Le diabolique Monsieur Benton

JULIE! Doris Day runs for her life in this drama about a woman with a psychopathic husband (Louis Jourdan). The story seems to start in the middle - it begins with Jourdan trying to crash his car with Julie in it because he's jealous of her talking to someone. We learn that Jourdan, who plays a concert pianist, is Julie's second husband, her first having committed suicide. Except that apparently he didn't according to a mutual friend, Cliff (Barry Sullivan). Cliff is worried about Julie living with this nut job and thinks that hubby #2 may have gotten rid of hubby #1. Determined to find out, Julie confronts him, and he admits it. Thus begins her desperate attempt to get away from him. When she finally escapes, she goes back to her old job as flight attendant on an airline.

The story hit a little too close to home for Doris Day, who didn't want to make the film because it reminded her of two earlier marriages. And possibly her third, as Marty Melcher insisted that she do it and was unhappy when she appeared friendly with Jourdan. However, thanks to the film, she discovered Carmel and Monterey and eventually made her home there. The scenery is glorious.

Day does the narration which uses the phrase "strangely disturbing" several times. It's maybe not the best movie you've ever seen but it is very entertaining, and Doris is great as the terrified woman. What a talent, and her '60s reinvention made her bigger than ever. Jourdan is quietly terrifying, and there are many suspenseful moments in the film. Highly watchable - it's a little all over the place, starting off as one thing and ending as another - but it will really hold your interest.

In 1956 Doris Day was cast in Julie between two of her best pieces of work, the highly dramatic Alfred Hitchcock thriller The Man Who Knew Too Much and her best musical The Pajama Game. Usually those two films are either or both listed on Doris Day's top ten. Julie never is.

There was nothing new by 1956 in leading ladies marrying psychopaths, Ingrid Bergman had done it twice already in Rage In Heaven and in Gaslight. But both of those films were intelligently done while Julie goes into the hysterically melodramatic.

Doris is cast in the title role in Julie as a woman with an obsessively jealous second husband in Louis Jourdan. Louis married Doris after her first husband committed suicide and about all there is to recommend him is that he's a great concert pianist. But after another pathological outbreak Day seeks some solace with an old friend in Barry Sullivan. And she's determined to leave Jourdan and give him the slip.

But Jourdan is one grimly determined psychotic. When she returns to her old job as an airline stewardess, Jourdan stalks her and ends up on her first airline job. After that things get real interesting over 15,000 feet.

Julie actually won two Academy Award nominations, the first for original screenplay. Impossible for me to believe but as Casey Stengel used to say in baseball, you can look it up.

The second Oscar nomination was for Best Original Song. That year Doris came out a winner of sorts because while the title song Julie didn't win Doris came home a winner with Que Sera Sera, a much better song from a much better film.

The over the top melodramatics throughout the film made what could have been a spine tingling climax into something quite camp and quite laughable. I won't reveal what the midair climax is, but just to say that it could have worked under different circumstances.

Having just finished "The Man Who Knew Too Much" for Alfred Hitchcock,

Doris Day repeats the genre and does a wonderful job in a suspence drama. The story flowed well, and Miss Day's performance was outstanding. ( She even smokes !! ) Too bad She never got to do a second film with The Master of Suspence. That is the only thing that could have improved this movie. It has a lot of the feel of Suspision, and the edgeness of Midnight Lace. Both fine films of Hitchcock and Day respectivly. Highly recommended for a good rainy afternoon.

Most comedy movies could only hope to be this amusing. An airy, drippy title song plays, setting up the audience for some sort of romantic drama. No such luck. Immediately (and hilariously at odds with the opening music), Day comes running on, desperately trying to avoid her husband (Jourdon), who has apparently made a scene over her attention to another man. She hops in her car and he joins her. Even though the road is almost perfectly straight, Day spins the hell out of her steering wheel, furiously wielding it back and forth on a straight road! This overwrought and overheated beginning is merely a prelude for the wildly illogical and melodramatic story that follows. Jourdon turns out to be a crazed, obsessive danger to Day and the film involves her repeated attempts to get away from him before he kills her. Ms. Day is a delightful screen presence and is certainly capable, in the right hands, of delivering a terrific dramatic performance (i.e.--Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much".) Here, however, she is up against a heinous script (astonishingly nominated for an Oscar!) and contrived, silly situations which make her look foolish. Worst of all is her (hysterically funny) series of dramatic voice-overs. The production feels the need to have her breathlessly describe all her feelings and state what is clearly happening on screen! The wording is often fall down funny and her despairing delivery paired with the stark visuals pair up to create several moments of screaming laughter. One scene has her "desperately" trying to get away from Jourdon, but she still manages to pack her favorite outfits and even seemingly make sure she selects the right purse to go with her shoes. Another has her running from him in a snug skirt until she falls on a big rock and lays there. The whole movie is filmed with a crisp, clinical detachment since this was a bold new subject and all the happenings were so bleak and gripping. This makes for some really dry viewing today, especially when the (inept) police do their thing and during the climax when realistic (but uninteresting) air traffic controllers communicate with Day. Day, a stewardess, gets a breather midway through to scramble some eggs and sashay around in a kicky one piece lounge suit (and act as if nothing is wrong with her life!) In this section, the demure, twice-married character even refuses to come out and meet a gentleman her makeshift roomie is dating because she's not dressed (even though her full-length nightgown comes down to her knuckles and almost reaches her ears! Yes... women just didn't DO that, but it's still amusing!) Stay tuned for the really kooky climax in which she and one other stewardess work a flight in which Day doesn't even realize that Jourdon in ON board! (Like a person wouldn't immediately pick out someone who they know is out to kill them!) Situations eventually warrant that Day has to fly and land the plane herself (Karen Black fans will be disappointed to learn that she wasn't the first woman in this predicament. Cross-eyed Black did it in "Airport 1975", but Day beat her by 19 years....and she flies a significant portion of the trip with her eyes CLOSED!! Notably, with regards to sexism, little had changed in those two decades, for the men call Day "honey" the whole time while in Black's case, they continuously called her "honey" and "baby"...) So many other ripe moments have been left out, but in any case, the film is a scream. Jourdon is indeed surprisingly menacing and Day tries very hard (and found the filming very difficult in real life.) Also fun is a glimpse at how dressy and glamorous airports used to be and how much air travel has changed. Don't miss the amateur actress playing an apartment resident who, when asked about Day's character, pronounces "Julie" as "Julah".

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.