---
title: "Julia"
year: 1977
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/julia"
fi1m_score: 60
critics_score: 57
critics_reviews: 6
published: "2026-09-20T05:56:56.146735+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-20T05:56:56.424492+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Julia (1977)

Directed by Fred Zinnemann · 1h 57m · MPA PG · Drama, History

**Fi1m score: 60** · Critics 57 from 6 reviews

*In a sentence:* Jane Fonda spends two hours remembering a woman the film never quite lets us meet

> Fred Zinnemann’s film of Lillian Hellman’s memoir is beautifully lit, carefully dressed and full of good actors, and it keeps its central friendship at arm’s length. One train journey and one scene across a table are worth the wait; the rest is respectful.

## Synopsis

An older Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) sits alone in a rowing boat and remembers. In the 1930s she is a young writer stuck on a play at a beach house she shares with Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards), who reads her pages, tells her they are no good and pours another drink. Between drafts she thinks of Julia (Vanessa Redgrave), the rich, serious friend of her childhood, who has gone to Oxford and then to Vienna to study medicine and has thrown herself into the fight against the fascists there. When word comes that Julia has been hurt in the street fighting, Lillian sets out for Europe to find her. Julia’s world of politics and danger is about to reach for Lillian too.

## Review

Fred Zinnemann takes one chapter of Lillian Hellman’s memoir *Pentimento* and gives it 117 minutes, a first-rate cast and the most careful period dressing 1977 could provide. Alvin Sargent’s screenplay treats the friendship between Hellman and Julia as something close to sacred, and that is the trouble. Julia is admired, missed, worried about and remembered, and she is hardly ever simply there. The film is handsome and honourable, and for long stretches it is oddly hard to care about.

Jane Fonda is better than the part. She plays Hellman as a woman who is nervous about her own talent and rude to cover it, and her scenes with Jason Robards are the liveliest in the film. Robards gives Dashiell Hammett a slow, gravelled patience, reading her pages by the fire and telling her to throw them away, and the two of them behave like a couple who have argued before and will again. Rosemary Murphy’s Dorothy Parker arrives at a party with a drink and a cruelty, Hal Holbrook’s Alan hovers beside her, and for a few minutes the film has the sharpness of the people it is about.

Then it remembers Julia, and softens. Vanessa Redgrave has the rare gift of appearing to believe every word she says, and she gives Julia a lit-up seriousness that explains why a girl like Lillian would follow her anywhere. Zinnemann, though, photographs her like a monument. The childhood scenes, with Lisa Pelikan as the young Julia striding through the grounds of her grandparents’ house while Cathleen Nesbitt’s grandmother disapproves from a distance, are pretty and tell us very little about what these two saw in each other. We are told the friendship was the great fact of Hellman’s life. We are seldom shown it.

The craft is of a high, hushed standard. Douglas Slocombe lights the beach house and the childhood in a soft honey colour, lamps and low sun through windows, and saves his cold whites for the Vienna hospital and his greys for the railway stations. Anthea Sylbert puts Fonda in the tailored, slightly mannish jackets of a woman who works and Redgrave in plain, dark coats that cost nothing to look at. Willy Holt, Gene Callahan and Carmen Dillon rebuild the 1930s without a wrong ashtray. Georges Delerue’s score is piano and strings, mournful from the first bar, and it tells us the story is sad well before anything sad has happened. Marcel Durham and Walter Murch move between decades slowly, so the film drifts where it might have pushed.

And then, for twenty minutes or so, it does push. Lillian boards a train for Berlin with a hatbox and a fur hat, sharing a compartment with two strangers, Dora Doll and Elisabeth Mortensen, who may be helping her or watching her, and border officials who take their time with her passport. We were properly tense, hands tight in our laps, in a way nothing before it had prepared us for. This is the Zinnemann of [*High Noon*](https://film.one/film/high-noon) (1952): a clock, one frightened person, a small object that must not be opened. The scene that follows, across a table with Redgrave, quick and careful and over too soon, moved us more than the preceding ninety minutes had earned, and it moved us largely because Redgrave was at last allowed to be a person rather than a memory.

Maximilian Schell has one good scene as Johann, the messenger who asks Lillian a question she would rather not have been asked. Meryl Streep, in what the reviews of the time noted as her first film, gets a single party scene as Anne Marie, a gossip with a bright, hard smile, and she is memorable in about three minutes. John Glover’s Sammy is the sort of drunk who says the thing nobody else will.

Against Zinnemann’s own best work this is the quiet one. [*From Here to Eternity*](https://film.one/film/from-here-to-eternity) (1953) and [*A Man for All Seasons*](https://film.one/film/a-man-for-all-seasons) (1966) are films in which people argue for their lives in front of us. *Julia* is a film in which one woman remembers another, tenderly and at a distance, and the tenderness gets in the way of the drama. Watch it for Fonda and Robards at the beach house, for the train, and for the few minutes Redgrave is given. It runs 117 minutes and carries a PG, and it is the most respectable film about danger we can think of.

*Fi1m score 60, published 20 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

The reviews split down the middle, and the praise that exists clusters around the acting and the surface. Vanessa Redgrave’s Julia is singled out most often, with Fonda and Robards close behind, and even the doubters concede that Fred Zinnemann’s production is handsome, tasteful and literate, with the 1930s recreated in careful detail.

