I had high hopes for this one when it all started. It was directed by David Lean who knows his way around a decent film or two whether it be an epic like Lawrence of Arabia or something a little more intimate like Summertime. It’s also got Rex Harrison who was Dr. Doolittle as well as starred in My Fair Lady. Those of you into supernatural romances will no doubt fondly recall his turn as the ghostly and gruff sea captain in the sappy, yet vastly more entertaining The Ghost And Mrs. Muir. With a pedigree like that, (plus it’s based on a play by Noel Coward), I couldn’t see how this thing could miss. But of course it did.
The problem is apparent right from the get go with how the characters are portrayed. Harrison plays Charles, an author who invites the psychic Madame Arcati over to a dinner party so that he can watch her do her little séance tricks and use it for a book he’s writing. Charles is one of these guys with a very cool demeanor who has a quick word about anything that is said. The problem is that the stuff he says isn’t that funny.
Harrison also plays this character as such a blasé, aloof sort that you grow to wish that he would display some emotion besides classy indifference. This is especially maddening when he initially deals with the ghost of his first wife, Elvira.
He’s nonplussed by the whole affair and alternately finds her presence bothersome and amusing. I also sensed some deep hatred for his current wife because the more the current wife, Ruth, gets P.O.ed about all this, the more Charles likes the fact that his wife has come back.
Margaret Rutherford’s Madame Arcati though is where the movie shows its only signs of life. Whenever she’s playing around trying to summon spirits or trying to send them back, the film picks up the pace and delivers the kind of wacky supernatural hi-jinks that this movie tricked me into thinking was its focus.
Arcati is one of those psychic old lady types that plays by her own rules, riding her bicycle seven miles out to Charles’ house instead of using a car as well as gleefully reciting her past triumphs. Indeed, her description of her first materialization or trip to the other side sounds like she’s describing the first time she had an orgasm! Funny stuff – less of Rex and his shrewish wives and more of the old biddy!
During the séance with Charles, Arcati runs around, plays music, falls down into trances and does all sorts of crazy crap, yet nothing seems to have happened. After everyone leaves though, Elvira’s spirit appears!
The afterlife hasn’t done much for her complexion because she’s a sickly green, but then I don’t suppose you get much chance to get out in the sun over there.
Charles takes her appearance in stride and talks to her in his current wife’s presence even though Elvira is only visible to him. This leads to some scenes that should have been funny, but aren’t where he is saying things to Elvira but Ruth thinks he’s talking to her.
Ruth is quite put out that Charles keeps talking to and about his first wife. She runs around pouting, demanding that he come up to bed and twists her already homely face into scowls of fury.
And what about Elvira? She’s pretty much a jerk. You would think that in a movie like this, we could build some interest by having Charles be torn between the two of them. Apparently Elvira’s plan is steal Charles away from Ruth, but since both women are mouthy punks and he doesn’t care one way or the other, none of this is that interesting.
It was apparent from the beginning that Ruth was probably a shrew, what with her haughty tone and dark hair. I expected the first wife to be a real goody-goody or at the very least charming. Instead, she’s as boorish as Ruth, firing off snotty comments whenever she can and making demands on Charles to drive her places. (What kind of ghost is that?)
Elvira then plots to kill Charles. This is so he will be with her in the afterlife. Plans go awry when Ruth takes the car that Elvira has tampered with and ends up getting killed instead. This leads to Ruth haunting Elvira and the ghosts now harass each other.
Charles, apparently tired of all these ectoplasmic domestic dramas finally enlists the aid of Arcati to ship these two broads back to Satan or where ever they came from.
While Arcati is trying to figure out how to get rid of a couple of ghosts, Elvira and Charles talk and pretty much figure out that their storybook marriage had been a sham and that both had run around on the other.
She also mentions that Ruth had ruined him, his books aren’t any good, and she doesn’t even want him anymore. Eventually the ghost materialize at a bridge that Charles has a car wreck at and he ends up joining them in the afterlife, presumably henpecked by them for all eternity.
Usually I applaud a lack of sentimentality, but in a movie dealing with love and death, an antiseptic treatment of the subject matter merely distances the audience from what’s transpiring instead of shedding new light on it.
Surely no one is so callous that the arrival of his dead first wife’s ghost wouldn’t evoke some type of visceral emotion. And surely you wouldn’t be such a cad that her arrival wouldn’t stir up confusing feelings about the woman you once loved versus the woman you have pledged to love now.
But Charles just kind of wanders through it all, an observer more than a participant, only getting involved when he and the kitchen help start getting injured because of the ghostly shenanigans.
A dry wit is all well and good when it’s actually funny, but when it’s not and that’s all you have going for you, things get sluggish in a hurry. I’m all for sophisticated comedy, but somebody should remember that sophistication by itself is more than a tad dull at parties and downright turgid in a movie.
© 2011 MonsterHunter
