'The Ghost Camera' is a mystery thriller based on the miniature story 'A Mystery Narrative' by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, author of 'Mystery In White : A Christmas Crime Story' (1938). John Gray (Henry Kendall) discovers a camera and develops some negatives. One picture reveals something dark and sinister happening, possibly a murderer being caught in the act. John tracks down a mystery girl through the picture and convinces her to help him solve the riddle.
"Oh no, it's not in the least tiring. On the contrary, I find it excessively stimulating."
The sharp technological mystery 'The Ghost Camera' is a riveting British crime thriller that serves up an entertaining pursuit in search of a hidden truth. The film's spooky, unusual premise is lifted during dialogue scenes by Bernard Vorhaus' dainty direction and given juice by an array of tricks engineered by his technical crew. Cinematographer Ernest Palmer's high contrast, black and white imagery draws you into the frame and he presents negative images and underexposures created by the ghost camera. I really like the searching tracking shot that goes between two rooms. The crack cutting of editor David Lean is ceaselessly inventive as he experiments with rapid editing and stenciled cuts; there's a wonderful sequence in which Lean uses swipe screens to cut together front doors being opened during a street expedition, merging the images as different doors are being knocked on. Between them, Palmer and Lean create a split-screen effect with one scene by using a mirror and a doorway as partitions while the camera observes separate character actions.
"Following the successful release of the independently made 'Money For Speed' (1933), co-starring Ida Lupino and edited by David Lean, Bernard Vorhaus accepted an offer to work for Twickenham Studios, at that time one of Britain's busiest. Twickenham's resident editor, Jack Harris, was otherwise busy and so Vorhaus was able to get Lean to edit 'The Ghost Camera' (1933), one of Vorhaus' best-known British films which again starred Lupino as a girl with a guilty secret. This neat little thriller was based on a story by J. Jefferson Farjeon, who also provided material for Hitchcock's 'Number Seventeen' (1932) and three early films by Michael Powell, including 'The Phantom Light' (1934).
The film shows many of the characteristic touches that graced Vorhaus and Lean's previous collaboration, with inventive camerawork and fast pacing and a fondness for using real locations whenever possible. The story is decked out with a number of unusual and innovative stylistic touches, such as a pre-credit sequence and creative use of subjective camera during a flashback, devices that were highly original at the time and would only become more common years later."
- Sergio Angelini, The British Film Institute
Stanley Lupino in 'My Awful Past!'
Bernard Vorhaus compiles some exciting action set-pieces while shooting on location in rural getaways. There's a creepy sequence that unfolds at a secluded country inn, a nice comic moment on a farm and a gripping set-up at an open ancient ruin that looks like a medieval torture chamber inside its battered walls. There's also a claustrophobic, sweat-inducing courtroom stand that's brilliantly performed by John Mills and Ida Lupino as brother and sister Ernest Elton and Mary Elton. Lupino is courted by Henry Kendall in this movie and I was totally shocked to read afterwards that she was only 15 years old here.
"Low budget, UK mystery that charms thanks to the performances by Henry Kendall as a talky English twit and an incredibly young Ida Lupino as the girl he attempts to help. John Mills also appears as Lupino's brother."
- Jeff Williams reviews 'The Ghost Camera', letterboxd
Ida Lupino
'The Ghost Camera' is a neat little mystery with a fantastic angle. It's one of the best quota quickies I've seen to come off the pacy British assembly line of the 1930s. I think this is because it has a novel premise, maintains a good pace and manoeuvres the camera. Bernard Vorhaus successfully avoids the fatally static, shot-at-eye-level staginess that cripples so many British drawing room mysteries and it helps that he gets things moving out in the country. If you enjoy mysteries like Michelangelo Antonioni's 'Blow-Up' (1966), Dario Argento's 'The Bird With The Crystal Plumage' (1970), Francis Coppola's 'The Conversation' (1974) and Brian De Palma's 'Blow Out' (1981), you might also enjoy 'The Ghost Camera'.
