User reviews

A toothsome little potboiler whose 65-minute length doesn't seem a second too short, My Name is Julia Ross harks back to an English tradition of things not being what they seem -- Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes is one example. Out-of-work Julia Ross (Nina Foch) finds a dream job at a new employment agency in London, whose sinister representative seems very anxious to ascertain if she has living relatives or a boyfriend. After reporting to duty, she wakes up (Having Been Drugged) in a vast Manderley-like pile on the Cornish coast, supposedly as the barmy-in-the-crumpet wife of George Macready, who displays an alarming interest in knives and ice picks. His doting, enabling mum is the irresistible Dame May Whitty (this time a model of bustling efficiency on the other side of good-vs-evil than she occupied in The Lady Vanishes). The nightmare vision of this tale unfolds claustrophobically; we know what's going on but are powerless to tell poor Julia. This movie, curiously, is regularly accorded a place of honor as one of the earliest (and very few British) films noirs. I think it's closer to the Gothic old-dark-house tradition than the American one of wet cobblestones and urban corruption; it does, however, evince a more modern, psychoanalytic cast of mind. Whatever you call it, it remains a sharply satisfying thriller.

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.

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 ****

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.

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.

A mood piece, a psychological thriller in the vein of the trapped woman, and an example of betrayal melodrama.

'My Name is Julia Ross' certainly explores a lot further than it's script and it's production scale would suggest. A juicy, implausible, unoriginal, rapid and thin story which was clearly filmed as a strict b-movie production is given a very elevated treatment courtesy of the director, who ably aids the three lead actors to give decent performances in portraying their equally unoriginal characters.

But the palpable value is all in the treatment; in the surface layer of direction and photography which are able, when combined with three good turns from Nina Roch, May Whitty and George Macready, to develop a cloying tonality which expressively illuminates the subject of a betrayed and imperilled woman.

As long as the viewer is able to accept that the whole thing is a confidence trick, and is willing to lend 'My Name is Julia Ross' that supply of confidence then it delivers a marvellous melodrama mood piece in the Gothic style.

I rate 7/10 and I recommend to anyone who isn't requiring a film to make sense but is instead happy to afford artistic licence to the director. In which case it is just rosy and a nice example of making a stylish and thematically compatible film out of a streaky b-movie story and production.

My Name Is Julia Ross is directed by Joseph H. Lewis and adapted to screenplay by Muriel Roy Bolton from The Woman in Red written by Anthony Gilbert. It stars Nina Foch, Dame Mary Witty, George Macready, Roland Varno, Anita Sharp-Bolster and Doris Lloyd. Music is by Mischa Bakaleinikoff and cinematography by Burnett Guffey.

Julia Ross (Foch) out of work and in debt arrears to her landlady, hastily accepts a in-house secretarial position to Mrs. Hughes (Whitty). Starting work in the Hughes house in London the first night, she wakes up two days later in a cliff-top mansion in Cornwall. She is told she has been away with mental health problems, her name is Marion Hughes and she is married to Ralph Hughes (Macready)...

A very important film in the career of the great Joseph H. Lewis, My Name is Julia Ross would effectively put the director on the map, with noir fans subsequently rewarded with the likes of Gun Crazy and The Big Combo. Compact in running time (65 minutes) and budget, it's a film that showcases just what real good work could be achieved by a director and photographer noir team working under tight restrictions; classical noir production if you like.

Story as it is is pretty straightforward and familiar, but atmosphere and visual smartness ensure this is no walk down retread lane. It falls into the Gothic noir spectrum of films, following in the traditions of Rebecca, Gaslight and Suspicion. In fact, it's also very much "old dark house" on staple terms, with eerie staircase, wood panelled rooms, secret passageways and even a black cat. While the setting, house on a seaside cliff where the mist rolls in at night, is splendidly moody.

The characterisations (very well performed by the cast) are vivid and odd, with us clearly meant to note that Julia Ross is clearly the only normal being in the Hughes household! Best of the bunch is Macready's Ralph Hughes, the catalyst for all the things that are happening, he fondles his knives like a fetishist, a truly memorable noir antagonist.

Ultimately it's what Lewis and Guffey bring to the fore that makes the film better than it is on the page. Expressionistic touches are here of course, but it's the skew-whiff camera placements and up close POV shots that bring the viewer into Julia's confused new world. Memorable scenes are frequent, be it a rain sodden street or Julia peering through the bars of her bedroom, there's visual treats aplenty here.

