Waste of time

Thanks for the memories!

Boring

Absolutely brilliant

SPOILERS *** This one won the Oscar for best special effects.. the seance scenes, and Charles' ex-wife, as a ghost. This was one of David Lean's earlier directing gigs. He would go on to win TWO Oscars much later... River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia. I had never seen this 1945 version of Blithe Spirit. Usually, movie channels or Turner shows one of the more recent ones... it MUST be a good story; they remade it so many times in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. The 1945 version has a YOUNG Rex Harrison (Charles), Constance Cummings (Ruth), and of course, Margaret Rutherford (was Jane Marple, for MANY years.) She will also get an Oscar for "VIPs". In the story, we meet the medium, Madame Arcati, at dinner, and she's already an odd character. At a seance, Elvira, the ex-wife, talks to Charles, but he's the only one who can hear her. and now that she has been summoned, she won't go away. and the current wife doesn't like it. she FINALLY admits that the first wife has actually come back. It's all pretty good. A hilarious scene where Ruth pulls the door-ringer right out of the wall, and barely even noticing, Madame Arcati takes it from her and puts it right back. Stuff happens, and the two wives antagonize each other. Another thing -- Hammond, the first wife, has a strange way of pronouncing the letter "S", so that's a little distracting. It's noel coward, so of course, the story itself is great. Apparently, Coward did not appreciate Lean's ending, so it does end quite differently than the play. Entertaining stuff. Several versions are available on DVD.

A pristine restoration of David Lean's fantasy comedy based on Noël Coward's successful play, BLITHE SPIRIT is Lean's third feature film and pairs Rex Harrison and Constance Cummings as a middle-class couple Charles and Ruth, both have been married before, out of his whim, Charles invites a kooky medium Madame Arcati (Rutherford) to their rural house to arrange a séance, which he naively thinks is good for inspiration since he is a novelist and Ruth, takes the whole arrangement ever so light-heartedly, only participates out of sheer curiosity, but after the supernormal session, it turns out Madame Arcati is not a fraud at all, Elvira (Hammond), Charles' deceased first wife, has been invoked from the other side and materialises, but only to Charles, who is pleasantly surprised and they start to banter with each other, which vastly irritates Ruth.Seeking help from Madame Arcati of no avail, Ruth realises she must fight Elvira for Charles, and a subsequent outlandish accident, secretly plotted by Elvira, puts her in the same circumstance as Elvira, while Madame Arcati's final attempt to exorcise the dead from the living world fails, her crystal ball indicates a cue that there is another human being under the same roof is actually capable of accomplish that task.The story does sound idiotic and Coward's original play has no ambition to be a wacky science fiction other than a farcical fairytale (the film begins convivially with the "once upon a time" introduction), a frivolous (but also cartoon-ishly lethal) tug-of-war between two women divided by two worlds, with poles apart temperaments (Elvira is mischievously petulant while Ruth is uncompromisingly virtuous), thus, the acting is fairly engrossing, the four main characters all cop an attitude with their respectively distinct personalities, the repartees among Harrison, Cummings and Hammond are as rapid as any theatrical live performance, whereas Dame Margaret Rutherford's eccentric actualisation of Madame Arcati is an uplifting phenomenon, such a force of nature and she defies any ridicule of her calling.However, more essentially, it is Lean's cutting-edge job in fabricating a human-ghost co-existent magic presence becomes a major reason why this little piece of gem sustains its life-force, under the stunning Technicolor palette, this restored version is truly a boon for a first-time viewer, if you are into some carefree diversion of spectres, death and necromancy.

