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."