In 1900 London, widow Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney) has decided, one year after the death of her husband, to take her daughter Anna and move out of her mother-in-law's house and live in a small town on the coast. Angelica, the mother-in-law, and Eva, the spinster sister-in-law, are downright angry about her taking a stab at independence, maybe because her maid Martha is going with her. Lucy takes an interest in Gull Cottage, a lovely house which sits right on the seashore, but the local realtor tries to talk her out of it, and she is creeped out a bit by a painting of the former owner, a ship captain named Daniel Gregg, which she is hanging in a dark room. The realtor tells her that Gregg committed suicide and people who have tried to live in the house complain that it's haunted, and Lucy, almost taking the situation as a challenge, decides to stay. On her first night in the house, during a storm, the ghost of Gregg (Rex Harrison) appears. He's talkative but not necessarily friendly, and insists that he didn't kill himself but accidently knocked over a gas heater while falling asleep. They get used to the idea of each other and he decides to let her stay without bothering her, and promises that he can only be seen by her. They get used to each other's company until one day when Angelica and Eva visit to tell her that her gold mine investment has stopped paying dividends. They want her to come back to London and she doesn’t want to. Gregg has an idea: he will dictate the colorful story of his life to her and she can sell it to a publisher. She does, it's a hit, and she buys Gull Cottage outright. She also meets a children's book author (George Sanders) who writes as Uncle Neddy, and the two begin dating. The ghost gets jealous and warns her against Neddy, but he finally realizes that she needs to get on with life, so one night while she's sleeping, he decides to stop visiting, making her think that any memories she has of him are from dreams. Unfortunately, Neddy turns out to be a scoundrel—he's married with children. Will Gregg return, or will Lucy live out her days at Gull Cottage alone? The answer might surprise you.
This gentle fantasy was part of a postwar trend of movies about ghosts and angels meant to appeal to people who had lost loved ones in combat. Others include It's a Wonderful Life, The Bishop's Wife, The Uninvited, The Canterville Ghost, and with more direct wartime plots, A Guy Named Joe and A Matter of Life and Death. It has a comic touch but by the end, the overwhelming feeling is one of melancholy. [Spoilers:] Gregg never does return, and Lucy remains alone for many years with vague dreamy memories of him. When she dies, Gregg returns and walks with her into the mists of the afterlife. Is this a happy ending? In a way, I suppose, but I was sad for all those years when she might have been in contact with Gregg, as a friend even if romance was, as he claims, impossible. We see that her adult daughter remains in her life, as does the faithful Martha, but we know of no attempts at dating or even socializing that she does during all those years. I guess it left me with much the same feeling as I have at the end of Thornton Wilder's play Our Town: sadness leavened with a little hope. Tierney and Harrison have very good chemistry that stops just short of being truly romantic, though the longing is there just under the skin. I like Lucy's habit of using "Blast!" as a curse word like Gregg does. Some of his hardness rubs off on her, as does some of her softness on him. This feels largely like a two-character drama, even though there are good moments from Victoria Horne as the unlikable sister-in-law, Edna Best as Martha, and Robert Coote as the real estate agent. Natalie Wood is the daughter though she only has a couple of short scenes. The old-age makeup on Tierney is quite well done. Directed competently if without much style or atmosphere by Joseph Mankiewicz. The cinematography is by Charles Lang, and some shots here remind me of shots in The Uninvited, which Lang also did. Of all the supernatural movies listed above, this one has a unique and ambiguous tone. Recommended, though it’s not one I watch as often as some of those others. [DVD]
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