On Criterion, I watched the 1942 film I Married a Witch, directed by René Clair, which I heard of from the Critically Acclaimed podcast. I really adored it, it was a charming and weird premise for a romantic comedy. Veronica Lake plays a woman who got burned at the stake in the 1600s, and she and her father’s souls are imprisoned in a tree for centuries (their ashes are buried under the tree). She curses the whole lineage of the Puritan man who burned her, ensuring every marriage in his male descendants to be miserable and loveless failures.
Their souls escape the tree and they vow to continue their curse, this time on Fredric March, who is running for governor and about to marry Susan Hayward the next day. Veronica Lake, whose soul is embodied as a smoke plume that can hide in bottles, uses a fire to materialize as a beautiful woman in order to “bewitch” March and make him marry her so she can ruin his life for fun, but things take some screwball twists.
I found this really delightful, and Lake was just so funny and charming as the witch, just messing around with March as her dumb plaything. I’m happy the podcast recommended this, this was fun and offbeat and cute.
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