Written by Andreas Babiolakis

This review is a part of the Palme d’Or Project: a review of every single Palme d’Or winner at Cannes Film Festival. This is a Grand Prix winner: what the Palme d’Or was originally called before 1955. Miss Julie won the Grand Prix award in 1951, as the 1950 Cannes Film Festival was cancelled due to budgetary concerns; it shared this award with Miracle in Milan.

The film was selected by the following jury.
Jury President: André Maurois.
Jury: Suzanne Bidault-Borel Louis Chauvet, Evrard de Rouvre, Guy Desson, Jacques Ibert, Gaby Morlay, Georges Raguis, René Jeanne, Carlo Rim, Louis Touchagues, Paul Vialar.

The first time that Alf Sjöberg won the Grand Prix (now known as the Palme d'Or) at Cannes, he directed an Ingmar Bergman helmed screenplay with Torment. This second win was Sjöberg's time to shine alone, as he himself adapted August Strindberg's iconic play Miss Julie. Here, you can see the Swedish director's artistic strengths on full display, especially as he extrapolates the dark side of a period piece's psychological undertones. The eponymous Miss Julie is tortured, but it's ever so clear how much she is in Sjöberg's brief, no-nonsense version. Either Bergman rubbed off on Sjöberg, or it is as clear as ever that the two twisted minds were meant to work with one another (a Bergman veteran, Liv Ullmann, would direct her own version of Miss Julie in the 2010s, so I guess that’s something when it comes to this conversation of similar artistries).

I brought up the film's run time before, and it is quite apparent how short this film is at being just under an hour and a half in length. Sjöberg gets all of the necessary narrative points out, as far as I'm concerned: Miss Julie, the wealthy daughter of a count, has forever led a life where powerful men have given her false promises, and you see her get psychologically manipulated throughout the film. Starting from the servants' ball that she attends, we see her connect with Jean: a poorer citizen (a worker on her family’s estate) that seems to fall in love with Julie (and vice versa). What comes next is Jean's attempts at climbing the social ladder, as to take advantage of her wealth. We do see all of this, and Sjöberg and company do a great job of bringing this downward spiral to life (particularly Anita Björk as Miss Julie, who feels irreplaceable in this title role, and she alone makes the price of admission worth it).

What I feel is missing from Miss Julie is the deeper dives into the titular character and these realizations (and there is easily a lot of time that could have been added to this brisk runtime in order to achieve this). There is a lot to be said about hierarchical starvation and deception, especially the feminist angle of what Miss Julie was experiencing from someone she trusted the most. Was she used to men undermining and toying with her? Sure, but we can learn a lot from this particular – and final – example of the female experience within an imbalanced society. We get an engrossing story, but we could have also received a complex analysis of the bigger picture (and not just the implication that injustice exists, because, well, we know). Nonetheless, Sjöberg's Miss Julie is a solid adaptation with enough artistic and acting flair to carry an important message (at least in its simplest version).

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.