Review of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

I discovered this movie when a friend recommended that I listen to a recording of the score - by the vernerable Bernard Herrmann - and his score is indeed fine! But what keeps me coming back to this film is its heart and soul - and it is odd to be able to say that about a very proper Victorian mannered tale. It is a carefully structured story that would really be well suited for the stage. In particular, I love the comic relief in this film and its colourful supporting characters. Our heroine, Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney), is blithely courageous, though naive and against all advice lets a cottage on a bluff overlooking the ocean. The location is eerily remote and I'm continually struck by how spooky the setting is in the plain, bright light of day. The ghost of Captain Gregg (Rex Harrison) is at first brash and frightening but we come to find that he is a salt of the earth man of high principles.

Get over slick and callow modern film making and take a few steps back in time to watch this most charming and romantic of love stories well told on all sides: an ornate confection of a story, carefully and lovingly photographed, acted with aplomb and riding on top of a musical score that is as moving and powerful as the tides that beat throughout this film.

I find a personal connection to this story in that it takes me back to the days I lived on a northern island that was similarly beautiful though tinged with the bittersweet loneliness of a remote place awash in the deep undercurrents of sorrow and melancholy.