Odelecol
Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
Rosie Searle
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Zlatica
One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
Alex da Silva
Nina Foch (Julia) is down on her luck. She owes 3 weeks rent and hasn't got a job. Her love life is also empty although she is friendly with ex-boyfriend Roland Varno (Dennis). We are thrust straight into her ordeal once she applies to be secretary for wealthy Dame May Witty (Mrs Hughes).The film goes from mystery to thriller whilst all the while keeping the suspense and evoking a noirish feel. Don't look for holes in the story, just go with it. The cast are excellent and we have a lead character who thankfully, is not a wimp. Nina Foch is continually fighting back which puts the audience on her side. It's quite disturbing how easily her life is turned upside down and threatened.Years ago, I worked at a market research company and one day, Billy didn't turn up to his shift. No-one knew where he was. This was unusual especially as the survey we were conducting was about sexual habits and he loved that kind of thing. When he finally appeared the next day, it turned out that he had been tied up in a dungeon. Not as a kidnap victim but for his own pleasure. Still, it highlights how easily one can be thrown off kilter from one's normal routine. Nina Foch fights back from her dungeon in this one.
Spikeopath
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
Michael_Elliott
My Name is Julia Ross (1945) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Intense thriller has a broke woman (Nina Foch) accepting a live-in job where she is to work as a secretary for a kind woman (Dame May Witty) and her son (George Macready). The woman shows up at the house but wakes up the next morning with the mom and son trying to tell her that she's his long lost wife. What's really going on is that they're going to hold this woman captive in hopes of driving her crazy. This here is a film I had never heard about until it came up on Turner Classic Movies and host Robert Osbourne wasn't lying when he said it needed a new crowd to discover it. This "B" movie from Columbia runs a very fast paced 66-minutes and for the most part it's one of the best of its type. The film has an ultra low-budget but that just adds tot he entertainment because it has to rely on its story, which is a pretty strong one and we also get some very strong performances. What works best is without question the story because driving someone crazy has always been a part of movies but the way it plays out here is pretty tense and makes for some very thrilling moments. The attempts at escape, the trying to convince people she's sane and so on just makes for some great entertainment. Foch clearly steals the film as the woman facing death and who must out smart her kidnappers. Foch has a certain quality that makes us care for her but at the same time she comes off very strong and this benefits her character a lot. Both Witty and Macready are perfect as well and they make for some very memorable villains. The evilness and coldness that both display while also appearing so calm and sweet was great fun to watch. Some people have called this a noir and perhaps there are elements of it but it would also serve well in the horror genre as there's an underlying creepiness built by the atmosphere. The Gothic settings are certainly a decade or so before they'd become popular and the mother/son relationship is being done long before PSYCHO. It's certainly a shame this movie isn't better known but perhaps that'll change in the next few years.
Dewey1960
MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS is a mesmerizing 1945 B thriller from Joseph H. Lewis, arguably one of the very finest directors of Hollywood noir films. This 65 minute Gothic oddity from Columbia Pictures came after Lewis' lengthy apprenticeship as the helmer of a string of poverty row westerns, East Side Kids comedies, horror melodramas (including the incredibly bizarre Bela Lugosi shocker THE INVISIBLE GHOST) and standard studio B product (SECRETS OF A CO-ED, BOMBS OVER BURMA, THE FALCON IN SAN FRANCISCO, etc)---all of which set the stage rather nicely for what was to come from the enormously talented and inventive Mr. Lewis. MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS (as well as SO DARK THE NIGHT from the following year) introduced a director who had mastered the rare and delicate art telling a dark and probing tale swiftly and efficiently on the most modest of budgets. Later Lewis productions like GUN CRAZY (1949) and THE BIG COMBO (1955), despite the expanded scope of their narrative structure, continued to rely upon deft, lucid camera work and effective low-key lighting. And very modest resources.MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS probably owes more to the tradition of British mysteries (it's set in a studio-bound England) than it does to conventional film noir attitudes and trappings. A young woman (Nina Foch) agrees to take a position in the home of an elderly woman (Dame Mae Witty). Two days after her arrival she awakens from a deep sleep in a completely strange house and, mysteriously enough, with a brand new identity---that of the old woman's daughter-in-law. Told that she's been the victim of a nervous breakdown, she struggles to grasp the utter and seemingly hopeless nature of her predicament. But before long she begins to piece together the strange and troubling truth behind this dark mystery, that her "husband" (the always menacing George Macready) most probably murdered his real wife and that she's been duped into participating in a harrowing and sinister scheme. Much of what distinguishes this otherwise modest tale are the indelible touches that Lewis brings to the production, marking it as the first of his truly serious endeavors as a film director.
