Julie

"Julie" starts out as a mass of tension, (other than the ridiculous rear-projection car scenes where everyone turns the steering wheel in wrong directions!) packing an intense amount of story in the first 40 minutes. By the second act, when the pace slows down, all the previous scenes seem too condensed for comfort. One scene in the beginning of the film is especially intriguing: Lyle practices his piano piece while Julie lays on the couch. Watching his hands dance over the keys, and the beautifully framed shot of him against the open window is truly surreal, almost too profound for a film of this type.

The third act, all about Doris Day landing the airplane, feels like an entirely separate movie. With the loss of the human threat after her, it stops being a thriller and becomes the tag ending of an action blockbuster. "Julie" has uneven bursts of calm and nail-biting tension, all in all a strange combination with its own memorable moments.

I was disappointed that Doris Day only sang one song for this movie and it was played and over by the end of the opening credits. The road rage scene was exciting, but if you've ever driven on a winding road like that one in Monterey/Carmel, you know there would be no way to avoid going off the road in that situation.

The story was pretty good though. The wife who fears her husband will kill her and the police cannot help her without any evidence. She tries to get away, but he figures out every move she makes and it all comes down to a climatic ending.

I think the plane landing was done well. Doris Day was very convincing in her role. I really enjoyed her as an actress for this movie, when I normally think of her as a wonderful singer.

A thriller starring Doris Day a few years before she hit the jackpot with her string of coy sex comedies, Julie is what was known in the trade as a `jep' – a woman-in-jeopardy drama. It starts off promisingly with a spat at a country club between Day and her second husband, Louis Jourdan (the first Mr. Day, a presumed suicide, may have been his victim) that escalates into an incident of road rage. Jourdan is passed off as a concert pianist – you know, one of those unstable `artistic' types. And he fills out a startlingly up-to-date profile of the irrationally jealous, controlling spouse, alternating between murderous rages and mawkish contrition. (Since Charles Boyer launched the prototype of this sort of abusive male in Gaslight, it seems that Hollywood thought it safe to cast chiefly Frenchmen in subsequent outings.)

Julie wastes no time in setting Day to flee, with Jourdan in pursuit; her ally is old friend Barry Sullivan, who tries to smuggle her safely from Carmel to San Francisco. But Jourdan, who apparently missed his calling as an international master of intrigue, proves too smart for them and manages to get himself, gun in trenchcoat, aboard a cross-continental airliner.

Julie, you see, used to be an airline stewardess, and here is where the script's credibility ultimately crumbles. As the movie prepares to come in for a landing, it abruptly shifts gears, leaving behind the dark psychological drama of the noir cycle for the purely mechanical thrills of an Airport. And so what at first seemed daring – revealing Jourdan as a woman-hating psycho without a tedious buildup – turns into a time-saving gimmick to place Day as swiftly as possible behind the controls of an airplane. And so what started out as a psychologically astute study of obsession descends into the merely routine.

The writer-director (and producer of many other films, although not this one) Andrew L. Stone was only nominated once for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, and he was very proud of this one. I worked for Stone in the mid-1970's, and he looked back at "JULIE" as a piece of his finest work.

The maniacal husband-as-stalker was a new kind of character for films in 1956. The honest discussion of how law enforcement often failed 'women in jeopardy' brought up issues which only became widely discussed in the 1970's.

Doris Day plays the role of a terrorized wife trying to escape from the husband who is trying to kill her, and this is such a well-done treatment of the subject that even jaded audiences today respond to it.

The climactic scene in which Doris Day lands the passenger plane with help from the control tower is riveting, because it is based on fact. Andrew L. Stone was an exhaustive researcher, and you can be sure every detail of that scene was checked and re-checked. It would have happened in real life just as you see it on the screen.

Stone kept a collection of 'true crime' magazines dating from the 1930's in his office library, and he had dozens of plot ideas for thrillers like this one. However, he had always been his own boss and not a 'studio man'. Hollywood didn't give him big budgets, and he never had the opportunity to continue his career as Hitchcock did. Mentally sharp through his 80's, Stone spent the last decade of his life trying to put deals together to make movies that never got off the ground. Our loss.

Doris Day had a few "damsel in distress" roles in her movies, but none requiring her to be quite as stressed out as "Julie". Trouble is the film is a bit too overwrought for comfort with Miss Day being pursued throughout by a maniacal husband (Louis Jourdan) whose only problem is he loves her to death--literally!! And not a single supporting character to give us a few laughs.

The last half-hour aboard an airliner where her husband has managed to become one of the passengers, is the best part of this neat little suspenser. Although all the usual cliches are present in the script, the terrified Doris manages to look convincingly cool and confident as she handles the controls of the airliner for the story's somewhat pat climax.

Louis Jourdan makes the husband look like a really jealous and possessive heel, aside from being a maniac--and since Doris Day reveals in her autobiography that she married a couple of these early on in her career--perhaps that helped her give a very credible performance. Not that she was any slouch in the acting department on a few of her other "damsel in distress" roles--STORM WARNING, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH and LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME. Let's forget the phony, overly fabricated MIDNIGHT LACE. Here she gives a strong and sincere performance as a terrified woman.

Barry Sullivan gives excellent support as a friend who tries to help her when the police admit they can't do anything. Frank Lovejoy is also fine as a detective.

I can't say much for the title tune, "Julie", heard only during the credits and then quickly forgotten by me. To my surprise, it was nominated for a Best Song Oscar--so what do I know??

If you're a Doris Day fan, you'll find this suspenseful even though it takes itself much too seriously. There's not a hint of humor throughout the entire proceedings, not a single moment of relief. It's all very, very intense, whereas some humor would have helped.

Of course, there are always those who will laugh at the plot itself. It is, after all, a bit unbelievable by the time stewardess Day takes over the controls. It's to her credit that she makes it look real.