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April 2003, Week 3

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Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
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Sun, 20 Apr 2003 14:44:56 -0400
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Susanna Chandler <[log in to unmask]>
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The Third Man (1949) immediately lept to mind as an "almost ghost".

On a more humorous note, and outside of the 40s, is Alan Rudolph's The
Moderns. The faux death of the gossip writer Oiseau [bird in french], who
stages his own demise as a way to escape the ex-pat scene in its own death
throes. He hides in the trees watching his funeral at Père Lachaise. More in
the category of plain old "phony ghost".

Susanna


on 4/20/03 9:06 AM, [log in to unmask] at [log in to unmask]
wrote:

> "Miller, James Andrew (UMC-Student)" wrote:
>
>> I'm looking at a lot of ghost movies from the 1940s (Ghost and Mrs Muir,
>> Portrait of Jennie, A Guy Named Joe) and began to notice that there seem to
>> be quite a few of what I might call "almost ghost" or "pseudo ghost" films in
>> the period.
>>
>> Examples:
>> The Ghost Breakers (1941): the ghost turns out to be a scam...
>> Laura
>> The Lost Moment (1947): adaptation of James' "The Aspern Papers"-- Miss Tina
>> isn't literally a ghost but has almost made herself one by sheer force of
>> will...
>
> That last entry interests me.  The notion of 'sheer force of will' informs
> Poe's 'Ligeia' which thrice quotes a passage from Joseph Glanvill (1636-80) in
> support.  (Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were later comers!)  It may also be
> found in the
> novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, 'D'entre les morts' (c. 1955),
> the basis of Hitchcock's VERTIGO (1958).
>
> Hitchcock's REBECCA (1940) may just about meet your description of 'almost
> ghost' films, inasmuch that the dead Rebecca 'haunts' the mansion called
> Manderlay and exerts her pernicious influence through the living, notably the
> sinister Mrs
> Danvers.
>
> REBECCA was of course an influence on that fine ghost film, Lewis Allen's THE
> UNINVITED (1944).
>
> Re the foregoing, you may want to look at the entries on REBECCA, LIFEBOAT,
> and VERTIGO in my 'The Alfred Hitchcock Story' (1999) - the uncut,
> non-simplified UK edition.
>
> - Ken Mogg (Ed., 'The MacGuffin').
> Website: http://www.labhyrinth.net.au/~muffin
>
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