The ending is all to quick and as is often the case in this type of narrative, implausibilities need to be ignored. But that is easy to do, because with atmosphere unbound and not a shot wasted, this is a safe recommendation to the Gothic noir faithful. 8/10

An excellent little thriller ,infuenced by Hitchcock,which was remade by Arthur Penn as "dead of winter" ;an anomaly in his filmography ,his version was closer to the horror movies of the eighties, with even gore thrown in for good measure. Joseph E.Lewis 's work is in the Gothic tradition ,with its castle by the sea and its park with high gates a la "Rebecca" ;Nina Foch is efficient as the damsel in distress, who fortunately proves herself often smarter than her persecutors ;George McRead and the marvelous Dame May Whitty,terrifying under her genial comforting attitude ,give good support ;although the film is rather short (65 min) we feel that this son has remained a little boy under his mom's thumb. (as it often happens in sir Hitchcock's works) Sit back ,turn off the lights and get some scares .

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+

MY NAMES IS JULIA ROSS is a neat little thriller from Columbia later remade in '87 as DEAD OF WINTER with Mary Steenburgen as the unfortunate girl who finds herself prisoner in a strange household.

Here it's NINA FOCH who answers an employment agency ad and ends up in a household ruled by DAME MAY Witty and GEORGE MACREADY--and a plan that must have seemed daring and original when the story first appeared in '45.

Seems that she wakes up after a drugged night of sleep and finds out she has a new identity--no longer Julia Ross. Macready declares that he's her husband and Dame May Witty calls her by a different name. The two of them are conspiring to keep her there until their ultimate plan is carried out. Foch, of course, intends to get to the bottom of the thing and free herself from their hold on her.

What really hurts the story is the manufactured ending which is much too abrupt and too full of coincidence and loopholes to be believable. But still, while you're watching the story unfold, it does have its share of tension and suspense.

Personally, I prefer the more elaborately plotted remake with Mary Steenburgen and Roddy McDowall which came along in the '80s, called DEAD OF WINTER.

Exceptional B movie considered for decades to be the greatest B movie ever made. If not the best, it's certainly near the top of the list. Nina Foch gives an excellent performance as Julia Ross, an unsuspecting woman who answers an ad for a job and finds herself the hostage of a deranged man and his domineering mother. George Macready and Dame May Witty make for memorable villains, sinister and creepy. The film is only sixty-five minutes long and director Joseph H. Lewis makes the most of it, keeping the film moving at a brisk pace but not rushed. This is definitely one of the 1940's films I would put on a must-see list for those interested in trying out older films.

A young British lady responds to a job ad for a secretary, only to be kidnapped, taken to Cornwall, and driven to near insanity by her new 'employers': the villainous but nonetheless endearing Dame May Whitty, and her creepy, knife-happy son.

The acting in this entertaining, delightfully old-timey film noir is very taut and accomplished. The actors do what they need to do while still being believable, instead of pushing the slightly far-fetched story dangerously close to a tongue-in-cheek parody. While the whole thing is rather improbable, the movie is still enjoyable to the point where that's easily forgiven.

I did not know this little gem of British noir and I was pleasantly surprised by it. The Foch character is a girl who accepts a job, whose only requirement seems to be that the candidate is a lonely orphan.

However, Foch's boyfriend, whom she thought she'd lost, comes back into her life just as she is about to move in with the mysterious family who hired her.

The couple arrange for a date, but Foch disappears from London. She wakes up in a sinister Cornwall mansion and the plot takes a gothic turn.

I thought Foch overacted a bit. Also, her character seems prone to blurt out too much information to anybody. Despite this, the plot develops swiftly to the climax. The ending is a bit abrupt, with some unanswered questions (for instance: how did everyone arrived from London so quickly).

Still, an enjoyable movie.

B movie brightened by a good cast. Don't read anything with spoilers before watching!

What us really a strange coincidence is I watched this on May 5. In the film she looks at a desk calendar and the date says May 5!

"My Name is Julia Ross" is a very, very rare sort of picture. It was created with a very modest budget and cast in order to be the second, or 'B' picture at a double-feature. However, when the film was screened, people liked the film so much that at many showings, it was the premier picture! This is rather unheard of and says a lot about the story from Muriel Bolton and Anthony Gilbert--as well as the direction by Joseph H. Lewis.

