Julia

1977 was a very competitive year for Oscars. Nominees for best picture included The Turning Point, The Goodbye Girl, Star Wars, Annie Hall (the eventual winner), and this film directed by Fred Zinnemann (High Noon, From Here to Eternity, A Man for All Seasons).

The movie is based on one of the stories told in Lillian Hellman’s Pentimento. The opening of the film explains the title of the author’s memoir. We see the elderly Hellman (literally – it is the writer in the boat here and at the end of the story), and we hear Jane Fonda, who plays the author, talking about how a painter may alter what he was going to depict, and painted over a previous work. But, sometimes the earlier images are seen through the later work. Here are Hellman’s words:

Old paint on 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.

Hellman uses this artistic term as a metaphor for memory. Old thoughts and images mentally buried under other experiences are excavated and brought to the surface by the writer. She says, “I wanted to see for me what was there for me once, and what is there for me now.” Zinnemann then shows a cinematic representation of this artistic effect by presenting a train pulling out of a station against the water on which Hellman’s boat floats. The train will later be part of Hellman’s journey to Berlin. In fact, the entire movie depicts flashbacks to emphasize the resurgence of memories. Hellman admits that memory can be faulty, but she absolutely trusts what she remembers about her friend, Julia.

The two were friends since adolescence. Lilly would visit Julia at her rich grandparents’ mansion around the holidays. Julia’s elderly relatives are unapproachably stiff and formal in their strict adherence to etiquette. Julia’s mother is never around, associating with affluent types in Europe. When Lilly asks her about one of Julia’s visits to Scotland, her friend says she doesn’t “remember.” There were just many “fancy” people.  It is noteworthy that in a story about memory we are shown was is forgettable – the kind of people F. Scott Fitzgerald labeled as the careless rich in The Great Gatsby.

One of the flashbacks shows a young Julia incensed by the apathy of her relatives toward the sick in Cairo, and the unhealthy living conditions of the poverty-stricken workers in her mother’s home in Scotland. This early concern for the physical well-being of the oppressed is probably why Julia studies to be a doctor. She became an example for Lilly to follow. When they were young, Julia crosses a rushing river by walking over a twisty tree trunk. Lilly is afraid, and Julia tells her to go below and find a safe passage. Lilly tries the difficult way, stumbles, and is rescued by Julia. She tells Lilly that she will be able to make it on her own the next time. 

The “next time” appears when Lilly is an adult. The main narrative of the movie is set at the time of the rise of Nazi Germany. When she visits Paris on her way to a play festival in Moscow, a Nazi resistance associate of Julia confronts Lilly at her hotel. The man, Mr. Johann (Maximilian Schell), tells her that her friend wants Lilly to secretly transport Julia’s money to Berlin on her way to Russia. The cash will be used to secure the release of Jews and political prisoners through bribes. It can be dangerous for Lilly, since she is Jewish. Julia had once told Lilly to “work hard, take chances, be very bold.” But just as she told her that she didn’t have to take the dangerous way across the water, Julia told Johann to warn Lilly that sometimes “she is afraid of being afraid.” So, he tells Lilly if she feels that she “cannot do it, don’t do it.” Her confusion over knowing the depth of her courage is noted by her lover, writer Dashiell Hammett (played by Jason Robards in a supporting Oscar winning performance) in an earlier scene when he tells her that she is really the neighborhood bulldog but thinks she is a cocker spaniel. She hesitantly agrees to transport the money. While running toward the train, she stumbles, just like she did when she tried to cross the river. So, that earlier crossing is echoed here where she must find the courage to make this more meaningful crossing into dangerous territory.

Lilly succeeds in her task, but she is definitely not a convincing covert operative. She has the help of two resistance passengers, but must be reminded of when to wear the hat that contains the money and what to do with the box of chocolates she is given. When she has a brief rendezvous with Julia at a restaurant in Berlin to drop off the money, it is a heartbreaking scene. It amplifies the feelings between the two. Julia lost her leg in an attack by the Nazi youth at the college in Vienna. She tells her friend that she now has a baby, who she has significantly named Lilly. She plans on going to New York for a new leg and wants Lilly to take care of her baby, who is currently in Alsace with a baker’s family. But this is not a happy tale. Julia is murdered. Lilly tries desperately to find out about the baby, but her attempts to find her through Julia’s resistance contacts end in failure. Hammett tells her that her comrades only used Julia for her money and didn’t care about the baby, who was probably dead.

Lilly has an on-again, off-again relationship with the older and famous Hammett (The Maltese Falcon). The story begins with her living with him on Cape Cod as she is working on her first play, The Children’s Hour. The movie is effective in showing the ups and downs of the writer’s life, mostly in very quick images. Lilly rips pages out of the typewriter, throws the machine out of the window, talks to herself while walking along the beach, and is told by Hammett to throw away an early draft. She eventually becomes famous, but is reminded by Hammett that notoriety is just “a paint job. It has nothing to do with writing.”

