Word: julia
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Exactly a century after Manet painted his picture, Hellman published Pentimento, a series of autobiographical vignettes. Julia's story, included in the book, is at times both sentimentally nostalgic and self-righteous, but Hellman recounts it without becoming offensive. In this filmed version, Alvin Sargent's adaptation and Fred Zinnemann's direction usually retain Hellman's balance. At times, however, the women's deep friendship becomes cloying, subtly but soppily suggesting an adolescent lesbian relationship, an implication Hellman worked to avoid. And in the movie Hellman-and-Julia's admittedly courageous antifascist actions are presented as historically unequalled acts...
...Julia and Hellman met in their early teens and remained close friends until Julia's death. The scenes of their childhood games, their visits to Julia's family estate and their austere dinners with Julia's wealthy Upper East Side grandparents-- who serve sherbet at dinner after eating fish to clear the palate before the meat course--are among the best in the movie. In these sequences, the basis for the girls' later actions is established. Julia becomes innocently but intensely aware of the inequalities that will attract her to a workers' community in Vienna, shaking her head sorrowfully...
...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...
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...
...JULIA's strengths much outweigh its 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...