MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS (1945)

Unemployed working girl Julia Ross (Nina Foch) is on the verge of being evicted from her boarding house. To add to her woes, Dennis, the fellow boarder she had a crush on, has moved out to get married. And the landlady's maid, Bertha, is a nasty piece of work who isn’t above petty theft. But an interview at the Alison Employment Agency yields a job as a live-in companion for Mrs. Hughes (Dame May Whitty). Because Hughes has had several girls leave the position to get married or to go home to family, she is especially happy to hear that Julia has no living parents and no "young man" in her life (though just before Julia leaves the boarding house, Dennis returns, having called off his wedding, and Julia agrees to see him again soon). Also living with Mrs. Hughes is her adult son Ralph (George Macready) who seems fairly normal but is also a little highly strung, and has a thing for playing with pocket knives. On her first night at their house, a nefarious plot is sprung: Julia is drugged and taken to a house on a remote coast. When she awakens that morning, Dennis and his mother try to make her believe that she is Dennis' wife, Marion, who is recovering from some kind of breakdown. However, Julia is made of stronger stuff than mother and son assume. She never buys into their plan—though she (and we) aren't sure why they're pulling this charade. Julia tries to escape or get some villagers on her side, but her erratic behavior just strengthens the story about her illness. Her last chance may be Dennis, who is looking for her after she didn't show up for their date. But will he find her before the Hughes' plot comes to fruition—with the murder of Julia?

This hour-long B-movie has a bit of a cult reputation, probably due to the moody cinematography by Burnett Guffey (an Oscar winner years later for Bonnie and Clyde). This element is also what has led some to believe that it's a film noir. Actually, it's a fairly average Gothic thriller, with a predictable damsel-in-distress storyline. Though it moves along at a good clip, everything about it is strictly second-feature material except the cinematography and the performance of Dame May Whitty; she usually plays stodgy matriarch types (and at least once, in Night Must Fall, she was the damsel in distress in a similar Gothic story), but it's fun to see her as a villain for a change. Nina Foch is a blank sheet of paper as the title heroine—she has virtually no personality, though she does exhibit some backbone as things wind down to the ending you know is coming. Similarly, George Macready (pictured with Foch) is a little too bland to be playing a murderous psycho—it never quite feels like Julia is in life-threatening danger except in one nicely done scene near the end on a staircase. Mostly, I enjoyed Joy Harington as the sly Bertha but hers is a small role. [Criterion streaming]