On Tubi, I watched Blithe Spirit, the 1945 British supernatural black comedy directed by David Lean, co-written by Lean, cinematographer Ronald Neame and associate producer Anthony Havelock-Allan, based off of Noel Coward's 1941 play of the same name. It starred Rex Harrison and Kay Hammond, and was a delightful weird story about ghosts and marital drama and poking fun at stuffy British colonial culture. The film was shot in Technicolor, and has a glorious effect when it comes to the visuals and ghostly apparitions.
Charles Condomine (Harrison) is a writer who is seeking research for an occult-based novel he is writing, and invites the eccentric medium Madame Arcati (a fantastic and scene-stealing Margaret Rutherford) to his home in Kent to perform a seance. Charles' first wife, Elvira (Hammond) died seven years prior from pneumonia, and he has been married for five years to his second wife, Ruth (Constance Cummings). Charles is a typical stiff upper lip old-school Englishman, and goes along with the seance, not being a believer while Madame Arcati is completely serious, talking about communicating with Daphne, a seven-year old girl with a cold who died in 1884. When Madame Arcati performs the seance, the table will rap one for yes, two for no, and she speaks with the voice of Daphne, singing an old childhood song.
But, to Charles' surprise, he sees and hears the ghost of Elvira, who enters with a greenish tint to her body, with an ethereal nature that Charles described her as having had in life, and teasing and mocking him. Nobody else can see or hear her, so naturally Charles is treated like he's out of his mind. There are comedic misunderstandings where Charles will argue with Elvira, calling her a guttersnipe and telling her to shut up, and Ruth thinking those insults are directed at her, it's some good back and forth angry banter. As Elvira makes her appearances, usually at night, she keeps pestering Charles about his current marriage, thinking he married a dull person and insulting Ruth, while Ruth, slowly realizing that Elvira's spirit is actually there, is resenting her and her influence over Charles.
The film takes more of a black comedy turn, with a plot development I wasn't expecting, and I found this movie to be really fun and delightful. Kay Hammond is clearly having fun playing up Elvira's cunning, flirtatious nature, pressing Charles' emotional buttons. Margaret Rutherford had this gleeful charm to her as the medium, Constance Cummings was good as the "straight man" to everyone else's antics, seemingly the only person with any actual sense going on, and Rex Harrison's lines were full of vocabulary words I had to look up, like "irascible," meaning to be easily angered, and frequently saying "What the devil?!" The writing was really sharp, with banter being exchanged like a table tennis game, and made the film feel very light and breezy.
I'm happy I checked this out, as I had vaguely heard of it, and knew of the 2020 remake with Dan Stevens, Leslie Mann, and Isla Fisher, but didn't know the plot outside of "ghost of first wife comes back to haunt husband and second wife." This was fun to see, and came out around the time of Lean's wonderful WWII romantic drama Brief Encounter, about working-class, ordinary people. That movie as a contrast with this one about rich people makes for an interesting double feature.
No comments:
Post a Comment