Through a Lens Darkly: Exploring the photography of the film The Bride (2017)

In honor of Halloween, Jared Case, curator of film exhibitions at the Eastman Museum, decided it would be fun to screen three scary films that feature photography as an important plot point. In response, we thought it would be fun to get a group together from our Department of Photography (DOP), watch all three films, and discuss the accuracy of them. This blog post shares the conversation we had around our second film, The Bride (2017).

SPOILER ALERT: Because we are talking about details in the film, we may give away some of the key twists and plot points. We suggest watching the film first, then checking out the blog post!

Jared Case, curator of film exhibitions: From rising Russian horror director Svyatoslav Podgaevskiy, The Bride explores the idea of the undying monster in relation to 19th-Century photography. In the late 1800s, a young husband and photographer loses his wife at an early age. He knows of a rite that may allow her to be with him again, but he needs to capture the image of her dead body before he buries her. Years later, an unsuspecting young woman, Nastya, about to marry into this family discovers that the past never stays buried.

Kate Meyers Emery, manager of digital engagement: Right off the bat, we know that this film is using post-mortem photography as the underlying grain of truth in their supernatural plot. Post-mortem photography was indeed a real trend, but it didn’t really have these supernatural underpinnings. What’s the actual history of post-mortem photography?

Heather Shannon, associate curator, DOP: In the 1800s, high mortality rates meant that people were accustomed to death. Post-mortem photographs — portraits of the dead often made at home — may strike the modern viewer as morbid but in the nineteenth century they provided a great deal of comfort to the living.

Most often the photographer attempted to photograph the deceased in a pose reminiscent of sleeping. Rather than ruminate on the finality of the death, with the deceased posed in a state of slumber, the viewer might instead consider that, as in sleep, his or her loved one was temporarily free from the cares of the world.

Kate: One of the things that bothered me about the portrayal of post-mortem photography in this instance is that it plays on a misconception. I hear frequently that one of the ways to tell if an image is a post-mortem is to look for the metal apparatus holding up the body; however, we know that these were mainly used for the living to keep them standing still during the long exposure times. The dead wouldn’t need them because they don’t move!

When we were watching this as a group, there was a lot of discussion around the inaccuracies surrounding the types of photographs being produced versus the camera being used versus the terms that the family used to describe the photograph. Can you elaborate on these problems?

Heather: The size of the camera the photographer used to make the original post-mortem photograph was, to the best of my recollection, far too small to accommodate the resulting negative, which we finally got to see at the end of the movie. Several of us also wondered why, at the beginning of the move, the filmmaker emphasized the daguerreotype when the image in question was a glass negative!

At any rate, the camera looked to be a 4x5 and the negative an 8x10.

I’d also like to add that, at least in the United States, it was not at all common to paint eyeballs on the closed eyelids of the deceased. One of the points was to photograph the deceased as if he or she were asleep.

Kate: Part way through, we learn that if Nastya can destroy the original photograph of “The Bride” she can end the curse and save herself. Despite having multiple chances to destroy the object, she ultimately fails to do so. While I think all of us were yelling “smash it” throughout these frustrating scenes, one of the most surprising parts was how durable the photograph turned out to be- she even drops it at least four feet and it doesn’t break. How accurate is that?

Heather: I am sure — very sure! — that if I dropped a vintage glass plate negative it would break!

Kate:

Let’s end with our rankings. On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rank the film on:

Accuracy (with 1 being that they don’t know anything about photography, and 10 being that everything was 100% accurate)

Jared: 7

Heather: 6

Jamie: 7

Kate: 7

Scare-Factor (with 1 being that it wasn’t scary at all and doesn’t belong in this genre, and 10 being that you’re still leaving the lights on and having nightmares about it)

Jared: 6

Jamie: 8

Heather: 6

Kate: 7

Overall Enjoyment (with 1 being that you wouldn’t suggest anyone watch it ever, and 10 being that it’s your new favorite film)

Jared: 6

Jamie: 6

Heather: 5

Kate: 6