Hello everyone!! Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and I are back to watching and sharing about comfy cozy (and sometimes, chilling) movies for the fall season. Feel free to join in with us!! Our link will be live for a whole week after we post about a movie.
This week’s feature: Blithe Spirit, starring Rex Harrison, Kay Hammond, Constance Cummings, and Margaret Rutherford. Blithe Spirit is based on the play written by Noel Coward.
As the name suggests, this movie does not take itself seriously. It is silly and frivolous and cavalier, with some interesting characters. Apparently, Coward had been wanting to write a comedy with ghosts for a while, but since it was wartime he wanted to make sure that the characters were unsympathetic, as that would be too sad.
The plot: “To get background for a new book, author Charles Condomine (Sir Rex Harrison) and his second wife Ruth (Constance Cummings) light-heartedly arrange for local mystic Madame Arcati (Dame Margaret Rutherford) to give a séance. The unfortunate result is that Charles’ first wife Elvira (Kay Hammond) returns from beyond the grave to make his life something of a misery. Ruth too gets increasingly irritated with her supernatural rival, but Madame Arcati is at her wit’s end as to how to sort things out.”
I think that he succeeded in creating a comedic play centering around ghosts without a sympathetic character in the bunch. Charles is the very definition of blithe, cheerfully indifferent to the goings on around him. He takes it all in stride, and yes, at times is very callous. When the ghost of Elvira comes back to haunt Charles and Ruth, he is nonplussed, even after Ruth goes through many different stages of annoyance and irritation and even worry. At first she thinks he is just being a jerk and making it all up, and even insulting her when he is talking to Elvira, which he believes she should understand even though she can’t see Elvira, then she moves on to concern that something is wrong with him, and then once Elvira proves her ghostliness to Ruth, she is at first shocked then annoyed that Elvira is hanging around, disrupting her marriage, which Charles could care less about.
Spoiler alert: Ruth also dies, and becomes a ghost. At first, Charles is just “blithely” going about his evening, getting his drink, sinking into his snug little chair by the fire. I am guessing he believes that things will be peaceful now that he is just home with his ghost wife – until his second ghost wife blows through the door.
Madame Arcati is the spiritual medium, and a bit crackers, and she tries to help Charles return the two women back “home”. After what feels like forever, to Charles and the viewer as well, Madame Arcati hits on the reason why she can’t get the spirits to leave.
Madam Arcati – let’s talk about this character for a second because for me she kind of stole the show with her crazy performance. I think she really went for it, embracing this sort or crazy, zany medium. I think she fully embraced the quirkiness of this role, and probably had a lot of fun with it. She was a kook, but she did have some cozy scenes, with shots showing her in her snug home, sitting in the window studying her books while the weather went wild around her outside.
This role has been played by three Dames, all heavy hitters – Rutherford, Angela Landsbury, and most recently, Judi Dench. Billy and I have actually seen the 2020 version starring Dan Stevens and Dame Judi, and while we thought that version was ok, the 1945 version was better.
Billy and I were impressed by the quality of the 1945 special effects. They were obviously not anything like ours, but we thought for the time they were really well done. What was especially neat was Elvira. According to a comment on IMDB, “Writer and director Sir David Lean and cinematographer Ronald Neame decided not to use double exposure to create Elvira’s ghostly appearances. Instead, Lean created an enormous set that allowed Kay Hammond to move freely in each shot. Hammond wore fluorescent green clothes, make-up, and a wig, with bright red lipstick and fingernail polish. Each time she moved, a special light would be directed on her, allowing her figure to glow even in dimly-lit scenes and giving her an otherworldly appearance.” I think it worked pretty well, as she did stand out t in the scenes she was in, and sometimes did appear very ethereal, and it would have looked fantastic in black and white.
Overall, this movie was a bit of a silly ghost movie, not sad, not spooky, just silly.
You can find this movie on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Hulu to watch streaming for a fee. You might also be able to find it at the library.
You can find Lisa’s post here, and Deb’s here!
If you have watched along with us, and want to share your link, please feel free. We would love it!
Our next movie is Rear Window, starring James Stewart. I picked both Blithe Spirit and Rear Window, and I had no idea when I picked Rear Window that this year is the 70th anniversary of the movie. So that is a neat little extra!
Also, don’t forget to enter our Comfy Cozy Care Package Giveaway! You can enter here!
Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.. 