Technicolor Portraits

Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter "repented," changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again.

IN 1873, EDOUARD MANET painted At the Railroad Station; four years later Claude Monet painted a similar scene. Manet chose to depict two pretty women sitting under a sunny sky with the station creating a bland industrial backdrop. Monet omitted the smiling women, painting only the dark, smoky blue train station; and the opening shot of Julia is a technicolor replica of his ominous image--an image that is repeated frequently throughout the film. Julia is the story of Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) and her childhood friend (Vanessa Redgrave) whom she christens "Julia," who together lost the insular beauty of their adolescence as the Third Reich came into power.

Exactly a century after Manet painted his picture, Hellman published Pentimento, a series of autobiographical vignettes. Julia's story, included in the book, is at times both sentimentally nostalgic and self-righteous, but Hellman recounts it without becoming offensive. In this filmed version, Alvin Sargent's adaptation and Fred Zinnemann's direction usually retain Hellman's balance. At times, however, the women's deep friendship becomes cloying, subtly but soppily suggesting an adolescent lesbian relationship, an implication Hellman worked to avoid. And in the movie Hellman-and-Julia's admittedly courageous antifascist actions are presented as historically unequalled acts of heroism.

Julia and Hellman met in their early teens and remained close friends until Julia's death. The scenes of their childhood games, their visits to Julia's family estate and their austere dinners with Julia's wealthy Upper East Side grandparents-- who serve sherbet at dinner after eating fish to clear the palate before the meat course--are among the best in the movie. In these sequences, the basis for the girls' later actions is established. Julia becomes innocently but intensely aware of the inequalities that will attract her to a workers' community in Vienna, shaking her head sorrowfully as she realizes that Hellman has not yet begun to understand why Julia cannot live comfortably in her Scottish palace.

Julia settles in Vienna while Lillian throws temper tantrums about writing blocks in her oceanside home and dramatically suffers through her first failures and successes. Cantankerous Dashiell Hammett, Hellman's long-term lover (Jason Robards), calmly listens as Hellman agonizes over such moral dilemmas as whether to contribute part of her unexpectedly large royalties to a good political cause or to buy a sable coat. (We never rind out which she opts for.)

MOST OF THE TIME, Fonda portrays the writer just as one might envision the temperamental chain smoker. Occasionally, however, Hellman's stubborn scowls become Fonda's cute pouts and Robards's subtle understatements make Fonda seem even shriller. Fonda has her moments of glory, though, particularly as she confronts Broadway sycophants and awaits Hammett's judgments on her work, revealing the underlying dependence upon the older man she spent so much of her energy denying.

Redgrave is on the screen less frequently than Fonda but her appearances are memorable. She sensitively captures Julia's evolution from a headstrong stylish socialist to a committed antifascist who sacrifices her life not on impulse but after careful consideration. Hellman's character is relatively more static, and when she risks her life by smuggling funds for Julia's group into Germany-- Hellman is Jewish--we are never sure whether she is acting out of political commitment, love for Julia, or simply because she was afraid to display cowardice by refusing her friend's plea. In fact, if the details of Hammett's imprisonment and both writers' blacklisting during the McCarthy era were not well known, a viewer of Julia could justifiably conclude that Hellman's actions stemmed not from conviction but from affection.

IN THE END, JULIA's strengths much outweigh its flaws. Although Zinnemann occasionally lapses into such cliches as juxtaposing plush hotels with Nazi terror to make statements about inequality--a gimmick that should have gone out with War and Peace--his direction is usually sound and the cast generally rises above any momentary awkwardness. To some, Lillian Hellman is a heroic cult figure; to others she is a commercialized martyr. In Julia, though, she is simply human, retracing in her memory a cherished portrait.