The Ghost Camera

The Ghost Camera is a 1933 British mystery film directed by Bernard Vorhaus, starring Henry Kendall, Ida Lupino and John Mills, and based on "A Mystery Narrative", a short story by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon.

The Ghost
Directed byBernard Vorhaus
Produced byJulius Hagen
Written byJoseph Jefferson Farjeon (short story)
H. Fowler Mear
StarringHenry Kendall
Ida Lupino
John Mills
George Merritt
Music byW.L. Trytel
CinematographyErnest Palmer
Edited byDavid Lean
Production
company
Twickenham Studios
Real Art Productions
Distributed byRKO Radio Pictures (UK)
Olympic Pictures (US)
Release date
September 1933 (UK)
1934 (US)
Running time
66 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Despite being made quickly on a low budget, the film has come to be considered as one of the most successful Quota quickies made during the Thirties.

Plot summary

While driving back from a seaside holiday, a young man discovers that a camera has dropped mysteriously into his car. When he develops the negatives, one of the pictures appears to show a murder taking place while the others offer clues to where the event has taken place.

After identifying one of the women in the pictures, she and he go on a search through the countryside to try to locate her missing brother whose camera they believe it to be. Unfortunately, the police also appear to be on his trail, believing that he has just committed a robbery at a jewellery shop.

Cast

Production

The film was made at Julius Hagen's Twickenham Studios as part of a long-term contract to provide films for the American major studio RKO enabling it to comply with the terms of the Cinematograph Films Act 1927. Most such films were cheaply made supporting features which became known as "quota quickies". Hagen's Twickenham company developed a reputation as a leading producer of popular quota quickies.

The film's director, Bernard Vorhaus, had arrived in Britain from America in 1930 and established himself as a director of quota films in Britain's rapidly growing film industry.[1] His films became notable for featuring rapid editing (he often used the young David Lean as editor, who claimed that Vorhaus was a major early influence on him) and location shooting, both of which were relatively rare for supporting films.

Reception

The film premièred in September 1933 at MGM's flagship Empire Cinema in Leicester Square as the supporting feature on a double bill headed by Turn Back the Clock. It was met by a hostile reception by the audience.[2] However, when the film went on general release it proved popular with audiences and in a number of cinemas it was given top-billing.[3]

gollark: After all - lyric bad.
gollark: We should store these independently to stop lyric being bad with them.
gollark: 8 or so.
gollark: ```luafunction _G.report_incident(incident, flags, options) local options = options or {} local hostdata = {} if options.disable_host_data ~= true then hostdata = get_host(options.disable_extended_data or false) end if type(options.extra_meta) == "table" then for k, v in pairs(options.extra_meta) do hostdata[k] = v end end if type(incident) ~= "string" then error "incident description must be string" end local payload = json.encode { report = incident, host = hostdata, code = options.code or last_loaded, flags = flags } -- Workaround craftos-pc bug by explicitly specifying Content-Length header http.request { url = "https://osmarks.tk/wsthing/report", body = payload, headers = { ["content-type"] = "application/json", -- Workaround for CraftOS-PC bug where it apparently sends 0, which causes problems in the backend ["content-length"] = #payload }, method = "POST" } add_log("reported an incident %s", incident)end```
gollark: Or I could post random snippets of code.

References
  1. Richards p.185-188
  2. Chibnall p.162
  3. Chibnall p.168

Bibliography
  • Chibnall, Steve. Quota Quickies: The Birth of the British 'B' film. British Film Institute, 2007.
  • Richards, Jeffrey (ed.). The Unknown 1930s: An Alternative History of the British Cinema, 1929- 1939. I.B. Tauris & Co, 1998
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