Despite Hammett’s help, the men in this film are not as reliable as are the women. Hammett tells Lilly to go to Paris without him to work on her play, and later does not travel with her to Europe and Moscow. He is not there for the opening night of her play on Broadway. It is suggested that he has affairs with other women. The father of Julia’s baby is not important to her and didn’t want anything to do with the child. Although the relationship between the two women is shown as platonic, in Lily’s narration she says that Julia had “the most beautiful face I have ever seen.” She hugs her and tells her that she loves her.

This film is primarily a story about the empowering, loving relationship between two women, and overcoming one’s fear to find the courage to unselfishly commit to helping people in need.

Next week’s movie is I want to Live!

Long Day's Journey into Night

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

You might feel like you spent a whole day watching this film. It comes in just under three hours. Well, Eugene O’Neill was not known for being brief. Some critics have criticized this 1962 screen version of the play, directed by Sidney Lumet, for being “stagy.” I would have to disagree. Yes, we are talking about basically a four character story set at a beach house. But Lumet starts the story of the Tyrone family outside, near the water. The first object we see is the sun, its burning rays bearing down on the earth, hinting at the long day to come. To me the use of the illuminating sun as the first image presented is ironic, since this family doesn’t really want to see the truths surrounding their lives. At one point, the son Edmond (Dean Stockwell) says, “Who wants to see life as it is if you can help it.”

Lumet uses close-ups to zero in on characters as they are showcased while going through their ruminations. He says in his book, Making Movies, if you viewed close-ups of the actors at the start of the movie and then at the end, “you’d be shocked at how different they look. The ravaged, worn, exhausted faces at the end have almost nothing to do with the composed, clean faces at the beginning. It wasn’t only acting. This was also accomplished by lenses, light, camera position, and length of takes.” This effect emphasizes the toll this day (which is symbolic of the many days of their lives) exacts on the family members.

Let’s look at the individual characters. The matriarch, Mary (Katherine Hepburn) has been morphine-addicted since the birth of Edmund. She was institutionalized, and her husband and sons worry that at any moment she will relapse (which she does). Gong to the “spare room” is the signal that she is isolating herself from the family (a spare room is not used by family members) so she can shoot up. The drug addiction is a literal and figurative escape from reality. She, as do the others, blame their problems on other family members, instead of taking a hard look at themselves. Mary says it is her other son’s fault, Jamie (Jason Robards, Jr.) for having the measles that infected a third child, who eventually died. She says it was Edmond’s fault for bringing a birth too soon after the death of a child that led to her addiction. She refuses to accept the fact that Edmond has tuberculosis, and slaps him when he tries to make her realize he doesn’t just have “a summer cold.” She accuses her sons and her husband, James (Ralph Richardson), the traveling actor, for having lives outside of the home, leaving her alone. But, she has made the house a prison for herself. The fog at the beginning is symbolic of her inability to see the truth about her life. The fog horn is used repeatedly (for instance when they all are drinking alcohol) to show how the family is like a boat trying to navigate a self-imposed obscurity to the truth. Lumet says in his book that he used longer and longer lenses on Hepburn to show the character’s slipping “into her dope-ridden fog.”

The pretentious father, James, is also in a state of delusion. He was an actor of some note who invents statements about his theatrical abilities. He blames his sons’ wandering ways on their lack of commitment to the Catholic faith instead of taking responsibility as their father. He tries to limit the consumption of alcohol by the boys, but he drinks a great deal stating it is for medicinal purposes. He champions the importance of the family, but he was absent much of the time and was unfaithful to his wife.

Jamie drinks to excess, visits brothels, and generally has no stability in his life. He wants to blame his father and mother for his cynical and pessimistic view of the world, but again, does not take any personal responsibility. Edmond became a sailor to escape the family. He talks of a nirvana-like experience while at sea. He felt part of everything else, achieving self-obliteration, and not feeling at home at any one place. It is appropriate that he is the one suffering from “consumption,” since his individuality has been wasting away. The father blames Jamie for corrupting Edmond, but the latter allows his brother’s influence to take hold of him.

In the end, the characters start to confront the truth about themselves. For instance, Jamie confesses his love/hate relationship with Edmond (which is sort of how they all feel about each other) when he tells him that he wanted to corrupt his brother. He didn’t want Edmond to be the preferred son of the parents. Lumet says, “As the scenes progress and the truth becomes more and more agonizing, the lenses get wider and wider, the camera gets lower and lower, the light harsher but darker, as the whole story of these people gets wrapped in night and the final terrible truths are articulated.”

As I said, a long day indeed.

Next week’s movie is The Graduate.