Word: hellman
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Julia, based on a section of Lillian Hellman's autobiographical book, "Pentimento," is a sensitive, occasionally self-conscious story of Hellman's lifelong friendship with a woman she calls Julia. The film recounts the girls' adolescent escapades while revealing the foundations of the political beliefs that will eventually take Julia from medical school at Oxford to a workers' community in Vienna. The women are separated through most of their lives; but Julia's need for Hellman's aid in her anti-fascist activities prior to World War II reunite them, with repercussions that even a writer of dime store...
Julia settles in Vienna while Lillian throws temper tantrums about writing blocks in her oceanside home and dramatically suffers through her first failures and successes. Cantankerous Dashiell Hammett, Hellman's long-term lover (Jason Robards), calmly listens as Hellman agonizes over such moral dilemmas as whether to contribute part of her unexpectedly large royalties to a good political cause or to buy a sable coat. (We never rind out which she opts...
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...
Redgrave is on the screen less frequently than Fonda but her appearances are memorable. She sensitively captures Julia's evolution from a headstrong stylish socialist to a committed antifascist who sacrifices her life not on impulse but after careful consideration. Hellman's character is relatively more static, and when she risks her life by smuggling funds for Julia's group into Germany-- Hellman is Jewish--we are never sure whether she is acting out of political commitment, love for Julia, or simply because she was afraid to display cowardice by refusing her friend's plea. In fact, if the details...
...flaws. Although Zinnemann occasionally lapses into such cliches as juxtaposing plush hotels with Nazi terror to make statements about inequality--a gimmick that should have gone out with War and Peace--his direction is usually sound and the cast generally rises above any momentary awkwardness. To some, Lillian Hellman is a heroic cult figure; to others she is a commercialized martyr. In Julia, though, she is simply human, retracing in her memory a cherished portrait...