HYBRID IN-PERSON AND ONLINE PROGRAM

Julia (Fred Zinnemann, 1977, 117min.)

Linda DeLibero, senior lecturer and special advocate for alumni and outreach, and former director of the JHU film and media studies program

Not long after Lillian Hellman's death, literary sleuths verified what many observers had long suspected: that the narrative in "Julia," a chapter from the playwright's 1973 best-selling memoir Pentimento, was false. Hellman had coopted the story of a living woman she didn't personally know, inventing her friendship with the eponymous Resistance fighter out of whole cloth. Likewise, her own role in aiding Julia's cause was a lie. Perhaps this is why the film based on that vexed material is an unjustly neglected gem, unjust because even as a fiction (perhaps because it is a fiction), the movie positively glows with a multitude of treasures: superb performances by Jason Robards as Hellman's lover, Dashiell Hammett, and a luminous Vanessa Redgrave as Julia (both Robards and Redgrave won Oscars); Meryl Streep's first screen role as Hellman's viperish nemesis; a brilliant edge-of-your-seat episode involving Hellman's dangerous journey through Nazi Germany; Douglas Slocombe's richly evocative cinematography; and of course, a gripping performance by Jane Fonda herself as Hellman. Most of all, the film was ground-breaking in its portrayal of a phenomenon that is still all too rare in Hollywood film: the story of a deep and vital friendship between two women, as nuanced and loving as any that's graced the screen, true story or not. 

The summer film series is created in partnership with The Renaissance Institute.

$10 fee for guests or $40 for six films (No fee for ASG/RI members, or ASG subscribers)