Mark Robson’s The Ghost Ship is a moody and atmospheric little nautical thriller that I enjoyed so much more than I expected. The film presents us with two competing views of humanity – people are terrible and need to be governed by a stern authority, contrasted with the belief that people are essentially good and just need to be reminded of their basic goodness. It’s a simple dialectic, but one that is made terrifyingly concrete in the personage of Captain Stone, a man who believes that he and he alone has the authority of life and death over the souls on his ship. This tyrannical belief in a privileged elite’s “boundless wisdom” and superior standing feels all-too-relevant in today’s corporate and political oligarchy. While it’s still a b-movie, the black-and-white cinematography is rich and textured, the depth of shadow and play of light lending a visual poetry to the film that makes it even more compelling.
