Hit Me WIth Your Best Shot - 1977: JULIA

Fred Zinneman's Julia is kind of a strange picture. Memory, speculation, and the present intermingle in very off-beat ways in the first reel of the film, as Jane Fonda's Lillian Hellman has trouble writing her play and thinks of her best childhood friend, Julia (the inimitable, Oscar-winning Vanessa Redgrave). Or maybe she's having writer's block because she can't stop thinking of Julia?

I don't know, it's hard to say. What shocked me the most about the film was how I kept thinking that the whole storyline really only made sense as a queer romance, and how well Fonda was portraying that just under the surface.... and then the film ACTUALLY WENT THERE. TWICE. First, Lillian actually says "I love you," to Julia in a way that is more than just strictly friendly. Second, one of Lillian's very drunk friends first insinuates (I think?) that he had something incestuous going on with his sister when they were teenagers, and then tells her that everyone knew about her and Julia. Color me shocked. It never goes farther than that, but it was much farther than I ever thought the film would go, and even arguably farther than it would if the same film were made today, shockingly enough.

"I love you, Julia"

Because of this, I was very tempted to pick a shot of the two ladies together, particularly in what is far and away the film's best scene, their reunion at a Café in Nazi-era Berlin (Julia is a member of the resistance and has tasked a rather frightened Lillian with smuggling a large sum of money across the border from Paris). Or, even more so, the first time I got an inkling as to there being a little something more in that relationship, when they dance with each other in their nightgowns on New Year's Eve.

But in the end I couldn't go with any of the pictures of the actresses. What really made the film for me, was DP Douglas Slocombe's shots of the train Lillian rides for the film's middle third (a very solid thriller despite the fact that Fonda overplays it, with help from whoever was applying her sweat). They're beautifully lit, and provide far better context for the world in which this story is taking place than the many deliciously designed interiors that make up most of the film.

SILVER MEDAL

This is when the train taking Lillian to Berlin first leaves Paris, and it's both gorgeous and foreboding in equal measure, a perfect set-up for what's to come.

But my pick for Best Shot struck such a chord that it shocked me right of the reverie the film had lulled me into. I can't claim it's in as technically brilliant a shot as my runner up, but thematically, it packs a wallop.

BEST SHOT

A steam train rolling a through wintry snow. Not particularly noteworthy, right? But remember, the train is coming up on Berlin at the start of the Third Reich. The image of a train in Germany at that time, and snow falling like ash from the gray sky, is one that has a hell of a lot of baggage. It was only at this point that I fully grasped what was going on in the world around Lillian, and just how much danger she, a Jewish American woman, was in going to Berlin at this time. I can't think of a more concise way to make that statement than with this image. Besides what the image calls to mind, it's also the only shot in the film that barely has a single color in it - it might as well be in black & white. The reds and browns and greens that have dominated the film so far are all but gone here. It's a cruel cut just when you think the worst part of Lillian's journey is behind her, a hugely impactful image set up and inserted into the film for maximum impact.