Abstract
Ironically, despite its deep historic basis, the Gothic has always been a modern movement inspired by contemporary culture. Advances in science inspired Gothic writers such as Mary Shelley and Wilkie Collins. The Gothic is a technologically aware style and the attraction of the moving image is evidence of that. ‘The ghost in the machine’ shows how the Gothic was ideal for the medium of cinema, and how Gothic cinema was shaped by the social and political forces of the time, including the Great War trauma in Weimar Germany, mid-century isolationism in America, and British attempts at cultural renewal after the Second World War.
