JULIE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 954, 22 November 1957, Page 24

JULIE

(M.G.M.-Arwin) A Cert. UTTING my head on the block, I confess that I enjoyed Julie in spite of its melodramatic excesses, and most of all after I’d written it off, when in a final airborne sequence the omnipresent Doris Day becomes a heroine of a most unlikely kind. After an unimpressive start, the film takes you off in the first minute or two on a nightmare drive with Miss Day and her madman husband, Louis Jourdan. It has her hair standing on end and ours as well. Because he has nothing less than a psychotic crush on her, Mr Jourdan, it turns out, has killed her first husband. When she finds that out she runs away, and for the next 8000 feet or so he’s gunning for her. For all of this distance, or almost, she plays her panic act from The Man Who Knew Too Much, and plays it not too

badly; but I hope all the same it’s not going to becorhe a habit. She sings not so much as a note. This is an easy enough film to pick holes in afterwards, and there are some very jarring patches which -you can hardly overlook at the time-too many fireworks (with too many big bangers too early in the show?), moody piano playing by the crashing sea, some poor dialogue. However, even if the eventual outcome is predictable in general terms -which after all is no new thing-the best of the suspense is (shall we say?) genuinely suspenseful. But then I’m not too hard to sell on suspense so long as a film is cut with reasonable skill; and I like Miss Day. Mr Jourdan’s brooding good looks are right for his part, and

Barry Sullivan as a loyal friend and Frank Lovejoy as a police chief give competent support. Andrew L. Stone directed and also wrote the script.