The reservations are about what all that care costs. Most critics find the film too controlled to breathe: composed, solemn and reverential where it might have been alive. The commonest complaint is that the friendship at the centre never takes hold on screen, with Roger Ebert arguing that Lillian is shown admiring a distant figure rather than knowing a person, and Time Out adding that Hellman’s own forceful personality barely registers. Pauline Kael likens the images to picture postcards of a national monument. The spread is wide, from warm approval to plain disappointment, and the dissenters are the more prominent names.

### Reviews we read (6)

- **Variety** (85/100, inferred): Fred Zinnemann's superbly sensitive film explores Lillian Hellman's anti-Nazi awakening through her friendship with Julia, highlighted by Vanessa Redgrave's excellent characterization. The handsome, tasteful production features a literate screenplay and strong period recreation. [Read](https://variety.com/1976/film/reviews/julia-1200423977/)
- **Radio Times**, Tom Hutchinson (4/5): Zinnemann's sensitive adaptation of Lillian Hellman's memoir focuses on friendship, courage and awareness of the Nazi threat in the 1930s. The film excels through strong performances from Fonda, Oscar-winning Redgrave and Robards, with Streep making her debut. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-ie81ry/julia/)
- **The New Yorker**, Pauline Kael (50/100, inferred): Zinnemann's classical humanist approach produces perfectly lighted, composed images that feel like static picture postcards of a national monument. The conservative moviemaking works out every detail but leaves the film overly controlled and lacking spontaneity. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1977/10/10/a-woman-for-all-seasons)
- **The New York Times**, Vincent Canby (45/100, inferred): The adaptation amplifies the story with solemn care and good taste but results in a well-meaning yet largely lifeless film, except for a handful of scenes. It tells too much and not enough about the central friendship. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1977/10/03/archives/julia-tries-to-define-friendshipjane-fonda-stars-with-vanessa.html)
- **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (40/100, inferred): The film fails to establish a real relationship between Lillian and Julia, instead documenting an attitude toward a distant icon. It succeeds better with the man-woman dynamic involving Dashiell Hammett but overall feels awkwardly split between subjects. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/julia-1977)
- **Time Out**, JS (40/100, inferred): The film delivers a glossy but overly reverential treatment of Lillian Hellman's memoir about friendship and anti-fascist courage. It falters most in depicting the central relationship between Hellman and Julia, giving little sense of the playwright's dominant personality or the lesbian themes central to her work. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/julia-1)

## Details

- **Director:** Fred Zinnemann
- **Director:** Fred Zinnemann
- **Screenplay:** Alvin Sargent
- **Cinematography:** Douglas Slocombe
- **Editor:** Walter Murch, Marcel Durham
- **Music:** Georges Delerue
- **Production design:** Carmen Dillon, Gene Callahan, Willy Holt
- **Costume design:** Anthea Sylbert
- **Producer:** Richard A. Roth
- **Cast:** Jane Fonda as Lillian Hellman; Vanessa Redgrave as Julia; Jason Robards as Dashiell Hammett; Maximilian Schell as Johann; Hal Holbrook as Alan; Rosemary Murphy as Dorothy Parker; Meryl Streep as Anne Marie; Dora Doll as Woman Passenger
- **Runtime:** 1h 57m
- **Certificate (MPA):** PG
- **Release (the US):** 2 October 1977
- **Genres:** Drama, History
- **Budget:** $8 million
- **Box office:** $21 million

## Where to watch in the US

Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check.

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, CA, CH, CL, CO, DE, EC, GB, MX, NZ, PA, PE, PL, SE. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- BAFTA Film Awards 1979: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (nominated); Best Direction (nominated); Best Editing (nominated); Best Original Music (nominated); Best Actress in a Leading Role (won); Best Film (won)
- César Award for Best Foreign Film 1979: César Award for Best Foreign Film (nominated)
- Academy Awards 1978: Best Actress (nominated); Best Cinematography (nominated); Best Costume Design (nominated); Best Director (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Original Score (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Supporting Actor (won); Best Supporting Actress (won); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (won)
- David di Donatello for Best Foreign Actress 1978: David di Donatello for Best Foreign Actress (won)
- Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film 1977: Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film (nominated)
- Golden Globes 1977: Best Director (nominated); Best Motion Picture – Drama (nominated); Best Screenplay (nominated); Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture (nominated); Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama (won); Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture (won)
- National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress 1977: National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress (nominated)
- National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor 1977: National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor (nominated)

## If you liked this

- *Reds* (1981), Fi1m 77: Another American writer swept up in European politics, told with far more appetite. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/reds.md)
- *The Garden of the Finzi-Continis* (1970): Privileged young people and fascism closing in, remembered in the same golden light.
- *Cabaret* (1972), Fi1m 88: Berlin in the same years, and it dares to be vulgar about the danger. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/cabaret.md)
- *A Man for All Seasons* (1966), Fi1m 81: Zinnemann at his best, with a conscience under pressure and people who argue. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/a-man-for-all-seasons.md)
- *Carol* (2015), Fi1m 88: A friendship between women in period dress that the film actually dramatises. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/carol.md)

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/julia