Word: fonda
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...creating a bland industrial backdrop. Monet omitted the smiling women, painting only the dark, smoky blue train station; and the opening shot of Julia is a technicolor replica of his ominous image--an image that is repeated frequently throughout the film. Julia is the story of Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) and her childhood friend (Vanessa Redgrave) whom she christens "Julia," who together lost the insular beauty of their adolescence as the Third Reich came into power...
MOST OF THE TIME, Fonda portrays the writer just as one might envision the temperamental chain smoker. Occasionally, however, Hellman's stubborn scowls become Fonda's cute pouts and Robards's subtle understatements make Fonda seem even shriller. Fonda has her moments of glory, though, particularly as she confronts Broadway sycophants and awaits Hammett's judgments on her work, revealing the underlying dependence upon the older man she spent so much of her energy denying...
...most current big-budget movies, it trades in serious ideas rather than comic-book fantasies, and it even has the guts to buck Hollywood's longstanding embargo on heroines by starring two strong, intelligent women who care about other things than men. Since they are played by Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave, it's hard to imagine how Julia could fail -but fail, to a sad extent, it does. For all the taste, talent and money that have been lavished on this film, it is stubbornly lacking in passion and life...
...film works up some steam only when it is recounting the central anecdote of the original story, a scary 1937 train ride in which Hellman (Fonda) smuggles $50,000 to Julia (Redgrave) and her antifascist comrades in Berlin. Director Zinnemann (High Noon) brings a Graham Greenesque sense of intrigue to this adventure, and he sets up a powerful climactic scene. When Hellman finally arrives in a smoky Berlin cafe to deliver the loot, her terse, hurried conversation with Julia sums up everything the film has been trying to say about friendship, political commitment and growing up. Simultaneously the two star...
...newest film, Julia, an autobiographical account of Playwright Lillian Hellman's life in the '30s, offers Fonda and Co-Star Vanessa Redgrave two roles that are far more powerful than most recently available to women. Fonda plays Hellman, and Redgrave plays Hellman's friend Julia, a committed antifascist. The movie opens Oct. 3, and TIME Los Angeles Bureau Chief William Rademaekers talked to Fonda about it and about her life today...