I Walked With A Zombie

Lewton’s and Tourneur’s second collaboration was a loose adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Betsy Connell, a young nurse, travels to the Carribean, where she’s been hired by a sugar plantation owner to look after his catatonic wife. Skeptical about the true reasons behind her patient’s affliction, Betsy turns to voodoo and black magic in an attempt to bring her back to life. Despite its sensationalistic title, the limited setting and the sparse means at the director’s disposal, I Walked with a Zombie is a masterpiece of sobriety and insinuation. Turneur’s brilliant camerawork weaves an intricate tale in which the boundaries of myth and reality become blurred as the heroine’s Western skepticism is gradually tainted by superstition.

USA , B & W , 69’