Carnival of Souls: Are we ghosts in the
city?
Introducing
Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962)
at A Nos Amour’s pop-up screening this Thursday, Rodger Clarke began by
contextualising early cinema within other historical technologies of
entertainment. He outlined the early competition between X-ray and Cinema as
forms of amusement and explained that, at the turn of the 20th century,
both were features of pop-up urban spaces, found mainly at travelling fairs.
Alongside ghost shows and mechanised rides, cinema and X-ray evoked awe and
astonishment, poised half way between feats of science and enigmatic
apparitions. That early film was emerging in these transient spaces, alongside
X-ray and ghostly spectacles, goes some way to explaining film’s long
fascination with the ghoulish; an obsession which is at the heart of Carnival of Souls. It was therefore an
apt choice for a pop-up film showing; the ghosts on screen, as illusionary as
the shadows of cinema, were in turn as fleeting as the happening itself.
