Blithe Spirit Details

In this polished adaptation of Noël Coward's comedy, Rex Harrison plays a widower happily remarried to Constance Cummings and visited by the ghost of his first wife, Kay Hammond (the ghost was modelled on Gertrude Lawrence who had left Coward's stock company for Broadway). The architect of this event is a dotty old medium, played by the unforgettable Margaret Rutherford. David Lean directed — Coward was away in America and the great British director was worried he was the wrong man for the job. According to Kevin Brownlow's monumental biography of Lean, Coward attended the first preview and was distinctly unimpressed with what he saw. The critics lapped it up, though, and the dainty special effects won an Oscar.

Direction and acting carefully preserve a comedy which on its first West End appearance in 1941 achieved instant classic status. The repartee scarcely dates, and altogether this is a most polished job of film-making.