One of the fads in post-war cinema, on both sides of the Atlantic, was for the urban fantasy sub-genre. Stories of ghosts or angels touching the lives of ordinary people were a facet of the light-hearted escapism of the period, and other examples include A Matter of Life and Death, It's a Wonderful Life, The Ghost and Mrs Muir and Miracle on 34th Street. Blithe Spirit, based on a play by Noel Coward (who also produced) and directed by David Lean, differs sharply from these sweetly romantic pictures, playing instead as a comical take upon Rebecca.Coward was of course a frightfully witty playwright, and what I love about his humour is that he didn't foreground it. All the funniest lines are buried amidst seemingly innocuous dialogue, and there are some excellent ones in Blithe Spirit if you pay attention. The trouble is aside from the comedy the play seems rather mediocre. It lacks the charm of a typical Coward work, and much of it is predictable.As to this screen adaptation, first of all I am baffled as to why it was produced in colour. In this same year Powell and Pressburger had to delay their production of A Matter of Life and Death (a film that could not be made in black and white) because Technicolor stocks were effectively rationed, and I am yet to hear an explanation of why Blithe Spirit was granted some of the precious supply. As it is, the use of colour here is not exceptional. There has been some attempt to colour code characters; for example the two wives are picked out in the brightest tones against a relatively muted background, but it is all a bit simplistic and inconsistent. Besides, many of the visual touches such as giant shadows and single-source lighting would be better suited to monochrome.Lean's dynamic, kinetic approach to film-making does bring some life to the proceedings. The camera is often moving, but not obtrusively as it is usually to follow an actor, and these manoeuvres are used to draw our attention to characters, or simply add liveliness to a scene. A good example is in the opening few shots, where the camera tracks the maid as she runs up the stairs, before coming to rest on Constance Cummings. The camera then follows the maid back out of the room, this time stopping on Rex Harrison. This effectively introduces us to the three characters, and throughout it is touches like this that trick us into forgetting all we are really seeing is a series of lengthy dialogue scenes.One of the great things about these simple comedy pieces is casting them was simply a matter of finding the right type to fit each cliché. This was especially true in Britain in the 40s, where pretty much everyone was a character player, the best straight leads having long since been nabbed by Hollywood. Among the best of these "type fillers" was Rex Harrison, here portraying, with relish, another version of the character he always played, and as always he is a joy to watch. Kay Hammond is also fantastic as Elvira, a part she also played in the stage version. Hammond's screen career was not very prolific, and other than this picture was fairly obscure.Released a week after VE day, Blithe Spirit was a box-office flop. It was perhaps unwise at this time to produce a picture that makes light of death. In contrast, features such as It's a Wonderful Life and A Matter of Life and Death, which treated the subject with far more reverence and vigorously resist death, were somewhat more popular. They are also far more satisfying pictures today. Despite the apt cast and efforts of Lean, the adaptation does not bring enough substance out of the source material. I'll leave the last word to Mr Coward, whose response to Lean upon seeing the finished film was "How the hell did you f*ck up the best thing I ever did?"*u

This is a conscientiously photographed replica of Noel Coward's highly successful stage play, and as such demands full commendation. But I feel that a good deal better entertainment would have ensued from a freer use of the pictorial medium. Dealing as it does with the return of departed spirits it inevitably invites comparison with Topper, not, I am afraid to it's advantage. However, Noel Coward's dialogue - sometimes a little difficult to catch - keeps you well amused, and the acting generally is on a high level, and while the camera is allowed no great scope, photography is of excellent quality. The film is in Technicolour, which is presumably one reason why no liberties were taken with the stage play. Rex Harrison is easily natural as the harassed husband whose first wife's spirit appears disconcertingly and later kills his second wife. She, too, is conjured up from the dead and the pair of them see to it that their husband is involved in a fatal accident and is forced to join them in the spirit world, just as he had hoped he had got rid of them. Kay Hammond, in a somewhat terrifying green make-up with scarlet fingernails, is sulkily cynical as wife number one, and Constance Cummings scores too as wife number two. The hit of the show is the hearty fooling of Margaret Rutherford, the medium responsible for all the bother.Note - This review originally appeared in Picturegoer Magazine, 12 May 1945. Written by Lionel Collier.