Peter Fonda: a cowboy riding on his horse towards the far horizon

As I am writing this post, all the news agencies and all the newscasts of the world, even on the internet, are giving the same information: Peter Fonda, one of the last icons of the counterculture of the sixties, has disappeared. Certainly, he was an important figure, if we also consider his genealogy in addition to his character, meant as a watershed between a certain type of cinema, which characterized an era, and the modern cinema, more essential and direct.

Peter Fonda was born on February 23, 1939 in New York City. He came from a family of actors: his father was Henry Fonda, while his mother was Frances Ford Seymour; he was the brother of Jane Fonda, and the father of Bridget and Justin Fonda. He had a half-sister, Frances de Villers Brokaw, born from his mother's first marriage, and who died in 2008.

Peter's mother committed suicide in a mental hospital when Peter was only ten, by cutting her throat with a razor blade.

While attending the University of Nebraska, Omaha, Peter Fonda joined the Omaha Community Playhouse, where many actors (including his father and Marlon Brando) had started their careers.

He trained as a theatrical actor and later passed to the big screen, where he would give voice and face to the youngsters of the sixties: the "on the road" generation that was celebrated by the writer Jack Kerouac, halfway between political revolt and hippy movement.

Easy Rider, a film he wrote and produced along with Dennis Hopper in 1969, outside the limited world of the film studios of that time, consecrated Fonda as the ideal personification of a conflicted age: with this film he achieved a great success, both with public and critics, and had the Oscar nomination for the best screenplay. Thanks to Easy Rider Fonda became one of the emblems of pop culture, along with Hopper and Jack Nicholson, who acted with him.

Later he played in other films, which had less resonance, western in particular: The Hired Hand of 1971,which he also directed; Idaho Transfer, 1975; Wanda Nevada, 1979.

In 1988 he was, for a short time, in Italy, to shoot a mini-television series based on the novel Gli Indifferenti, by Alberto Moravia.

In 1997, Fonda took part in the film Ulee's Gold, in the role of a widowed grandfather, a beekeeper, who must take care of his two nieces, played by Jessica Biel and Vanessa Zima: it is an intense drama on generational conflicts that earned him an important award: the Golden Globe as best dramatic actor. He also received two other awards, from the New York Film Critics Circle Award and the Southeastern Film Critics Association Award, as best leading actor.

In 2007 he returned to the big screen, playing the bounty hunter Byron McElroy in the new version of 3: 10 to Yuma, where he worked alongside Christian Bale and Russell Crowe. The film received two Oscar nominations. He also played a cameo role in the final scenes of the comedy Wild Hogs and as a disturbing Mephistopheles in the movie Ghost Rider.

In 2009, he appeared in the role of The Roman, in The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, and also in the Californication TV series.

So he appeared in American Bandits: Frank and Jesse James (2010); The Trouble with Bliss (2011); Smitty (2012); Harodim (2012); As Cool as I Am (2013); Copperhead (2013); The Ultimate Life (2013); The harvest (2013); HR (2014); House of Bodies (2014); Jesse James: Lawman (2015); The Runner (2015); The Ballad of Lefty Brown (2017); The Most Hated Woman in America (2017); Borderland (2017) and Boundaries (2018).

He was executive producer for the documentary The Big Fix (2012).

Today, August 16, 2019, the news of his death in Los Angeles came, unexpectedly.

It is right to remember Peter Fonda, in the field of Cinema, as a spokesman and standard bearer of a certain youthful malaise: a malaise that resulted, often, in the rebellion against some schemes and conventions, leading young people to leave their homes and travel on the road, as it is shown in the movie Easy Rider.

Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson will forever bind their names to Easy Rider, because it was not just a movie, but a declaration, as much as it had been, years before, for Rebel Without a Cause, with James Dean.

As to me, however, there is a film by Peter Fonda that I am very fond of: this film is The Hired Hand.

In those years, the 70s, I was immersed in a specific kind of culture from USA: that of country music and a peculiar way of seeing things, typical of a society that wanted to rediscover individual values, in contrast to the collective approach which was held until then. It was a need for introspection, even for solitude, to a certain extent, which I found completely in the film directed and interpreted by Fonda.

I will always recall Peter Fonda just like in The Hired Hand: his black silhouette on a horse, standing out on the hill, while a red, hot sun sets on the horizon.

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The Hired Hand - Full movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCsCRNByc3g