The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Edna Best, Gene Tierney, George Sanders, Rex Harrison, Vanessa BrownDirector: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Brand: Fox
Cinematographer: Charles Lang
Editor: Dorothy Spencer
Producer: Fred Kohlmar
Writer: Philip Dunne
Writer: R.A. Dick
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 104 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-04-01
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Movie Reviews of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Movie Review: Deeper, Richer, and More Complex Than Its High Concept Romance Suggests
Summary: 5 Stars
THIS REVIEW REVEALS SPOILERS ABOUT THE PLOT. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW HOW THE PLOT DEVELOPS, DON'T READ THIS REVIEW
I saw "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" years ago on television. I was just a kid and I noticed, mostly, the high concept romance: A spunky, living, twentieth-century woman is in love with a pre-feminist, sea captain ghost. I enjoyed the film's wit and romance, but then I filed it and forgot about it, thinking of it as a clever concept, but not a classic.
Because my own reaction to the film was rather shallow and cliched, I thought that the film itself was rather shallow and cliched, that it was just about its obvious wit and romance, with nothing deeper there.
I recently rewatched the film. I saw the same amusing, stylish, witty, clever, high-concept romance -- living woman loves ghost -- that I had seen for the first time as a child. But there is a whole 'nother movie here beneath the surface style, a movie of great depth.
As soon as the score began, while the Fox logo was still onscreen, I was all atremble, as if bewitched, with goosebumps and near tears. That score brought home to me the story and its attendant feelings of profound yearning and mystery.
Perhaps I had registered all this when I had seen it as a child, but not consciously.
Ken Geist, who offers commentary on the DVD version, said this about the score:
"I can't really say enough about it ... it's haunting; it's the most haunting thing about this ghost picture and he brings to it the same quality of his haunting movie with Hitchcock, 'Vertigo.' I think that Bernard Hermann is a great film composer, from 'Citizen Kane' right through to 'Taxi Driver' and this may be his finest...it's wildly romantic."
There is the feminist subtext. Significantly, the film is set in early twentieth century England, the place and time of sufragettes. Women were breaking new ground. Lucy Muir, the lead here, breaks new ground by leaving her in-laws, living alone, and making her own living.
Charles Lang's black and white cinematography is perfection, and it serves the story's various elements: its spookiness, romance, and humor, in turn -- perfectly.
Rex Harrison is a revelation. Yes, this is a romance; it's not great literature. And yet, like great literature, it takes on big, universal themes: the passage of time, mortality, yearning, the complexities of love, the limitations of the legendary loves.
Harrison's performance serves these themes in this frame perfectly. His Captain Daniel Gregg is a bit of a cartoon, but beneath the cartoon's exaggerations, you sense a real living, breathing, man, a boy who ran away from home and went to sea; his adopted mother yearning for him as his living lover would yearn for him once he died.
I can't think of any other actor who could have performed this role with the utter perfection, the combination of intelligence, conviction, generosity, focus and flair that Harrison gave it.
Gene Tierney is incredibly beautiful and that makes her believable as the target of the captain's yearning. she doesn't work 100% for me, though. She is perfect in "Laura" as the beautiful blank screen on which men project their fantasies; she's also perfect in "Razor's Edge" as a schemer.
I never see Tierney connect with the women in her audience, though. I don't sense that she's up there doing what she's doing for *me,* and the rest of the women in the audience, as I do with other female stars, from Garbo to Jane Fonda.
I would have liked to have seen Olivia de Havilland in the Lucy Muir part. She has that impossible combination of incredible, Fairy Queen beauty, plus human warmth and spunk so necessary in a romantic heroine.
Too, Natalie Wood as Anna Muir is woefully underused. Did director Joseph Mankiewicz not realize what a goldmine of charm and talent Wood was? A scene where Lucy and Anna perform their mother-daughter bond would have added depth to the film.
When i saw the film the first time, I had found George Sanders as Uncle Neddy / Miles Fairley to be a shallow snake in the grass and operator.
Viewing it this time, though, I see that Miles is as human as Lucy and Daniel, with his own tragic incapabilities. Daniel can't be a real -- flesh and blood -- man; Miles can't be a real -- stand up -- man. Sanders' eloquent face, half supercilious, half tragic -- renders Miles' failed manhood poignant and tragic.
Just as Daniel and Lucy yearn for what they can't have -- a flesh and blood romance -- Miles yearns for some impossible romance he can't have, and so he chases women by moonlight, and abandons them in the day.
"The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" highlights gender differences in love. Lucy Muir yearns for a man most women would love to meet -- a manly, strong, competent leader of men who is also dedicated to her, hangs on her every word, helps her around the house -- he even helps her with her in-laws.
In helping Lucy, Daniel is not belittling her; he leads her to become her best self. He rescues her financially, but, in that rescue, he reinforces her own strengths, strengths she had not been aware of before him. Finally, he sacrifices himself utterly for her, going so far as to remove her memory of him in order that she can live a happy life without him.
What a man. Does he exist? If he did, he'd have a very long waiting list of women trying to get to him. This man may not be just a fantasy in the movie; this man may be a fantasy in life, as well.
This film poses the question: Is there such a thing as a soulmate? Someone you are destined to meet, no matter what intervenes between you and that person? Does love transcend death?
Summary of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
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