Spotlight
Spotlight Date: 14-December-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
Chance meetings, serenades, and Meg Ryan are for pansies. When a movie really wants to suck the marrow out of true love, it dishes up melodrama about people whose passionate connections cannot be avoided even though their lifetimes don't coincide. These movies, like "Portrait of Jennie" (1948) and "Somewhere in Time" (1980), can often satisfy the cravings of the dewy-eyed and the cynical alike, so adamant are they in proclaiming that real love is too complicated to succeed in normal life, but too powerful to be vanquished by little matters like death and the space time continuum. Such is the case with "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir," an unabashedly romantic tale about a star-crossed couple who must cross a vast ocean of disappointment, loneliness, and mixed-up fate to find each other.
As with any good love story, "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" derives its charm from the chemistry of its leads, so the initial twenty minutes before they appear together drags on a little too long. The film begins at the turn of the last century with lovely widow Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney) escaping the restrictive London home of her in-laws and heading to the coast, where she hopes to discover independence and build a new life for herself and her daughter (a young Natalie Wood). Ignoring the veiled warnings of her realtor, she sets her heart on a quaint seaside cottage that has remained empty since the death of its last inhabitant, a sailor named Captain Gregg who perished there under mysterious circumstances. Shortly after moving in, Lucy meets the captain face-to-face, though not exactly in the flesh.
As soon as Captain Gregg (Rex Harrison) makes his appearance in Lucy's kitchen, first trying to frighten her and then negotiating joint custody of the premises with her, the movie begins to hit its stride. Through a combination of good dialogue and strong performances, Lucy and the captain bloom before our eyes, two colossally incompatible people who nevertheless seem perfect together. Lucy (whom Gregg dubs "Lucia" as more befitting a mighty female) begins to explore the limits of her own competence and self-assurance, living life on her own terms while drawing the support she needs from her ghostly friend. The captain reveals to her the varied experience and wide knowledge of his well traveled life, which opens her eyes, soothes his troubled spirit, and helps them both to keep the cottage from being sold out from under them. With no chance for physical contact, they form a team more than a couple, although each recognizes the risks involved in devoting so much of themselves to a relationship that has no grounding in reality.
Inevitably (in both logical and dramatic terms), reality rears its ugly head after about a year, when Lucy meets a suave writer of children's books (the ever unctuous George Sanders) who attempts to sweep her off her feet. Encouraged by her lingering youth and the earnest advice of Captain Gregg, she makes a decision that charts the course of the rest of her life. The movie veers slightly toward the overblown at its conclusion, but it stops short of becoming sappy or indigestible due to the claims that Tierney and Harrison have firmly established upon our interest. Only the most hardhearted of souls could fail to follow Lucy as she wanders tirelessly along the shore, asking herself again and again whether the most influential relationship she has ever known was the great love of her life or nothing more than the whispered fantasy of a storied cottage by the sea. And only the most hardhearted of souls could fail to be pleased with the answer.
Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
