The screenwriter Lillian Hellman, a key name of the classical Hollywood scene who worked alongside moviemakers such as William Wyler, Arthur Penn, William Dieterle and George Roy Hill, will be the focus of the retrospective at the San Sebastian Festival’s 73rd edition. Organised by the Festival and the Filmoteca Vasca, in collaboration with Filmoteca Española, the season will also come with the publication of a book about Hellman penned by three female writers and looking at all aspects of her career. 

Lillian Hellman (1905-1984) has been shrouded in mystery for many years. The North American playwright, novelist and screenwriter lived in turbulent times, from the Great Depression to the McCarthy witch hunt, moments reflected in a body of work which, while enigmatic, has also been highly vindicated, particularly in its cinematic slant. The San Sebastian Festival intends to commemorate her career with this retrospective encompassing all of her work for the big screen, crucial for understanding the evolution of style, subject matter and ideology under way in Hollywood from the 30s to the 60s.

Simply listing three of the films in which she was involved, whether as the screenwriter of texts by others or through the adaptation of her own works for theatre, says it all: The Little Foxes (1941), the film by William Wyler with a screenplay based on Hellman’s own play and starring Bette Davis; The Children’s Hour (1961), another of Wyler’s movies based on a complex offering by the writer about the false rumours circulating about two school teachers (Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine), in which she also participated as the screenwriter; and The Chase (1966) by Arthur Penn, a remarkable X-ray of the widespread violence and racism riddling the society of the Southern United States, written by Hellman based on Horton Foote’s novel with a cast featuring Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda and Robert Redford.   

She struck up a fine relationship with William Wyler given that, in addition to the two films mentioned above, he also helmed These Three (1936), first version of the play The Children’s Hour to which the director and writer would return for the movie of the same name, an unexpectedly modern character study following two women teachers whose lives are blown to pieces when a young girl accuses them of having an affair. The Little Foxes, like The Chase, is set in the despotic south and renders yet another splendid portrait of unscrupulous characters. Hellman and Wyler also collaborated on the social drama-cum-thriller Dead End (1937).

Hellman had made her movie debut as a screenwriter in 1935 with Sidney Franklin’s The Dark Angel, a romantic melodrama following the emotional after-effects of the war. Her career in the cinema ran parallel to her theatre work and the writing of several books of memoirs alternating fiction and reality. Taking a position in the eye of the storm of numerous issues, she invented new approaches to North American playwriting, entertained a well-aired rivalry with the novel writer Mary McCarthy and always upheld a left-wing stance. 

Ideologically speaking, her relationship with Dashiell Hammet was crucial. The author of essential detective novels such as Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon, staunchly committed to leftist beliefs and to the American Communist Party, is strongly present in one of Hellman’s volumes of memoirs, Pentimento (1973). The work was taken to the cinema by Fred Zinnemann in Julia (1977), starring Jane Fonda as Hellman, Jason Robards in the role of Hammett and Vanessa Redgrave playing Julia, the writer’s childhood friend, with whom she reignites her friendship in Vienna during the harsh days of the Nazi rise to power. Her third autobiographical novel, Scoundrel Time (1976), follows the days of the witch hunts and the House Un-American Activities Committee. In 1999, actress Kathy Bates directed the TV movie Dash and Lilly, set around the relationship between Hammett and Hellman.

She participated, as either the adapting or the adapted party, in films by Lewis Milestone –The North Star (1943)–, William Dieterle –The Searching Wind (1946)–, Michael Gordon –Another Part of the Forest (1948)– and George Roy Hill – Toys in the Attic (1963)–, as well as collaborating, albeit uncredited, in one of the fundamental movies of the cinematic left wing: The Spanish Earth (1937), a documentary by Joris Ivens on the subject of the Spanish Civil War, the writing of which also saw the participation of Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos.

A classic film festival

Since 2024, the San Sebastian Festival retrospective has been part of the Klasikoak program, promoted by the Festival and the Filmoteca Vasca as a classic film festival expanded in time and space. Thus, Klasikoak brings together three film cycles under the same label: the films of the retrospective, the Klasikoak section titles screened during the Festival in September, and the twelve restored films programmed by the Filmoteca Vasca in the homonymous cycle over the last quarter of the year at various cultural institutions in the Basque Autonomous Community, Navarre, and the French Basque Country.

Klasikoak is heir to the historic tradition established by the San Sebastian Festival of rediscovering work by filmmakers, periods, themes or film languages, that it put into practice more or less right from the very start, with the retrospective devoted to René Clair in 1959, and the decisive commitment by the Filmoteca Vasca both to restoring and disseminating films.