My Name Is Julia Ross

Out of work, Julia Ross takes a live-in secretarial job with a family in London and moves in the same day. She wakes in a house in Cornwall, wearing someone else's clothes, with everyone calling her Marion. The more she tries to prove who she is, the more evidence accumulates that she is mad. Joseph H. Lewis directed. Nina Foch plays Julia, Dame May Whitty the mother of the house, George Macready her son George. It was planned as one of Columbia's cheap, fast B pictures. The result exceeded expectations and the studio booked it into theatres reserved for major releases, which was rare for a B film. Its force today comes less from the script than from the setup: a person's identity annulled by other people, and the impossibility of producing proof. Lewis covers the tight budget with light and framing; shadow, a corridor and a locked door are the whole set. It runs under seventy minutes and never pauses. Who it is for: viewers who like short noir and thrillers about identity. Who it is not for: anyone after deep character; the film is entirely mechanical.