BLITHE SPIRIT (1945)

A Noel Coward comedy transferred faithfully to the screen, perhaps a bit too faithfully, since it winds up feeling a little stagy and sluggish. Rex Harrison is an author writing a book on spiritualism and he invites a noted but rather ditzy medium (Margaret Rutherford) to a small dinner party to get some material, but during a seance, she actually manages to conjure up the ghost of Harrison's first wife (Kay Hammond) who stays around to haunt him. No one else can see the spirit, so Harrison's current wife (Constance Cummings) is first perplexed and then annoyed at his odd behavior. Hammond eventually attempts to kill Harrison by tampering with his car so he'll have a fatal accident and join her in the afterlife, but instead it's Cummings who ends up dead, so Harrison soon has two bitchy ghosts in the house. Rutherford winds up unable to intervene, and a happy ending looks elusive until another death occurs, providing at least an ending, a funny one if not a particularly happy one for anyone involved. The actors are all fine, especially Rutherford who originated the role of the medium on stage and uses all kinds of upstaging business to shine here. The colors are striking, especially the green used for the ghosts; the movie is not a special effects extravaganza by any means, though the few effects used are fine. At around 100 minutes, the film feels too long, especially in its final section, and perhaps David Lean was not the best director for such breezy material, but it's worth seeing if for no other reason than to see the delightful Rutherford (known today for her Miss Marple movies of the early 60's) ham it up. [VHS]