I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (director: Jacques Tourneur; screenwriters: Curt Siodmak/Ardel Wray/From story by Inez Wallace; cinematographer: Roy Hunt; cast: James Ellison (Wesley Rand), Frances Dee (Betsy Connell), Tom Conway (Paul Holland), Edith Barrett (Mrs. Rand), Theresa Harria (Alma), James Bell (Dr. Maxwell), Sir Lancelot (Calypso Singer), Richard Abrams (Clement), Darby Jones (Carre-Four), Clinton Rosemond (Coachman), Christine Gordon (Jessica Holland), 1943)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Jacques Tourneur (The Cat People/The Leopard Man) based this studio RKO film for Val Lewton on a magazine article of Inez Wallace, but added the Jane Eyre storyline onto this tale of voodoo in the West Indies. He has come up with a possible masterpiece, arguably his best film, that overcomes a questionable B-movie plot, to achieve an elegant, memorable, and poetic story.
It is snowing in Canada and the young and eager nurse, Betsy Connell (Dee), accepts a job to care for the comatose wife of a sugar planter on a Caribbean island called St. Sebastian. On the ocean voyage, she converses with the embittered sugar planter who employed her, Paul Holland (Conway), who warns her that what she takes for beautiful is all underscored by death, such as the jumping fish she is admiring, as he tells her, they are only jumping in fear of being eaten by the bigger fish. Meanwhile, in the background, the black crew are chanting the mournful tune 'O Marie Congo,' as they are absorbed by all the beauty around them. While he strikes, for her, a rather attractive pose, of a Byron type, perhaps overreacting to his wife's illness by being guilt-ridden that he drove her toward the critical condition she is in.
On the island, a black coachman (Clinton) fills her in on the island's slave history, of how they were brought to the islands in chains on the boat with the figure of St. Sebastian on its front (now part of Paul's home), which makes the beauty of the island seem tainted for them.
Betsy, upon reaching her destination, meets the half-brother of Paul, Wesley Rand (James Ellison), who has a drinking problem and has lost interest in his work at the sugar mill. He speaks despairingly of Paul, warning her that he is a man of beautiful words but is capable of harming her, like he did his wife, Jessica (Christine Gordon). He leaves for work at the sound of the eerie throbbing of the jungle drums, which is only announcing that the sugar syrup is ready to be poured.
At night, she hears the cries of a woman, thinking that it is her patient; she rushes to her in the darkness of the sleeping area, and finds her sleepwalking, in a trance-like state. Paul comes rushing in upon hearing the nurse's shrieks and she is told by the servants who arrive, that the cries are from the black maid Alma (Harria), who is taking care of a new born child. The maid tells her that the custom on the island is for people to cry at a birth because in the days of slavery, babies were born into a life of misery. The reverse is also true, that death will bring on sounds of rejoicement because death signifies freedom.
Betsy confers with Dr. Maxwell (James Bell), who believes Jessica suffers from tropical fever, which has incapacitated her spinal cord, leaving her with no will power and unable to speak. She can only obey simple commands, and is like a zombie- a living ghost. He recommends the nurse restrict her to a light diet and some exercise.
While in an outdoor restaurant drinking and conversing with Wesley, Betsy hears in the street the startling calypso song sung by Sir Lancelot, which tells of her employer's family history, which is entitled "Shame and Scandal in the Family," of how Wesley tried to steal Paul's wife and brought dishonor to the family. It is interesting to note, how this 1940s film had a tolerant and respectful attitude to blacks, and even allowed them to be critical of upper-class whites without being rebuffed for it.
Betsy meets the mother of the family (Edith Barrett), who is pleased with Betsy's concern for Jessica. She tells the nurse to have Paul remove the whiskey from the dining table, that she is worried about Wesley's growing alcoholism, as she recognizes that Paul and Betsy have an attraction for each other and that she can influence the master of the house (he is her first son, whose deceased father was the plantation owner) to remove this traditionally placed decanter that is always on the family table.
