Blithe Spirit (1945)

Directed by

David Lean

Genre

drama film, fantasy film, romantic comedy, ghost film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 42m

Rated

NR

Rating

7.0 of 10 from 167 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A writer hires a medium for a seance as research for his new novel. The seance accidentally summons the ghost of his first wife, who meddles in his current marriage.

wittylightheartedwhimsicalplayfulfast-pacednostalgicslightly macabrebreezy

What happens

Blithe Spirit is a 1945 British supernatural black comedy film directed by David Lean. The screenplay by Lean, cinematographer Ronald Neame and associate producer Anthony Havelock-Allan, is based on Noël Coward's 1941 play of the same name, the title of which is derived from the line "Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert" in the poem "To a Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The song "Always", written by Irving Berlin, is an important plot element in Blithe Spirit. The film features Kay Hammond and Margaret Rutherford, in the roles they created in the original production, along with Rex Harrison and Constance Cummings in the lead parts of Charles and Ruth Condomine. While unsuccessful at the box office and a disappointing adaptation for the screen, according to Coward, it has since come to be considered notable for its Technicolor photography and Oscar-winning visual effects in particular and has been re-released several times, notably as one of the ten early David Lean features restored by the British Film Institute for release in 2008. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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• That's the Spirit (1945)
• Blithe Spirit (2020)
• A Place of One's Own (1945)
• The Shining (1980)
• The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
• Dead of Night (1945)
• Wonder Man (1945)
• Brief Encounter (1945)