United States, 1947
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
With Gene Tierney (Lucy Muir), Rex Harrison (Captain Daniel Gregg), George Sanders (Miles Fairley), Edna Best (Martha Huggins)
It begins as a feminist statement. Realizing with embarrassment and surprise she has never fully owned her life, never had anything belonging to her, never carved out a place of her own, Lucy Muir, after a year spent, as demanded by tradition and property, mourning her beloved husband, decides to make a fresh start. She wants to chart her own path through the future, with her daughter Anna and her maid Martha Huggins in her wake, confident that the dividends of the shares his husband had bought would be enough to pay for her audacious exploration of life. Graceful actress Gene Tierney is simply exquisite as she conveys the radiant, optimistic, and unassailable determination of the titular character.
And a strong determination is what Lucy Muir needs in the inaugural sequence: both her mother-in-law, who is always weeping, imploring, and questioning, and her sister-in-law, who is sharp, fierce, and daunting, just cannot understand her, accept her decision to leave their house, and imagine a widow can make such a change. This is after all the Edwardian England – but then, this was an era of doubts and revisions after the advances and certainties of the long Victorian era.
So the film promises to be the arduous effort of Lucy Muir to prove them wrong, a plea for women’s liberty, acknowledging their rights to define themselves without constraints and to build their lives without hurdles.
The first male victim of Lucy Muir’s, and the film’s, manifesto is the real estate agent trying to make her choose one house rather than another. The young woman smilingly but firmly forces him to have a look at that seaside house mysteriously claimed as unfit for her. She instantly loves the place, but then is compelled to realize that there is something wrong about it: an otherworldly voice laughing at the visitors and the sudden feeling the atmosphere is creepy. It seems the house is haunted – that is why the realtor was so reluctant and why he feels vindicated. But Lucy Muir rather chooses to believe ghosts are from the past and that the house is what fate holds for her new life.
What could have been a bizarre, funny accident was of course the introduction to the real story the title has anyway signaled: the film morphs slowly and pleasantly into a comedic ghost story which is not spooky at all but a funny confrontation between the house’s new owner, spunkier and livelier than ever, and the ghost of the previous owner, a grumpy, boorish, rude sea captain, Daniel Gregg, played with a mischievous and raucous zest by distinguished actor Rex Harrison.
Could it follow the course of a witty story like Oscar Wilde’s “The Canterville Ghost”? The ghost Lucy Muir is forced to reckon with is not going to be cowed by her rationality and bravery, quite the contrary: the film sticks to the original feminist inspiration and the disgruntled and stubborn Daniel Gregg hails the young lady’s desire to stay put and to carry on: her spirit of independence suits him and pleases him, so much that when news break that her late husband’s investment will not yield any more money, he comes up with a solution, a quite extraordinary one, but one that would prove successful.
Making her writing his memoirs bring them closer than they could have ever thought at first, and on much friendlier, if not more, too. However, it becomes a double-edged sword: it cuts the Gordian knot of her finances but catches the unwonted attention of a writer who has a contract with the publisher that Daniel Gregg wanted. Unabashedly pompous and pretentious, cocky and careless, Miles Fairley wants to seduce Lucy Muir – and manages to upset her and gets her besotted foolishly with him. This is enough to turn mad the ghost and the maid, both distrusting a suave and smart character who seems tailor-made for the skills of great actor George Sanders. Both proved right, alas: the writer is a mendacious and miserable, already married, philanderer.
But the point of the episode is more complex. On the one hand it puts the lead character back to a romantic fold where her narrative could be easily developed, catering to the mawkish sentiments of the audience and the social logic Lucy Muir’s in-laws have articulated: a woman cannot be alone, she should be either married or be with relatives, away from the world. On the other hand, it delivers a key turning point, and a surprising one, upsetting what the audience has been accustomed to: angry by her attitude but aware she must learn what life has in store for her, whether it is good or bad, the ghost of Daniel Gregg decides to leave the place and put an end to the amazing relationship he has forged. He casts a spell to make sure she would never remember the reality of this relationship but the scene the camera closely organizes and records has an obvious romantic tinge: the man bidding farewell looks far more a lover than a mate.
And the film takes yet another turn, which is not really shaped by the changes Lucy Muir experiences, which are dealt with brief vignettes perfunctory highlighting how she and the folks around her grow old, but by the splendid and recurring images of powerful waves, breakers, foam: the endless motion of the sea gives the film a deeply poetic dimension, embodying the flight of time and the loneliness of people. Lucy Muir has not just coped with many events, troubles, and surprises: she has actually spent a quite, predictable, rather lonely, but clearly satisfying life in her little seaside house. Having a free, independent, and happy life has simply meant to be the tranquil lodger of that nice house she once fall in love with – far more in love than with any man. She would die very old, very exhausted, but very pleased: Lucy Muir may feel something is lacking, linked to a vague, indistinct, odd memory of a ghost, but knowing she had a life she has shaped on her own terms. So the feminist viewpoint carries the day, somehow, as the film seems to end.
But wait, “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” is not over: other shots come up. And this time this is romanticism in its most idealistic and emotional nature that prevails: another stunning and delightfully stunning twist, another superb image of doors mysteriously getting wide opened, and it is with a celebration of eternal love between souls living in the hereafter that the film performs. The audience can right be left bedazzled and bewitched, not just by the way themes and characters have been artfully handled by director Joseph L. Mankiewicz to reach this moving ending with such an elegance, not just by his flair for nice special effects and effective shots, including the powerful suggestion of a cosmos where time flies and love abides, but also by the solid performances of actors truly enjoying their roles and jauntily doing their best.