Betsy decides, after she is sure that she has fallen in love with Paul, that Jessica must be treated with the only known cure Dr. Maxwell can suggest for her, insulin shock therapy, which could also result in her death. Her purpose is two-fold, one to help the patient who seems dead already, the other, to resolve the situation with Paul, so that if she is cured, Paul will have his wife back, but if she dies, she can now go out with Paul. But the treatment doesn't work.
Alma says that only the voodoo doctors at Houmfort can cure her, as the native locals are concerned with the bad feelings derived from having the zombie woman around with no resolvement in sight and would be anxious to help. Alma carefully outlines in some flour she spills on the floor how to get there and pins on Betsy a patch needed for entry to the voodoo ceremony, so that when she reaches the crossroads to the place, the zombie guard would let her pass.
One of the all time greatest scenes in horror movie lore takes place, as Betsy takes the sleepwalking Jessica through the thick jungle of the sugar cane fields while the howling wind and rustling branches and sound of a conch is being blown to bring to the ceremony the faithful. Then, there are the contrasting light and dark shadow patterns seen in the field, and the unmentionable dangers that are imagined in the frightened mind of the brave nurse, as she goes silently past the voodoo talismans and the goat carcass hanging from a tree. When they reach Carre-Four (Darby), the scary looking zombie guard, he lets them go on, but follows along in a very mysterious way. When Betsy shines her flashlight on the guard's face after they reach the ceremonial spot at Houmfort, the voodoo drums begin and the ceremony is started, and all this is so much like a dream.
The ritual voodoo ceremony is done in a deliberate and quietly dignified manner, with the result being hypnotic. The worship calls for drums and dance, but the surprise is that the high priest is Mrs. Rand. She will later on explain to Betsy, that when her second husband, who was a missionary, passed on, in order to get the natives to take the proper medicine, she pretended that the voodoo God spoke through her, and that after she became bitterly disappointed that her sons were fighting over Paul's wife, she uttered Jessica's name in a curse that stuck and Jessica has been a zombie ever since.
The obscure motives of the mother and the nurse, and to who was at fault in Paul's marriage, and what role Wesley plays in all this, is never cleared up completely by the film but that only makes the story more intriguing. Mrs. Rand is walking in the world of both the Christian and voodoo societies, and her role in this affair could lead far in speculation, even to suggest possibilities that she wanted Wesley for herself, almost like the part Jocasta played in the Oedipal myth.
As for Paul, we can never be sure if he was the cause of Jessica turning away from him or if he was always the brooding intellectual type, even before her affair with his half-brother. Jessica's personality is seen differently through the eyes of others, but since she was a zombie for the whole film, we have no idea what her role was in this indelicate affair. The seemingly innocent Betsy, seems clever enough to have thought of a solution to this problem that could benefit her. Her plan comes about only after she falls for Paul. So her motives for helping Jessica could be called-in for questioning.
The natives want the case of the zombie settled, they feel there is enough sadness on the island, as is. The shaman makes a voodoo doll in the likeness of Jessica, and the voodoo followers decide to go along with the curse and hold Wesley responsible for it. They stick a pin in the doll and send their trusted zombie guard to retrieve her but are foiled by Paul and Betsy; so instead, Wesley is used to bring about her final death. After he fails to get the nurse to euthanize her, he takes an arrow from the figure of St. Sebastian in front of their palatial home and carries Jessica in a zombie-like ritualistic manner to the ocean, where they both drown. He will now be with his loved one forever.
The film closes on the image of slavery for the blacks and wealth for the whites, the arrow-pierced St. Sebastian, the symbol of all the pain suffered by the island people, as a voiceover, in a serious religious tone, declares that death has taken away the evil and implores God to bring joy to the living, with forgiveness to all.
The power of the script, is in the telling of a tale about local superstition built around the moral dilemma of what is the Christian concept of right and wrong, and by creating an unforgettable and haunting atmosphere that blows away the less than sterling acting by the male leads and the unlikeliehood of the story being totally believable. Tourneau's direction for this low-budget film was marvelous, and it was spectacularly shot by Roy Hunt in its chiaroscuro imagery, bringing to light a film that is both incredible and magical.
REVIEWED ON 11/16/99 GRADE: A
Dennis Schwartz: " Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
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