188. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

Song - The Man With The Child In His Eyes (Kate Bush)

Movie: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947)

In the 1990's there was apparently an attempt to remake The Ghost and Mrs. Muir with Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer. Nothing came of it, possibly for the best, but perhaps in the next few years some enterprising producer could give it another try. It's hard to see the success of this film separately from the year of its release. Similarly to A Matter of Life and Death, it feels like a direct response to World War 2 and people's need to come to terms with the passing of so many loved ones. In the end the two arrive at different conclusions, and Mankiewicz never comes close to the sheer filmmaking chutzpah of Powell and Pressburger. But like the dead in their film, the ghost (Rex Harrison) here is depicted, mostly without any special effects, as a fully corporeal human being who looks as alive as Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney). There are occasions when he only appears as a disembodied voice, or suddenly disappears from the room without warning, but for the most part his presence in the world is not presented as distinctly different from Lucy's. It's also notable that until his goodbye to Lucy we never actually see his disappearances; he never 'disintegrates' within the frame. Rather, whenever the ghost 'needs' to disappear, Mankiewicz cuts away from him and then either cuts back to reveal an empty space where the ghost stood, or simply shows Lucy responding to his disappearance. This approach essentially never allows you to imagine the ghost as anything other than a human being. 

The film never mentions World War 2, and is in fact set in 1900, but the ghost is captain Daniel Gregg who laments that he travelled the seas to make life better for the 'landsmen" and never got much gratitude for his sacrifices. He now wants Lucy, a widow who came from London to Southcliff-on-Sea where she rents Captain Gregg's old house, to write a book about his adventures to set the record straight. Unsurprisingly they fall in love, which complicates things, especially because most men who meet Lucy do the same. Once you see Gene Tierney, you'll find this to be the most realistc aspect of the story. What makes Lucy even more attractive/interesting is that while she is written as proudly obstinate, Tierney also makes her uncertainty visible. Lucy makes several important decisions in the film, knowing both that they well may be wrong ánd that she wants to make them.

 

I don't find doomed love stories inherently appealing, and was slightly peeved by the finale. While that does fully embrace the more gothic elements of the film, it also embraces the idea that for accepting misery in life, you will be rewarded in the afterlife. It does so with more nuance than expressed here, but it's hard to escape that Lucy's happiest moment in the film comes in death. Still, the incredibly sharp and witty screenplay makes up for any misgivings I may have. Harrison has a lot of fun with his dialogue combining charminly foulmouthed declarations with archly romantic chivalry, but the best line in the film belongs to Miles Fairley (George Sanders), one of Lucy's living suitors. Watching over the English rain, he observes that "it's easy to understand why the most beautiful poems about England in the spring were written by poets living in Italy at the time."

 

187. Roadgames

Song - Gimme All Your Lovin' (ZZ Top)

Movie: Roadgames (Richard Franklin, 1981)

I should maybe explore more Ozploitation films, cause I greatly enjoyed this one about a poet truck driver who starts suspecting he is sharing tbe road with a killer in a green van. It starts off compelling enough with a naked woman playing guitar in a brighlty red-lit hotel room and a mysterious man dressed as a motorist who puts a wire around her neck. We never see her actually get killed and the scene is filmed in a much more overtly expressionistic way than anything before or after. The next morning Pat Quid (Stacy Keach), who had to sleep in his truck in front of the hotel, sees a stranger in one of the rooms suspiciously watching the garbage men do their job. The film gets only better from there, especially once Pat picks up hitchhiker Pamela (Jamie Lee Curtis). He may fall in love with her, but his most cherished companion will always be Boswell, a dingo (or a dog!) 

Pat playfully annoys his co-passenger, calling her Hitch and is also shown to be the owner of a Hitchcock book. The film earns those comparisons, especially during a classic scene of mistaken identity, when it cuts between Pat confronting the potential killer in a public bathroom and Pamela, the daughter of an American diplomat, foraging in the seemingly empty green van. Of course, Pamela disappears, which turns Pat into an even more Hitchcockian character, who mistrusting his instincts essentially starts gaslighting himself. Director Franklin does a good job of leaving it open until the very end whether the man in the van is guilty or Pat's been too long on the road. He is a wonderful character, Pat, a sensitive, rational truck driver on his way to deliver meat from Melbourne to Perth. He likes to imagine the inner lives of the drivers, motorists and passengers he meets on the road, to quote poetry to his dingo and play word games with the passengers he picks up. He is also a former gun runner in Africa, currently possibly a scab, as implied by the radio news which keeps reminding us that the meat industry is in deep trouble because of a trucker strike, while the union boss can't be found anywhere. 

Franlklin uses the wide outstretched roads, the lights surrounding them, and the cramped space in the truck to create some wonderfully stylized scenes reflecting Pat's doubts and unsettled state of mind. He is helped by Keach's terrific performance and his hesitant literary voiceover. Keach plays Pat as an experienced truck driver who can handle with an easy-going confidence anything within the parameters of his job. but also gets frazzled, confused and hurt in situations that aren't in his comfort zone. He is charming enough to seduce Pamela, but it's also easy to see why he could believe that she voluntariliy joined the man in the green van. That's also because Jamie Lee Curtis, who I've always found to be one of the coolest actresses, is in top form here as a self-assured flirty and fiery hitchhiker, looking for "excitement" in defiance of her stuffy elitist parents. Curtis and Keach get great support from a motley crew of Australian actors, playing the various, somewhat quirky, motorists Pat keeps encountering on his journey.