it’s quite the entrance. Shot in one
of those grand old creaky manors
that pepper the English countryside,
Carmilla has the feel of some
lost installment of the BBC’s ‘70s ‘A
Ghost Story for Christmas’ anthology.
Visually, Harris and cinematographer
Michael Wood divide up
the house in two distinct palettes
- warm and amber for the domain
of the passionate Carmilla and
Lara, cold and teal for the rooms
Fontaine occupies. As the story
progresses and Carmilla’s influence
grows, so too does the film
become warmer, as though the
many candles lighting the house
are somehow more alive. Harris
frequently cuts to extreme closeups
of worms, insects and spiders,
which themselves seem to be
stirred into some sort of a frenzy,
as though nature itself is in heat.
Were it not for the stories of other
young girls in the locale falling
ill without rational diagnoses, Carmilla
might be the unambiguous
heroine of Harris’s film. Let’s face
it, who doesn’t root for Ingrid Pitt
when she comes up against the
stuffy bastions of a society that’s
rigidly straight in every sense of
NJ STAGE - ISSUE 73
INDEX
NEXT ARTICLE
24