Julia (1977)

While the young playwright Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) is struggling with writing her first play (which would be THE CHILDREN'S HOUR), her best friend since childhood Julia (Vanessa Redgrave in her Oscar winning performance) studies medicine in Vienna. The rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe draws Julia into the resistance movement. But the friends will meet once more under extraordinary circumstances. Based on Hellman's "memoir" called PENTIMENTO, it's generally now believed that the character of Julia and the incidents in the book are entirely fictional. Why Hellman placed herself in a fictionalized WWII adventure is anybody's guess but it's irrelevant whether it's true or not because it makes for a great tale. It's traditional old fashioned film making (it could have come out of 1940s Warners with Bette Davis and Olivia De Havilland), certainly out of step with what American cinema was about at the time with film makers like Scorsese, Coppola and Spielberg emerging but director Fred Zinnemann's solid craftsmanship is what the film needs. The anticipation of seeing two of the greatest actresses of their generation acting together is muted for most of the film because there's nothing to play until their final scene in a restaurant and Fonda is excellent but Redgrave is positively luminous. Douglas Slocombe's cinematography is quite elegant (almost too elegant) while George Delerue's underscore is a bit of a disappointment. With Jason Robards as the writer Dashiell Hammett, Maximilian Schell, Hal Holbrook, Rosemary Murphy, Cathleen Nesbitt, Dora Doll, John Glover and in her film debut, Meryl Streep.