Le calvaire de Julia Ross

Having watched this film strictly on the strength of reviewers' ratings I was most pleasantly surprised. Although clearly low-budget, it bears the signs of clever ingenuity. For example, when Julia wakes in the strange house and looks out the window I found myself thinking that her sense of isolation would be enhanced with an exterior shot focused on her face and then moving backwards to include the house and its isolated location. And lo and behold! the next scene was exactly that last shot of the house standing lonely on the cliff at the water's edge. There are other examples of how a clever director can elevate his film to the level of a very enjoyable thriller. Savvy viewers will surely spot them but should rest assured they will not be disappointed.

As to the performances, George Macready is his usual creepy self, barely maintaining his composure while suggesting a capacity for unadulterated violence. Nina Foch was surprisingly good as the no-nonsense working girl who's not about to submit without a fight. But Dame May Witty, oh boy, she even had me doubting my own eyes and believing she could get away with her evil schemes.

This a real diamond in the rough and not to be missed.

Nina Foch delivers a surprisingly strong performance as the title character in this fun little Gothic nail-biter. She accepts a position as secretary to a London society dowager (played imperiously by Dame May Witty) and her creepy son (the effete and bothersome George Macready). Before she knows it, she awakens to find herself in a seaside manor she's never seen before, where Witty and Macready are calling her Marian and trying to convince the servants and the nearby townspeople that she's Macready's mad wife. Of course this pair can only be planning dastardly deeds, and even though we know Julia has to eventually escape her trap, director Joseph Lewis builds real suspense in answering the question of just how she'll manage it.

"My Name Is Julia Ross" has nothing stylistically to set it apart from any number of films that came out at the same time period, but I was surprised by how well it held together despite its shoe-string budget and B-movie pedigree. There are quite a few moments that just may have you on the edge of your seat, and I found myself really rooting for Julia as she caught on to the scheme underfoot and began to outsmart her captors. In any other Gothic thriller, the heroine would have swooned, screamed and dithered, waiting for her hero to come and save her. So I can't tell you how refreshing it was to have the heroine in this film use her brain and figure out how to save herself.

Well done.

Grade: B+

Second-feature concerns a young woman in London desperate for a job, happy to accept live-in secretarial position with an elderly woman and her son. Thrillers about people being held in a house against their will always make me a little uneasy--I end up feeling like a prisoner too--but this rather classy B-film is neither lurid nor claustrophobic. It's far-fetched and unlikely, but not uninteresting, and our heroine (Nina Foch) is quick on her feet. Rehashing this in 1986 (as "Dead Of Winter") proved not to be wise, as the plot-elements are not of the modern-day. "Julia Ross" is extremely compact (too short at 65 minutes!) but it stays the course nicely until a too-rushed climax, which feels a little sloppy. *** from ****

My Name Is Julia Ross is one of those gems that every now and then come from the B end of a major studio. Columbia Pictures did this one and got a good cast of some as yet unknown players.

The title role is played by Nina Foch in her salad days and she applies for a position as a secretary to Dame May Whitty. It's all a ruse as she's whisked off to the Cornwall coast from London.

Foch is kept in a genteel prison and she's constantly referred to as Whitty's balmy daughter-in-law, wife of George MacReady. Foch is having trouble keeping her own sanity as she searches for the reason that Whitty, MacReady, and the rest of the staff are treating her as they are.

This film is a solidly cast one with Foch, Peters, and Whitty just perfect in their parts. If broadcast don't miss this one.

For those who think of Dame May Witty as the kindly, slightly batty, old lady from Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, this movie requires an adjustment. Here, she's anything but kindly or batty. Instead, her son, George Macready is the loony one. Just don't give him a knife, otherwise his eyes light up and no furniture cushion in the house is safe. Now we know what he has in mind for the trapped Nina Foch if he can just get out from under Mother's domineering hand.

Really tight little woman-in-danger film that keeps the suspense on high throughout. The script never strays from Foch's dilemma. She's held prisoner in a big old Gothic house on the edge of an angry sea. They're going to kill her, but why. Her predicament makes no sense. The tension mounts as she tries one escape ploy after another, but even strangers seem against her. We begin to feel her helplessness and mounting paranoia as the world turns away from her.

Director Joseph H. Lewis took a big step toward cult status with this film and understandably so. Then too, watch Foch run subtly through a gamut of emotions without once going over the top. Witty too shines as a really intimidating matriarch who knows what she wants and how to get it if she can just keep her wacko son in line. My one reservation is the climax which seems too contrived considering the timing of the events. Nonetheless, it's a good, nerve-wracking way to spend a little over an hour, courtesy Columbia studios.