Rent Blithe Spirit (1945)

Comedy Fantasy. - Blithe Spirit review by Steve

Surely nothing said war is over to British cinema audiences as emphatically as a Noël Coward social comedy starring Rex Harrison...in Technicolor! And for the survivors, maybe a fantasy about the apparition of a dead loved one might strike close to many hearts. Though Blithe Spirit is played completely for laughs.

And it's a funny film. Harrison is a novelist who engages a dotty medium (Margaret Rutherford) to provide a little drawing room diversion, but afterwards finds himself living with the ghost of his first wife (Constance Cummings). To the fury of his second wife (Kay Hammond). That's just the first act. The rest is Rutherford trying to get the genie back in the bottle.

Rex can be insufferably smug, but he is sending himself up here. He claims to be a writer, but does nothing but sit down to a life of continuous dining. When a doctor suggests he is overworking, it's one of the best gags of the film. Cummings is ideal casting as the screwball spectre, but Rutherford steals the film, unforgettably.

As it's a faithful adaptation of a Coward stage play, there are many witty epigrams. But also, snobbery and a racist joke. When the wives fall out, it's mostly over the furnishings. The fluorescent green of the ghosts is an eyesore, but enabled the visual effects which won an Oscar. It's froth, but best quality froth, which probably felt like a blessing in 1945.