Richard Dix

The Ghost Ship

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Tom Merriam on the bridge with Captain Stone

The Ghost Ship isn’t a Jacques Tourneur film but it feels like one. Perhaps that’s because Tourneur’s editor, Mark Robson, is directing. And as well as misty gothic looks and a sense of foreboding, Robson has also borrowed from Tourneur his sense of psychological overload. The Ghost Ship isn’t a horror movie, or a supernatural tale, though it looks like one and even the title nudges us that way, much like Tourneur’s Cat People did. Instead it’s the story of a bright and capable third officer on board a ship who becomes increasingly alarmed at the behaviour of his captain, Will Stone, eventually blowing the whistle after becoming convinced that the captain’s cavalier … Read more

100 Years of… The Ten Commandments

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Moses with the tablets of stone

Cecil B DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, so good he made it twice. This is the original 1923 version, which came about after DeMille held a public competition asking for suggestions as to what he should make next, maximum shock and awe being the big idea. The winning entry started with the line “You cannot break the Ten Commandments – they will break you,” and that was that as far as De Mille was concerned, a theme and a challenge all in one. He shot some of it in two-strip Technicolor, while the rest of it was tinted, as was common at the time. That’s all gone now; restorations come in a standard black and white. … Read more