JULIA (1977)

When Mary McCarthy, author of THE GROUP, said of Lillian Hellman (on The Dick Cavett Show) ‘I think every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the,’ she might well have had Hellman’s late memoir PENTIMENTO in mind. The slim book, which includes the JULIA story, is one of the best things she ever wrote (including the plays), but also something of a tall tale, its veracity believably challenged. Especially so in regards to ‘Julia,’ probably based on Dr. Muriel ‘Mary’ Gardiner, still living when the book came out and with no known past or present association with Hellman. A problem for a book of personal memoirs. Less so for a ‘Based On A True Story’ film, code for largely fiction. How much Hellman’s self-serving fabulist tendencies matter, a debate best left to literary ethicists; we'll stick with ‘fact-inspired’ or ‘fact-suggested. And on those terms, this Fred Zinnemann film gets just about everything right. Vanessa Redgrave, at her most goddessy, is Julia, the WASPy rich, politically motivated life-long friend of budding playwright Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda). So when Julia goes missing in pre-WWII Berlin, Hellman tries contacting her from Paris, only to be contacted herself by members of Julia’s left-wing underground resistance group with a dangerous offer: smuggling cash across the border. A dicey assignment for a Jewish-American tourist in the late ‘30s. The film gets the look and tone almost magically right, while Zinnemann paces the edgy set pieces and character-building flashbacks like nobody’s business. Alvin Sargent’s script over-eggs Hellman’s shortcomings as Madame Spy, but then she’s so terrified at what she’s agreed to do you can just believe it. Fonda, an uneven actress, especially in prestige items (see ON GOLDEN POND/’81), is near her best here. Too bad she’s surrounded by actors with an easy emotional access that confounds her more limited talent, forcing her to work for every effect while Redgrave, Jason Robards as her partner Dashiell Hammett, Hal Holbrook & Rosemary Murphy as Alan Campbell & Dorothy Parker, Maximilian Schell in an exceptional character turn, even a debuting Meryl Streep have to be careful not to roll right over her. All given rapturous glow or suspenseful shadow by cinematographer Douglas Slocombe on some sort of all-time career high.* And Zinnemann’s patient craft, so rare in today’s studio offerings, adding to a sense of loss & melancholy reflected in the film’s final, perfectly composed tableau.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: *In his charming, modest auto-bio, Zinnemann, praises Slocombe, particularly in regard to Fonda & Redgrave, noting that ‘Next to a mountain, a woman is the hardest thing to photograph.’

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Zinnemann’s first A-list directing gig also involved someone on the run from Nazi authorities, THE SEVENTH CROSS/’44 with Spencer Tracy as an escaped P.O.W. It’s just okay, and hard to imagine a more different sort of film. OR: The hit play Hellman works on for much of the film is THE CHILDREN’S HOUR. Filmed twice by William Wyler: as THESE THREE/’36 without its ‘daring’ lesbian angle, then ‘with’ in ‘61 under the original title.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/05/these-three-1936.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-childrens-hour-1961.html