Julia (1977 film)

Julia

Theatrical release poster by Richard Amsel
Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Produced by Richard Roth
Screenplay by Alvin Sargent
Based on Pentimento
1973 story Julia 
by Lillian Hellman
Starring Jane Fonda
Vanessa Redgrave
Jason Robards
Hal Holbrook
Rosemary Murphy
and
Maximilian Schell
Music by Georges Delerue
Cinematography Douglas Slocombe
Edited by Walter Murch
Marcel Durham
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release dates
  • October 2, 1977
Running time
 118 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $7.84 million[1]
Box office $20,714,400[2]

Julia is a 1977 drama film directed by Fred Zinnemann, from a screenplay by Alvin Sargent. It is based on Lillian Hellman's book Pentimento, a chapter of which purports to tell the story of her relationship with an alleged lifelong friend, "Julia," who fought against the Nazis in the years prior to World War II. The film in DeLuxe Color was produced by Richard Roth, with Julien Derode as executive producer and Tom Pevsner as associate producer.

Julia was received positively from the critics and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Fred Zinnemann and Best Actress for Jane Fonda. It ended up winning three awards, Best Supporting Actor for Jason Robards, Best Supporting Actress for Vanessa Redgrave, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Alvin Sargent's script. Julia was the first film to win both supporting actor categories since The Last Picture Show six years earlier in 1971, and would be followed by Hannah and Her Sisters nine years later in 1986.

Plot

The young Lillian and the young Julia, daughter of a wealthy family being brought up by her grandparents in the U.S., enjoy a childhood together and an extremely close relationship in late adolescence. Later, while medical student/physician Julia (Vanessa Redgrave) attends Oxford and the University of Vienna and studies with such luminaries as Sigmund Freud, Lillian (Jane Fonda), a struggling writer, suffers through revisions of her play with her mentor and sometime lover, famed author Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards) at a beachhouse.

After becoming a celebrated playwright, Lillian is invited to a writers' conference in Russia. Julia, having taken on the battle against Nazism, enlists Lillian en route to smuggle money through Nazi Germany which will assist in the anti-Nazi cause. It is a dangerous mission, especially for a Jewish intellectual on her way to Russia.

During a brief meeting with Julia on this trip, Lillian learns that her friend has a child named Lily, living with a baker in Alsace. Shortly after her return to the United States, Lillian is informed of Julia's murder. The details of her death are shrouded in secrecy. Lillian unsuccessfully looks for Julia's daughter in Alsace and also discovers that Julia's family wants nothing to do with the child, if she exists. They even pretend not to remember Lillian, clearly wanting to excise the embarrassment of Julia from their lives.

Cast

Production

The film was shot on location in England and France. Although Lillian Hellman claimed the story was based on true events that occurred early in her life, the filmmakers later came to believe that most of it was fictionalized. Director Fred Zinnemann would later comment, "Lillian Hellman in her own mind owned half the Spanish Civil War, while Hemingway owned the other half. She would portray herself in situations that were not true. An extremely talented, brilliant writer, but she was a phony character, I'm sorry to say. My relations with her were very guarded and ended in pure hatred."[3]

Julia features the first film performances of Meryl Streep and Lisa Pelikan.

Reception

The film earned $13,050,000 in North American rentals.[4]

Awards

Academy Awards:

Academy Award nominations:

After Redgrave was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, the Jewish Defense League objected to her nomination because she had narrated and helped fund a documentary entitled "The Palestinian," which supported a Palestinian state. They also picketed the Oscar ceremony.

Accepting her Academy Award, Redgrave said:

“ My dear colleagues, I thank you very much for this tribute to my work. I think that Jane Fonda and I have done the best work of our lives, and I think this is in part due to our director, Fred Zinnemann.

And I also think it's in part because we believed and we believe in what we were expressing--two out of millions who gave their lives and were prepared to sacrifice everything in the fight against fascist and racist Nazi Germany.

And I salute you, and I pay tribute to you, and I think you should be very proud that in the last few weeks you've stood firm, and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behaviour is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression.

And I salute that record and I salute all of you for having stood firm and dealt a final blow against that period when Nixon and McCarthy launched a worldwide witch-hunt against those who tried to express in their lives and their work the truth that they believe in. I salute you and I thank you and I pledge to you that I will continue to fight against anti-Semitism and fascism.

 ”

It also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film.

References

  1. ↑ Aubrey Solomon, Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History, Scarecrow Press, 1989 p258
  2. ↑ "Julia (1977) (1977)". Box Office Mojo. 1977-10-02. Retrieved 2013-01-21.
  3. ↑ ''Fred Zinnemann: interviews'', University Press of Mississippi (2005) p156. Books.google.com. Retrieved 2013-01-21.
  4. ↑ Solomon p 234
  5. ↑ Marcel Durham is listed as an editor for the film in some credit listings for Julia, including the credits database of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS). However, he is not listed as a nominee for the Academy Award in the AMPAS awards database; see "Academy Awards Database - 50th (1977)". Retrieved 2014-02-19.

External links

Awards
Preceded by
The Last Picture Show		 Academy Award winner for
Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress 		Succeeded by
Hannah and Her Sisters