Blithe Spirit

Rating:
Summary: Harmless, But Uninspired
Review: "Blithe Spirit" has Rex Harrison in his acerbic bachelor mode unable to get rid of either of his dead wives. Now if that's not a knock-out premise, I don't know what is, yet this film fell flat for me. This came out the same year as David Lean's other 1946 release, "Brief Encounter," but it doesn't have any of that film's elegance and style. "Blithe Spirit" feels pretty anonymous from a filmmaking standpoint.

However, this movie's strength is its writing. The screenplay is terrific, and all of the lines are delivered with such throw away dryness that I have the feeling I could watch this again and find everything funnier than I did the first time.

No quibbles with the performances, though no one is asked to stretch him/herself much. My favorite performance probably came from Kay Hammond, playing Harrison's first dead wife. Others rave about Margaret Rutherford, but I found her a bit too mannered and spastic.

I love that movies like this won Oscars for special effects. They're so quaint and fake, but you know the artists had to be so inventive to pull stuff like this off in the pre-computer era.

My most negative comments concern the quality of the DVD itself. I wholeheartedly agree with previous commenters on the horrible color and sound quality on display here. I wish the film had been in black and white, because the copy I saw was washed out and ugly. And my wife and I missed about the first 20 minutes of dialogue because of bad sound.

If you want to own a copy of "Blithe Spirit," I wouldn't buy this one. But it's fine for renting.

Grade: B-

Rating:
Summary: Classy Noel Coward Classic
Review: Noel Coward's popular stage comedy BLITHE SPIRIT comes to the screen with considerable charm and notable performances from Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, and Margaret Rutherford in this fantasy of a married man whose seance party inadverdently summons up the ghost of his first wife--who promptly moves in, turning him into an "astrial bigamist."

The Coward script, which zips along with cool one liners, is well played in the best British 'throw-away' tradition, quick, light, and more than a little acid. Harrison is neatly cast as the hag-ridden husband, Cummings is particularly charming as the terse second wife, and Dame Margaret Rutherford steals the show as the slightly dotty medium who conjures up the ghost of Harrison's first wife and then can't get rid of her. Fans of cool English comedy will enjoy it considerably; others, however, may find it all a bit too restrained for their tastes.

Rating:
Summary: Bravo for the London reviewer of January 16, 2004!
Review: The London reviewer and I are of one accord on the perfection of this exercise in WIT as defined by Pope: "True wit is nature to advantage dressed / What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed." I did not live between the two World Wars and so did not have the privilege of interfacing with the great characters in everyday life then who occupied the charming English country towns of that era. But curiously, I instantly felt I was witnessing a true slice of life when I first viewed this GEM from Noel Coward. Of course, Frank Capra (in "You Can't Take It With You") and C.S. Lewis had put us on notice that folks on both sides of the Pond in the '30s and '40s were dabbling in the dangerous pastime of spiritism and would get themselves into all sorts of mischief when they did. I consider it a tribute to the masterful direction of "Blithe Spirit" that I, a Connecticut baby-boomer born in 1950 and of Irish descent, instantly knew I was viewing real English society in this film. There is a certain delicious human authenticity to this comedy of errors ... I find it just plain irresistible. I love seeing the human spirit portrayed enjoyably in film or in literature (often through gentle social satire), and for reasons I'll never quite understand, I so love this silly, enchanting story and come back to it again and again. Dear reviewer, you are joined by cultural brethren wherever the good breeze of human reflection blows across the arts.

Permit me to make two recommendations for you. One is the film, "The Late George Apley" (a worthy, if truncated, distillation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel) -- hard but not impossible to find, and again a gentle look at the foibles of mankind in a gentler time that I prize, even though I was born after it. Another is an out-of-print (but relatively easy-to-obtain) collection of short stories about characters in the British Isles in the late 19th century: "Grandmother and the Priests," by Taylor Caldwell, who takes us inside the lives of marvelous characters we would like to have met, in one of the most breathtaking exhibitions of literature offered in 20th century literature. Thank you for standing up for the right stuff in your praise of "Blithe Spirit."

