My Name is Julia Ross

Directed by JOSEPH H LEWIS

Starring NINA FOCH, DAME MAY WHITTY, GEORGE MACREADY

1945

Released 18 FEB

Blu-ray

ike many general practitioners, director Joseph H Lewis moved nimbly from tales, seemed to appear, and assume repose, in a zone outside both its era and its infrastructure. It concerns a nefarious family’s plot to abduct, detain, and gaslight a young woman (Nina Foch) – some elaborate con devised to cover up for a gruesome, past misdeed. There hardly seems to be enough plot to sustain a feature length picture, but in Lewis’s hands, it makes a tight 65 minutes, with scarcely a frame wasted. Indeed, the far-fetched plot expands and resolves right in the nick of time, as if the fates of both the heroine and our credulity were intertwined.