My Name Is Julia Ross (1945, Joseph H. Lewis) (Patreon)

65/100

Got a bit distracted early on by the plot's loose similarity to one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories, "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches." There's zero mystery about what's going on here, however, since we spend nearly as much time observing the evildoers and their machinations as we do with Ms. Ross herself—a curious narrative strategy that makes the film feel slightly mechanistic at times, but eventually enables some satisfying plot twists (including an ending that genuinely had me baffled for a moment). Nina Foch's coolly sophisticated Milo has always been my favorite element of An American in Paris, and Foch is likewise ideal for this role as conceived; you'd expect Julia to start doubting her own sanity, in the tradition of Gaslight, but she never once wavers. On the one hand, that makes her an atypically ferocious damsel in distress, able to treat even kindly-looking Dame May Whitty (retaining a degree of involuntary sympathy from having been The Lady who Vanishes) with deserved contempt throughout. On the other hand, Julia's consistent forthrightness means that the film ultimately isn't really about much of anything, merely providing her with a series of obstacles to overcome via ingenuity. Joseph H. Lewis compensates visually with some striking images involving partially obscured faces, at one point actually having Foch deliver multiple lines of dialogue with George Macready's right shoulder blocking everything below the bridge of her nose. There's nothing here that astonishes like the bank robbery in Gun Crazy (at this writing, the only other JHL I've seen), but you can clearly see why Sarris placed Lewis in Expressive Esoterica.