IN NEW YORK’ a delightfully nuanced film, touched by that comfy quotidian European flair rarely found in today’s Hollywood romantic comedies, is not only Fonda and Taylor’s playful tug-o-war of will until the full ‘language’ of their curious ballet fills up its vacant spaces with trust, but the realistic location use of New York’s old traditional Airport (in a film about the wild romantic lifestyle of some pilots and hostesses), with its wooden doors, long drawing-room lobbies, somehow bristling with that expectant New York excitement one can feel at this old terminus, used (at least a few years back) for Toronto/New York flights.
Many of Fonda’s films on contemporary life usually exhibit this sort of public environmental and social excitement beyond its personal dramas.

European introduction

Fonda’s life as a screen star began to attract added public attention and popularity after her return to Paris in 1964, and her first film there, under Rene Clement’s avant-garde direction of ‘THE LOVE CAGE’. Her exploration of feminine power jumped simultaneously on a cinematic and personal level, via her role as one of two sensuous, independent women who shelter a suave French vagabond, Alain Delon, at their Riviera villa in the lap of classical luxury, where they make him their chauffeur.
‘THE LOVE CAGE’ is a beautiful film of luscious, satisfying black-and-white cinematography, highlighting its theme of socially sophisticated, intellectual, and unconventional feminine power, equating capital and stability with sensuality in female hands, rescuing the bohemian male from his insecurity, while demanding the surrender of his freedom to feminine control. In actual fact, Clement’s ‘THE LOVE CAGE’ looks back and pays homage to those brilliant classic black-and-white Hollywood films like ‘TAKE A LETTER DARLING’ or ‘THE PALM BEACH STORY’, or ‘SUNSET BOULEVARD’ etc.
French matinee idol, Alain Delon, one of France’s most satisfying yet complex actors to date, was perfect for the role as the handsome, servile, pampered gigolo chauffeur in Fonda’s and Lola Albright’s ‘love cage’. The film certainly developed underground cult influence on many later films, reshuffling its theme if not retaining the same cinematic standard.
On a personal level, Fonda’s role in ‘THE LOVE CAGE’ introduced her to improvised acting, since Clement did not always use a script, and though Fonda was not very comfortable with this method, she must have understood the implication of personal power secreted, on her part, in the sense of self-confidence, risk, and bold sensuality it no doubt entailed. She could either back out of the production, stalling and hurting its budget plans, or go ahead with the role on a personal self-confident level.
‘THE LOVE CAGE’ is a distinctly delightful film due to Fonda’s and Delon’s  mutual demonstration of their egos’ ability to adjust in their own way to what seems personally humiliating in their roles. In any case, Rene Clement’s use of structural signifiers flavoured with erotic overtones, as when Fonda, in her lingerie, hides half her body at the edge of a door while brandishing an unusually large key (Michelle Pfeiffer picked up some of this style in her fine performance in ‘WOLF’) allowed her to play with a combination of cinematic theatricality, and perhaps an unspoken private realization of the improvised scenes real un-theatrical significance for her sense of self-liberation.

Meeting Roger Vadim

Indeed, Fonda’s French sojourn would result in advancement of her professional and personal life when she met French director, Roger Vadim, born of a Russian father, whose experimental yet quite entertaining and highly pleasurable cinematic style plunged her into true sensual liberation (or bondage?) on screen, and sometimes popular scandal when nude photos of her appeared, unauthorized.
Vadim directed Fonda in three films of lasting value: ‘CIRCLE OF LOVE’ 1964, ‘THE GAME IS OVER’ 1966, and ‘BARBARELLA’ 1968. Vadim’s reputation was  that of the artist as ‘ladies man’, and it was valid, since he had been married to, and guided by, France’s cinematic sex goddess, Bridgette Bardot, enhancing her career with a few of his films.
Vadim’s films, of course, were far from any lewd pornographic level; their attraction and intellectual value exist in their leniency towards feminine power, embedded in zesty, bold screen-plays exploring the nature of sexual jealousy, possessiveness, immature and mature responses, the difference between young and mature men and women, etc. Moreover, their narratives assumed added creative significance by the use of coastal or rural sunny environments, as on the Riviera, or urban artistically sophisticated ones.
Fonda’s background as an art student was perfect for Vadim’s stylish, unique ‘New Wave’ films, and her sense of feminine power advanced, since she fell in love with Vadim (they married in ‘65), so perhaps the nudity she permits of herself in his films was an expression of her love for him, both as lover and artist. It is he she REALLY undresses for in these films.
Her sense of feminine power is therefore twofold: Both personal, and social via film’s public exposure. For the male director involved in such a distinct sensual artistic liaison, the very subject of jealousy becomes subjectively acute, since he must often direct the woman he loves in intimate scenes with other men.
There is a high causality rate here, and many directors (and actors) lose their female partners, both temporarily and permanently, as a result of this artistic, or, shall we say, quite normal risk and freedom. The opposite is true as well, of course, as regards to women losing their men to other women via the cinematic lifestyle.
Maybe Vadim already felt such insecurities in1968 when he made ‘BARBARELLA’, with Fonda in the starring role. This is a beautiful eclectic film of colourful visual art, influenced by designs from the Russian Avant-Garde, combined with American sci-fi comic-book culture, from Buck Rogers to Wonder Woman.
Set in the year 40.000 in widescreen cinemascope, which only cinema screens could give justice to, the film perhaps helped Vadim overcome his own eventual loss of Fonda by satirizing and spoofing uptight prudish attitudes to sex and nudity in a light-hearted imaginative and pleasurable way.
The film was a hit, especially with international youth audiences during that incredibly exciting and pleasurable decade of the 1960s. Yet, to Vadim’s credit, we see artistic evidence of his Russian cinematic forbearers, such as the great I.V. Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein, two masters with opposing cinematic theories: Pudovkin’s motto being that a film is not shot, but built or constructed by editing; and Eisenstein’s view that a film is made by a collision of ideas and moments.
Vadim’s cinematic style, nevertheless, seemed to lean more towards this one of Pudovkin’s theories in his imagistic originality evident in ‘BARBARELLA’: “To show something as everyone sees it is to have accomplished nothing.”