Before there were horror movies there were horror books, gothic novels. Two of the greatest were written by women, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. Gothic tales came in two varieties: those in which the horror (Frankenstein) is real, and those in which the supernatural (Udolpho's haunted castle) is only seeming but resolves into a natural cause. Henry James in The Turn of the Screw created a third variation. Is the supernatural imagined or real? We never know. Val Lewton, better than anybody, brought that variation to films, his trilogy of fantasy. Is the were-cat in "Cat People" real? Or is it a figment in the disturbed mind of its alter ego Irena? Does Irena's ghost return in "Curse of the Cat People?" Or is it a little girl's imaginary friend conjured up out of old photos of a beautiful woman and a name overheard in whispered conversation? Is there a zombie in "I Walked with a Zombie?" Or is it a woman whose illness has affected her brain? She has not died, the doctor points out. How can she be a walking dead? She doesn't bleed when stabbed. How can she be alive? It is a question of faith. The grim figurehead, perpetually covered with dripping water as if with blood, represents St. Sebastian. Shot by arrows, he died. But he lived. His nurse, St. Irene, saved him - resurrected him - until he died again. (Screenwriter Curt Siodmak might as well have named Frances Dee's nurse Betsy Irene. Maybe better not. Too obvious.)
The beauty of these films is to leave all unanswered. Wake up from a waking dream and believe what you want. Perhaps the spectral aberrations are meant to be real. I prefer to see them as projections, the products of powerful, disturbed emotions. In "I Walked with a Zombie" they are manifestations of guilt and isolation. White people on the tiny Caribbean island are the dominant caste. They own the land. Their ancestors had brought the slaves to work that land, as they still do though no longer slaves. The whites continue to live apart. Their villa is called "The Fort." The sinister slave-ship figurehead, Ti-Misery, still presides over it. The memory of inherited guilt and sense of present isolation have twisted Paul Holland. He lives in a tropical paradise. He sees death and decay. "Everything dies here," he tells Betsy. The ocean glows phosphorescent. He thinks of the putrefying residue of a million millions of plankton. Remembrance of past suffering haunts him. A baby is born. Black people lament. "The misery and pain of slavery," he says. "They weep when a baby is born and make merry at a burial." Mrs. Rand, a missionary's widow, should repugn the native belief. She joins it. She prays to its god. The African faith surrounds her. It overcomes her. She calls to the sentinel Carrefour. His name means what he is, the Crossroads between two worlds, civilization and exaltation. She crosses over. The zombie is her projection. She herself, she believes, has conjured it.
The acting is superb all around, Frances Dee (her opening voice-over narration is particularly affecting), James Ellison, Tom Conway, Theresa Harris. Edith Barrett, as always, stands out. She adds a flicker of that mental instability, especially in her confession scene, that she did so memorably in "Ladies in Retirement." It's sad to recall her own later similar suffering. The most striking performance - no facetiousness intended - in my opinion is that of Christine Gordon as the catatonic Jessica Holland. I know. What performance? you ask. She has only to adopt a look and maintain it for the movie. Yes. But what a look! Watch her face closely, as she waits immobile at the voodoo ceremony, as she stands blocked at the iron gate. It is not the cliched look. There is not a staring, transfixed gaze, as of one whose mind has been hijacked, or mesmerized. It is the look of one who has no mind - totally blank, not possessed or bewitched but empty. That requires genius to achieve, to seem to have erased every thought, even the thought of having erased every thought. I can only imagine the auditions for the part. "Now turn to the camera, Miss X, and let me see you empty your mind." How many screen tests must they have done before finding one actress who could do it? Her head slightly cocked to the side, eyes subtly downcast, her features supremely, unutterably vacant, voicelessly, she steals the film, even from Edith Barrett.
The whole film, from the opening shot, figures moving along a moonlit beach, to the dreamlike image of two women walking at midnight through windswept sugar cane fields, is a masterpiece. Wesley enters the sea holding Jessica's dead body. I see The Turn of the Screw, the governess cradling a dead boy. What killed little Miles? Was Jessica already dead when she died? We'll never know.
The beauty of these films is to leave all unanswered. Wake up from a waking dream and believe what you want. Perhaps the spectral aberrations are meant to be real. I prefer to see them as projections, the products of powerful, disturbed emotions. In "I Walked with a Zombie" they are manifestations of guilt and isolation. White people on the tiny Caribbean island are the dominant caste. They own the land. Their ancestors had brought the slaves to work that land, as they still do though no longer slaves. The whites continue to live apart. Their villa is called "The Fort." The sinister slave-ship figurehead, Ti-Misery, still presides over it. The memory of inherited guilt and sense of present isolation have twisted Paul Holland. He lives in a tropical paradise. He sees death and decay. "Everything dies here," he tells Betsy. The ocean glows phosphorescent. He thinks of the putrefying residue of a million millions of plankton. Remembrance of past suffering haunts him. A baby is born. Black people lament. "The misery and pain of slavery," he says. "They weep when a baby is born and make merry at a burial." Mrs. Rand, a missionary's widow, should repugn the native belief. She joins it. She prays to its god. The African faith surrounds her. It overcomes her. She calls to the sentinel Carrefour. His name means what he is, the Crossroads between two worlds, civilization and exaltation. She crosses over. The zombie is her projection. She herself, she believes, has conjured it.
The acting is superb all around, Frances Dee (her opening voice-over narration is particularly affecting), James Ellison, Tom Conway, Theresa Harris. Edith Barrett, as always, stands out. She adds a flicker of that mental instability, especially in her confession scene, that she did so memorably in "Ladies in Retirement." It's sad to recall her own later similar suffering. The most striking performance - no facetiousness intended - in my opinion is that of Christine Gordon as the catatonic Jessica Holland. I know. What performance? you ask. She has only to adopt a look and maintain it for the movie. Yes. But what a look! Watch her face closely, as she waits immobile at the voodoo ceremony, as she stands blocked at the iron gate. It is not the cliched look. There is not a staring, transfixed gaze, as of one whose mind has been hijacked, or mesmerized. It is the look of one who has no mind - totally blank, not possessed or bewitched but empty. That requires genius to achieve, to seem to have erased every thought, even the thought of having erased every thought. I can only imagine the auditions for the part. "Now turn to the camera, Miss X, and let me see you empty your mind." How many screen tests must they have done before finding one actress who could do it? Her head slightly cocked to the side, eyes subtly downcast, her features supremely, unutterably vacant, voicelessly, she steals the film, even from Edith Barrett.
The whole film, from the opening shot, figures moving along a moonlit beach, to the dreamlike image of two women walking at midnight through windswept sugar cane fields, is a masterpiece. Wesley enters the sea holding Jessica's dead body. I see The Turn of the Screw, the governess cradling a dead boy. What killed little Miles? Was Jessica already dead when she died? We'll never know.