The Moviegoer is the diary of a local film buff, collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground film scene has to offer.

In Alexander Horwath’s formidable three-hour essay film, Henry Fonda for President (2024), which screened this weekend as part of the Chicago Underground Film Festival (CUFF), Horwath notices among the great actor’s performances his propensity for putting his hand over his face, be it to hide a character’s shame or, more curiously, his pride. Horwath connects the action to more than just the archetypes for which Fonda is best known, as a man on the run, at odds with society’s expectations and thus in hiding from its inculcation, or one seeking justice—or perhaps both, as is epitomized in John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940). He also connects the

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