The film begins with Julia (Nina Foch) looking for work. She's frustrated in her search and is excited when she sees that a new employment agency has opened. They interview her for a job and during the course of the interview, they have some strange questions--does she have any family, does she have a boyfriend and the like. Well, she can answer no to most of the questions but lies about the boyfriend part--telling them she has no one in her life. They are thrilled and offer her a job. Here's the bizarre twist. She suddenly finds herself drugged! And, she wakes up two days later in a prison-like mansion!! And, these strangers begin referring to her by another woman's name! She insists that she IS Julia Ross and demands to be set free but they treat her like she is insane. Her 'mother-in-law' (Dame May Witty) and 'husband' (George Macready) obviously have something awful in mind--but what? And, with all the neighbors having been told that she is a schizophrenic, she cannot convince any of them that she is telling the truth! What's next? See the film for yourself.

Th bottom line is that everything works well in this film--the acting, writing, direction, sets. The only negative, and it's a minor one, but back in the 1940s, Hollywood had the Production Code and according to this code, evil had to be punished so viewers know that somehow things WILL work out for good. A similar film that works even better is the 1960s French film "Diaboliquement Vôtre". Likewise a man has been kidnapped and folks work very hard to convince him he's someone else. But because there is no code to restrict the film, the ending is VERY dark and more satisfying. Still, both are exceptional films and I recommend both very highly.

Oh, it starts reasonably well and draws the viewer into it but as you start to see the end looming it's full of oh for Pete's sake moments, not least of all at the VERY end. I'm not going into the plot here, I'll leave that for others to mull over. Suffice it to say that the plot, such as it is, is full of holes. Interesting to see Nina Foch in a lead, she looks here kind of like Dietrich and Ann Baxter in a crossover. Interesting too to see Dame May Whitty in a non sympathetic role but it's not fully realized. No great shakes.

Julia Ross (Nina Foch) agrees to take a position as a secretary with the rich Hughes family to get over her boyfriend leaving her. Almost immediately she is drugged and shipped off to the family's estate in Cornwall. When she awakens they keep telling her she's Marion Hughes, has been mentally ill and keep her locked up...but why? You'll probably guess why but won't mind because this one is fun.

Along with "The Narrow Margin" and "Face Behind the Mask" this is one of the best B pictures ever made. (B pictures were low budget pictures made quickly with low budgets and no major stars). It's just as long as it needs to be (only 65 minutes), is well-directed, fast paced and exciting. It only stumbles at the end which I found a bit too implausible to buy.

Foch (a good actress) is just OK in the lead but Dame May Witty is great and George Macready is excellent (and frightening) as the villains. Well worth catching. A perfect example of how you can make a great movie on a small budget.

The premise is of the not particularly innovative but still very interesting and potentially suspenseful kind, there are plenty of good B-films and am somebody who has always liked this genre and films with psychological character writing. The cast is a strong plus, was very intrigued in seeing Dame Way Whitty play against type and had no doubt that she would do it well. Joseph H Lewis doesn't get enough credit today in my view and many of his films are well worth watching and more, 'Gun Crazy' for example being a near classic.

'My Name is Julia Ross' turned out to be a more than worthwhile film and even a very good one. Not perfect, but it is another shamefully neglected film and like its director it doesn't get enough credit. Some may find the premise mundane on paper (not me), but somehow it is executed in a way that is more exciting and professional than it initially appears. So much more than a typical B movie. Which was a general strength actually of Lewis' films.

It is hindered a little by its budget, with moments where there is a rushed look and the sets are less than evocative.

Also thought that the ending was too abrupt and too coincidence heavy.

So much is done incredibly well. It is primarily saved from the acting, which is nothing short of excellent. Nina Foch does steel and pathos beautifully and does so without any signs of overacting, in a role that is easy to overact. She is helped though by that her character is psychologically interesting, how so is little new but the film manages to still provide a lead character that is easy to root for and generates a lot of tension in her predicaments and attempts in getting out of it. Whitty excels and is wonderfully cold against type, with a character that has a calm exterior but is pure evil on the inside. George Macready did plenty of sinister roles in his career, but he often did them very convincingly. He is very sinister here.

What is also great about 'My Name is Julia Ross' is the atmosphere. It has a lot of suspense and truly genuine dread, nothing mundane or stagy here. The story is from the very beginning very absorbing and never stops being intriguing, predictability, over-simplicity and confusion are very low on the scale. Lewis directs with a very assured and subtle touch, clearly knowing what he was doing and making the film closer to near cinematic than mediocre B movie level.

Furthermore, the script is always entertaining, hard boiled and gritty, laden with tension. There is some nice moodiness in the photography and the audio is suitably ominous when needed.

Overall, very, very good. 8/10.