My Name Is Julia Ross

[domino harvey]

Synopsis: After a promising start on Poverty Row quickies, Joseph H. Lewis (The Big Combo) made his first film at Columbia and established himself as a director to watch with this Gothic-tinged Hitchcockian breakout hit, which later proved so popular that Columbia promoted it to A-feature status.

The morning after Julia Ross (Nina Foch, Executive Suite) takes a job in London as secretary to wealthy widow Mrs Williamson Hughes (Dame May Whitty, The Lady Vanishes), she wakes up in a windswept Cornish mansion, having been drugged. Mrs Hughes and her volatile son, Ralph (George Macready, Gilda), attempt to gaslight Julia into believing she is Ralph's wife, Marion. Her belongings have been destroyed, the windows barred and the locals believe that she is mad. Will Julia be able to escape before she falls prey to the Hughes' sinister charade? And what happened to the real Marion Hughes?

A briskly paced and brilliantly stylised mystery that grabs its audience from the start, My Name Is Julia Ross immediately cemented Lewis' place in the noir pantheon, and anticipated the elaborate identity-based deceptions found in future classic thrillers like Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and Brian De Palma's Obsession.

Special Features and Technical Specs:

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
Original uncompressed mono PCM audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
Commentary by noir expert Alan K. Rode
Identity Crisis: Joseph H. Lewis at Columbia - The Nitrate Diva (Nora Fiore) provides the background and an analysis of the film
Theatrical trailer
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Scott Saslow
First pressing only: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by author and critic Adrian Martin

U.S. STREET DATE: FEBRUARY 19.
UK STREET DATE: FEBRUARY 18.

[domino harvey]

One of the dumbest noirs ever made

[tenia]

That'd make for a tremendous quote on the cover.

[domino harvey]

Unbelievably, even this film eventually got a ripoff of sorts in Chase a Crooked Shadow a decade later, though that one at least has an incredible ending

[nitin]

I think this a pretty strong movie, bit surprised they picked out only 2 titles from the Columbia Noir vol 3 set and didn’t just do the whole boxset.

[domino harvey]

I made the same mistake, only I thought both were in Vol IV-- this one's from the third volume but So Dark the Night is from the fourth

[dda1996a]

One of the dumbest noirs ever made

Do you think any of Lewis' films is worth a watch? Remember seeing Big Combo as a kid and except for the gorgeous cinematography found it rather dull.

[domino harvey]

Gun Crazy is a masterpiece and I actually quite like the Big Combo, but he has an inflated reputation as an auteur on the strengths of these films that is unearned by the rest of his oeuvre

[cdnchris]

The supplements for Terror in a Texas Town are more about what a hack the guy was, right down to a visual essay that went out of it's way to point out how lazy the film was in its visuals.

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

I actually quite adore My Name Is Julia Ross. It's by no means a particularly plausible film, with an unending series of coincidences, accidents, plot-twists, and contrivances. But it's a fast, almost sadistic little film with a solid ensemble, a pleasant blend of gothic and noir conventions, and most powerfully of all, for me (as well as a friend I showed it to, who also loved it), a particularly sensitive grappling with how we are expected to treat and believe women in the guise of a rather run-of-the-mill pulp film.

Spoiler

The entire film pivots around the question of a woman's sanity, whether she is "hysterical" or not, and that domestic violence is the motivation behind the villains' actions certainly makes this explicit.

It's on YouTube, last I checked, for what it's worth, and it's only a little over an hour, if you haven't watched it for yourself.

[knives]

I'll second that. It's actually my favorite Lewis though Ulmer's Hamlet adaptation does some of the same things better.

[dda1996a]

The supplements for Terror in a Texas Town are more about what a hack the guy was, right down to a visual essay that went out of it's way to point out how lazy the film was in its visuals.

Forgot I watched that and that he made it. That film was so silly and dull as well. But I'll give those two films a shot Dom

[zedz]

Awkward extras moment: after listening to the commentary in which Rode basically establishes (with evidence) that everything Lewis ever said about his career was bullshit, we get to hear Fiore parrot those inflated - or invented - anecdotes as fact in her piece.