Lillian Hellman wrote some great, nuanced plays in her life, so it's odd her own life story is written so flatly and unevenly. While the acting is good, there is no arc or drama in the whole movie. (Spoiler) The introduction and original title of the memoir hints at that there is a chance she will "repent" and change her mind, betraying her friend or something like that...but we know she won't, or else there is no movie (it's one of those films where you know exactly how every character will play out in the first five minutes). That would have made a more interesting film, but Julia is essentially a spy-caper with a Dashiell Hammett cameo. Instead the movie builds to a dramatic point where the protagonist stumbles into an anti-climactic money-smuggling ring on a train. And the then her friend dies and never tells where her baby is.We don't even know whether there is a baby at all or if that was just a ploy to smuggle one more kid out of Nazi Germany (which would have made a more interesting plot point: a dogmatic woman disavowing her past and social conventions, manipulating and duping her weaker friend in emotional blackmail, adopting a needy orphan) but that's clearly not how it was intended to be interpreted. It's so po-faced and morally pristine the only characters I really enjoyed were the two scumbag incestuous aristocrats played by John Glover and Meryl Streep.

A very watchable movie with so many beautiful faces from so many good pictures. And it all seemed calculated to win an award but not make a great film. Every bit of suspense possible in a routine story was squeezed out by Director Fred Z, and the romping about of two pretty girls had a charm all its own, and amounted to more that what it was worth to the story. It was my first viewing on TCM last night, and I see no reason to return to it. Mr. Robards and Ms. Redgrave are outstanding actors, but their work in this picture was pedestrian and not worthy of Oscars. I looked for Meryl Streep's touted debut performance, but it sneaked by me. From what I've read, it was a tall story told by Ms Hellman, and perhaps too tall to fit between an opening and final scene.

"Julia" holds a special place in my heart. It was one of the first times I read a screenplay before seeing the film and was completely enthralled -- in suspense and moved to tears. Notice how characterization drives the slowly building suspense culminating in a fantastic third act devoid of pyrotechnics or gimmicks. (Never mind that the story is almost 100% fiction; this is adaptation at its finest.)A well-deserved Oscar-winner for Alvin Sargent, the script belongs on any screen writing student's bookshelf alongside "Chinatown" and "Ordinary People" two other Oscar-winners from the era. Confession - by "era" I mean from my USC screen writing class, where I also read terrific scripts like "Marathon Man" (the Hoffman-Devane-Keller lunch scene a textbook example of "reversal" writing), "Breaking Away" and "Cutter's Way."

This was the penultimate film of the long directorial career of Fred Zinnemann, whose many triumphs have so enriched cinema history. This film is a superb evocation of a true story from the life of Lillian Hellman, as recounted in the volume of her memoirs entitled PENTIMENTO. Although Lillian Hellman was no beauty, she is played by the glamorous Jane Fonda, an amusing and flattering touch. Hellman's close friend Julia, for whom Hellman has the deepest possible emotional attachment, is played by Vanessa Redgrave, who is as usual inspired and brilliant. We see Hellman struggling pathetically to write and rewrite her play THE CHILDREN'S HOUR, staying in a beach house apparently at the Hamptons with her husband Dashiell Hammett (played by Jason Robards, Junior), a much older and successful author of mystery novels, such as THE THIN MAN. While this is happening, Hellmann's friend Julia has gone to Europe to struggle against Nazism in the resistance movement. The film skirts over Hellmann's own political affiliations, so that from the film one might think that she held no strong partisan views. The truth is that Hellmann was a passionate member of the United States Communist Party, as I discovered long ago when I was editing some of the unpublished private papers of the late James Agee. Agee described in some of his autobiographical notes being taken to some Communist Party meetings in New York City by a friend who wanted him to join. He records that Hellmann was there on those occasions, and was a very keen and dedicated member. (Agee himself never joined.) In order to see the story of this film in a true perspective, one must know this. In the story, Hellmann undertakes a risky trip to Europe to pass money to Julia in order to help 'the Cause'. The film portrays her as a naïve and apolitical person doing this out of love and friendship. I am sure she did it out of love and friendship, but I am also sure she did it as a political activist herself. So let's get the historical record a little straighter. Whether Fred Zinnemann knew about that or not is impossible to say, and the fact that Hellmann was alive at the time the film was made would have made it impossible for him to get the political story accurate anyway. The film is a very powerful drama, and if I appear to quibble over a detail of the motivation of the characters' actions, it is only to fill out the historical record. Certainly the film is a magnificent achievement and very moving.