Christmas Spirits

From the time of Charles Dickens’s ever-popular “A Christmas Carol,” ghost stories have been important in our celebration of this festival in the Anglo-Saxon world. I myself have written some stories to be read by my friends and, I hope, enjoyed.

Although I have never seen ghosts myself, I keep an open mind and am always willing to read and hear accounts of unexplainable and mysterious phenomena. A friend of mine at Cambridge University told me that he had seen a figure floating, as it were, through his room which he could not explain and other people I have spoken to have given me accounts of strange and eerie experiences, at least two at Berry Pomeroy Castle (near Paignton). I have been there myself on many occasions, including dead of night, but nothing has ever revealed itself to me.

I thought that this month, as the last article in the series I have been writing on the cinema, I would concern myself with filmic recreations of ghostly phenomena as opposed to horror. So many horror films are crude and badly made, like cheap fairground thrills, whereas the two films I propose to write about are cleverly and subtly-made classics.

In 1961, “The Innocents” (directed by Jack Clayton) appeared on our cinema screens and it is truly memorable (It is now happily available on an excellent British Film Institute DVD). Set in mid-Victorian England it makes beautiful use of black and white wide-screen to create a remarkable world of shadow, mystery and half-seen things. Matters are suggested and left to our imagination and the spirits (with one exception) are always seen from a distance or in the corner of our eye which makes them truly chilling and the atmosphere powerful.

The story is based on the American Henry James’s spooky “The Turn of the Screw” (James, incidentally, was fond of Torquay and a regular visitor) and concerns itself with the ghostly and evil possession of two seemingly “innocent” children and the intervention of their repressed governess. We are left unsure, finally, as to whether the phantoms “exist” or are projections of her sexually frustrated nature. Their appearances never fail to give one goose flesh, such is the impressive control by the director and the very fine Victorian atmosphere.

The other masterly ghost story film, also made in England, is Robert Wise’s 1963 “The Haunting” about a house in New England (U.S.A.) with a horrible reputation. Wise and his remarkable cameraman, Davis Boulton, and the designers make brilliant use of the wide screen suggesting the presence of evil in the very fabric of the house and the way the characters are corrupted by this. This version is far superior to the silly, overcooked remake (with Catherine Zeta-Jones) which mistakenly overstates things and resorts to cliché and overuse of special effects destroying any power. Generally, colour does not aid films in creating ghostly atmosphere and neither does noisy Dolby stereo.
The climax of the 1963 film, when the spirit is abroad in the house and one hears sinister noises and the door of one room bulges under the pressure of untold malevolence, is a high point and very frightening. Wise, like Clayton, understood the importance of understatement and the building of tension, something modern directors (and audiences) seem increasingly unable to manage.

BBC TV has brought us a couple of short classics for Christmas from stories by Dickens (‘ The Signalman’), about a haunted railway line, and the old master story-teller M.R. James (‘Whistle and I’ll Come to You’) about the danger of disturbing tomb-guarding ancient spirits. Both can be bought on DVD and should be viewed by anyone who wishes to see how skill and imagination can overcome any limitations of budget. Even a modern, very good ghost film like Amenábar’s “The Others” (2001) does not, in my estimation, equal the films I have mentioned above. However, Guillermo del Toro’s masterly “The Devil’s Backbone,” (also 2001) set in the time of the Spanish Civil War is a modern classic and shows that, despite my caveat, colour can be atmospheric in the right hands. It is a very creepy film indeed.

I shall be presenting a ghost story film or two at the LAL Film Club in December. Don’t miss them!
KR