Rating:
Summary: VERY WITTY AND SOPHISTICATED
Review: This film is great fun to watch. Rex Harrison and Constance Cummings are the married couple and Kay Hammond is the ghost of Harrison's ex who wreaks havoc in their home. Margaret Rutherford is much younger than we usually see her but blissfully her fey self as Madame Arcati. Rutherford is very funny and a real scene stealer. The early colour is quite good (on my DVD) and the print was very clear. Harrison was actually more versatile than is generally remembered (remember "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir"?).

Rating:
Summary: Perfect
Review: This is a review of the script, acting and direction; not of the DVD. This is vintage, brittle Coward. It will obviously not appeal to young, brash kids, who will not be able to believe that English people between the two World Wars actually spoke, thought and behaved like this. However, they did. Or some of them did. In fact, I can remember them doing it: they were just exactly like the older members of my own family. The writing is brilliant, precise and accurate. Strange as it may seem, there actually were people like Madame Arcati: eccentric English spinsters repeating the mannerisms and slang of their schooldays. The plotting is extremely clever: you continually wonder how Coward is going to keep the plates spinning in the air, and are constantly surprised at his deftness and dexterity. The lines are poised and sharp, if slightly one-note. The direction is faultless, but then this kind of play almost directs itself. I feel sorry for those who cannot appreciate the theatrical skills displayed in this performance, or the verbal and mental adroitness being displayed. Modern film technology and techniques are no substitutes.

Rating:
Summary: Always
Review: This Rank/Two Cities film directed by David Lean was produced by Noel Coward, an adaptation of his own play with screenplay by Lean, Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan. At first the treatment is exhausting, with snappy repartee reading like Neil Simon in double time. We're trapped in Coward's idea of how married people interact, and the falseness is stagebound. Margaret Rutherford scores a few laughs with her body language as a medium Rex Harrison has invited to his house for a seance. The seance itself is indifferently presented but it is after it is over, when the spirit of Harrison's first wife is conjured up, that the film comes alive too. The humour isn't in the"blithe"-ness of the ghost, it's in the reaction of Harrison's present wife, Constance Cummings, who unlike Harrison is unable to perceive the presence.
It's always amusing to watch movies where the actors have to pretend to ignore other actors playing ghosts, and this seems particularly tough when the garish Techicolour gives Kay Hammond a sickly green glow. One can excuse the obvious incompatibility with Harrison as a youthful error, due to her death, or simply to fit into Coward's scheme. And Lean introduces her by delaying Harrison's acknowledgment, which allows her to witness the situation she has entered. However the gimmick wears thin and there are slow periods we must endure before Coward's mechanics jump us into the next act.
It's a shame that the plot deprives us of Cummings just when we have learned to value her the most, even when she gets to deliver Coward's mysogynistic line about Harrison being "hag-ridden". That this notion ultimately becomes the theme of the play is probably more sour than Coward wished to reveal. And the material reads as being unfair to the second wife.
The resulting action is flatulent, with Lean failing to re-energise Rutherford, and a montage of her efforts to exorcise hindered by an obtrusive music score by Richard Addinsell and the London Philharmonic. Lean does manage to invest the climax with slight pathos, though the conclusion is sheer farce.
It is on reflection that one realises how thin this play is. It is said that Coward wrote it in 6 days. In her 5001 Nights at the Movies collection, Pauline Kael tells us that is was prepared to provide war-torn England with some comedy relief, and that on stage it seemed "pleasantly airy".
The thing that is most curious in the film is Harrison's wish for the ghost to co-exist with his marriage, that he cannot understand why his living wife can be so disturbed. However if Cummings agreed with this thought, I suppose there would be no conflict, and Harrison thereby has to take this attitude. The final explaination for the appearance somehow involves a servant, a point turned to blather, perhaps evidence of a writer rushing to deadline, but also a question that remains unanswered by the end, with Irving Berlin's Always as a clue.