A Convoluted Memoir of the '30s

By Frank Rich

JULIA. Directed by Fred Zinnemann. Screenplay by Alvin Sargent

On paper, Julia sounds like an exemplary American film. In sharp contrast to 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.

Julia's problems trace back to its source, a Lillian Hellman story that appeared in her 1973 memoir, Pentimento.

Whatever its virtues, this elliptical tale is risky movie material: a brief meditation on the author's 20-year relationship with a wealthy childhood friend who ultimately died fighting European fascism, Julia is short on plot and jumps around in time.

Curiously enough, the film's creators have not addressed themselves to the cinematic challenges that Julia raises. Instead, they misguidedly reproduce Hellman's convoluted narrative, all the while padding the story with superfluous scenes that add literal-minded psychological footnotes to the action. The movie that emerges is a glossy bio flick that superficially charts the rise of Lillian Hellman, Young Leftist Playwright.

The 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 performances crystallize. Fonda's Hellman, who has previously come across as a rather abrasive ninny, suddenly becomes a figure of some substance and courage. Redgrave's Julia--who is generally shortchanged by the film--metamorphoses into a complete revolutionary; her calm voice and flaming eyes convey both the serenity and passion of the true believer.

The rest of the time, Julia is mired in its maker's mistakes of aesthetic judgment. The many flashbacks to the heroines' girlhood days have more to do with the conventions of old-fashioned movies than with the characters' relationship.

The bland scenes that dwell on Hellman's love affair with Writer Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards) are as cryptic as they are irrelevant. Meanwhile, other poorly delineated supporting characters prance around without apparent purpose.

Perhaps to give Julia the aura of art, Zinnemann has dotted the film with pretty recurring images, and they are superbly rendered by Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe. But this is artiness, not art.

Though Julia is all dressed up to be a great movie, it never figures out how to get where it wants to go. -- Frank Rich

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