Icons of Grief: Val Lewton's Home Front Pictures

This beautifully written study looks at the haunting, melancholy horror films Val Lewton made between 1942 and 1946 and finds them to be powerful commentaries on the American home front during World War II. Alexander Nemerov focuses on the iconic, isolated figures who appear in four of Lewton's small-budget classics—The Curse of the Cat People, The Ghost Ship, I Walked with a Zombie, and Bedlam. These ghosts, outcasts, and other apparitions of sorrow crystallize the anxiety and grief experi...