I Walked with a Zombie

Produced by Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur’s loose reimagining of Jane Eyre, set in the West Indies, blends psychological horror with Haitian vodou and folklore.

Introduced by Kieron Webb, Head of Conservation, BFI National Archive

  • Director

    Jacques Tourneur

  • With

    Frances Dee, Tom Conway, James Ellison, Edith Barrett

  • USA 1943. 69min

  • 35mm

  • Certificate

    PG

Canadian nurse Betsy, who is employed to care for the catatonic wife of a rich plantation owner, arrives on the Caribbean island of Saint Sebastian to find a world of contrasts: of light and shadow, beauty and decay, and the living and the dead. The glitter in the water is actually putrescence and ‘everything seems beautiful because you don’t understand’. Both ahead of its time in looking at the ghosts of colonialism and sometimes of its time in the delivery, I Walked with a Zombie leaves room for interpretation, confusion and awe, in what filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul called one of the most beautiful black-and-white films ever made. Seeing is believing, with this brand new 35mm print, where the shadows can come powerfully to life... or death.

Kristina Tarasova

New print creation supported by Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas.

Made by the BFI National Archive with funding from the National Lottery and the additional support of donors to the Keep Film on Film campaign. Created courtesy of Warner Brothers at Fotokem.