My Name is Julia Ross

When the financially desperate Julia Ross (Nina Foch) arrives at her new job as live-in personal secretary to the wealthy Mrs. Hughes (Dame May Whitty), she has no idea she’ll wake up the next morning as a different person. Joseph H. Lewis’s My Name is Julia Ross is a semi-Gothic thriller set on the Cornwall coast that mashes together kidnapping, gaslighting, and psychopathy in a brisk 65 minutes. During that first night, when Julia is drugged, Mrs. Hughes and her accomplices, including her creepy, scar-faced son Ralph (George Macready), destroy all of Julia’s possessions and make up her bedroom to belong to Ralph’s deceased wife Marion, whom we learn they are attempting to resurrect as some kind of cover-up. When Julia awakens to learn she is Marion Hughes, her resistance is dismissed as a natural reaction to her recent nervous breakdowns, which, of course, means she cannot be trusted to leave the premises, so she ends up trapped inside the mansion, certain she’ll be killed. Roland Varno plays Dennis Bruce, Julia’s friend and admirer whose concern over her sudden disappearance prompts him to investigate, but it’s a black cat that will open the door to Julia’s ultimate survival. Given a relatively small budget, Lewis establishes a distinct sense of place, especially with the waves crashing against the rocks 100 feet below Julia’s bedroom window, and manages sufficient suspense (the escape attempt in the back of a car, the letter mailing in town) to keep viewers engrossed. While chiaroscuro doesn’t play much of a visual role, cinematographer Guffey incorporates a handful of unusual shots (lingering over-the-shoulder, through a steering wheel, slow zooming and panning) that help to stylize the proceedings.