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| The ghostly Kay Hammond |
Our one non-Hollywood film in this series is “Blithe Spirit,” which came out mid-decade. Based on Noel Coward’s play, it’s an early film by director David Lean, who later went on to direct the sprawling epics “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Doctor Zhivago” in the ‘60s.
In the mid-40s, Lean was just getting started, creating smaller, intimate films that include this witty fantasy comedy. In it, Rex Harrison and Constance Cummings are Charles and Ruth Condomine, a well-off couple living in a small town outside of London. Charles hires the hack medium Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford) to conduct a séance, as a way to gather background for a mystery novel. During the séance, Madame Arcati inadvertently summons the spirit of Charles's dead first wife, Elvira (Kay Hammond).
After the séance, Elvira becomes visible only to Charles, and she begins making things complicated between Charles and Ruth. To prove to Ruth that he can see this feminine apparition, Charles insists that Elvira do something obvious—so objects and furniture move on their own.
Now convinced, Ruth asks Madame Arcati to order Elvira to leave, but the dotty old medium realizes she knows how to make a ghost arrive, but she doesn't know a bloody thing about making them go. Ruth is convinced that Elivra is there to bust up her marriage, and Elvira continues to cause comic trouble, proving Ruth correct. Through jealous miscalculations, Ruth and Charles end up ‘on the other side’ along with Elvira. The machinations that get them there are witty good fun in the Noel Coward way.
Kay Hammond, not well-known to American audiences, created the role of Elvira in the stage version of “Blithe Spirit,” and she is an insouciant delight in her otherworldly green makeup and flowing gown. (The film was shot in color.) Harrison is charmingly befuddled, and Cummings is at her clipped best as his irritated wife. But it’s Rutherford, the quintessential dotty Englishwoman, who steals the show in her hysterical turn as Madame Arcati. (You may remember Rutherford as the film incarnation of Agatha Christie’s spinster sleuth Miss Marple.) This is a very British, very droll drawing room comedy with a spirited twist, and highly entertaining.
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
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| George Bailey finally gets it. |
It’s a simplistic storyline, but this movie has many layers that make it fascinating on multiple levels. The fantasy element bookends it; like a few of the films I’ve discussed here (for example, “Heaven Can Wait”), the fantastic element merely frames the story, but it doesn’t interfere with the telling of the story itself. In "It's a Wonderful Life," the tale is told in flashback, finally leading up to the very moment at which the film began.
The movie is set in a small town and spans from 1919 to the present (1946), and you see the characters grow and age. What makes the film so special is the great effort put into creating many small moments that capture each character. Every character has their time to shine, by turns funny, touching, or repulsive, helping you understand him or her and their relationships with others. There are many flawed people in Bedford Falls, and George Bailey is definitely one of them; but at the root of him and most of the people around him are good intentions and a desire to help others.
I love this movie because it is a time capsule not just of the post-war years, but of the decades preceding it. It shows George as a young boy in the second decade of the 20th century, still a new century; following to when he’s a young man embarking on a college career in the late ‘20s, before the Crash of 1929; when he’s a young married man struggling in the lean Depression years; and in middle age, as a loving but frustrated father of four young children and the devoted husband of the love of his life, the former Mary Hatch (winningly played by the underrated Donna Reed).
The director, Frank Capra, is famous for populist films like “It Happened One Night” (1934), “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” (1936), “You Can’t take it With You” (1938), and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939) that resonated strongly with Depression-era audiences and still delight today. He spent the war years working for the War Department, creating documentaries and other propaganda films. “It’s a Wonderful Life” marked his return to feature films, but it was a different America. The movie was not a financial success at its release, but of course has gone on to become a treasured American classic.
Very few films of this type have this film's depth. It probably takes multiple viewings to really get all the details in script flourishes, character development, art direction (the town of Bedford Falls and home and shop interiors have as much personality as the characters), all under masterful guidance by Capra. It’s funny, moody, moving, atmospheric, and evocative of times past, and asks an eternal, basic existential question about why we are here and what life is for.
At the film's center is a devastating portrayal by James Stewart, an actor who, as he aged, became a cuddly sort of grandfatherly figure in America, but whose film acting skill should not be dismissed. As George Bailey, he navigates the development of an idealistic, dreamy boy to an embittered, disillusioned middle-aged man who thinks that life is no longer worth living—that he’s “worth more dead than alive”—but who, through spiritual intervention, learns that life for his loved ones would have been very different without him. His life, he realizes, is of value, in all its imperfection and disappointments.
For a master class in screen acting, watch Stewart’s face and listen to his whispered delivery in the bar scene toward the end of the film, at the height of George's desperation. When Stewart was really good, he was brilliant.
Angel on My Shoulder (1946)
In this little-known fantasy, gangster Eddie Kagle (Paul Muni) is released from prison, but one of his nefarious cohorts knocks him off before he gets to enjoy his newfound freedom. A bad guy in life, Eddie winds up in hell, where the devil, "Nick" (Claude Rains) offers him a second chance—but only if Eddie does Nick a favor.Just for kicks, Nick wants to ruin the reputation of Judge Frederick Parker, an honest man who is running for governor. Eddie is a dead ringer for the judge, so Nick arranges for Eddie’s soul to enter the judge's body. This will give Eddie a chance to get back at the man who killed him—and get out of hell.
His motivations aren’t noble, of course; but despite his best efforts at destroying Judge Parker to fulfill Nick's request, Eddie (in Parker’s body) ends up doing just the opposite. When he actually falls in love with the judge’s spunky fiancé Barbara (Anne Baxter), he starts to wonder if his deal with devil was really worth it.
Paul Muni was sort of the male Meryl Streep of his day. He played a number of grand biographical leads in the 1930s (“The Story of Louis Pasteur,” “The Life of Emile Zola,”) but began his career in the early ‘30s in gangster roles (he’s the original “Scarface”), which makes his late-career turn as bad-guy Eddie in “Angel on My Shoulder” a neat nod to his filmic past. While the film is light-hearted, it does have its heavy moments, as when Eddie/Judge Parker confronts the man who knocked him off.
Claude Rains played the heavenly guardian angel in “Here Comes Mr. Jordan,” so it’s a treat to see him playing the devil here. Interesting tie-in trivia: “Angel on My Shoulder” was written by Harry Segall, who also wrote the screenplay for “Here Comes Mr. Jordan” and the play “Heaven Can Wait,” the basis of the 1943 movie.
The Bishop’s Wife (1947)Do you remember the 1996 Whitney Houston movie “The Preacher’s Wife”? Well, this is the film on which the Houston vehicle was based. It’s all about Bishop Henry Brougham (David Niven), who is having difficulty raising money for a new cathedral. Due to the stress of dealing with several wealthy but stubborn parishioners from whom he is hoping to get funding, his marriage to his wife Julia (Loretta Young) is under strain.
Suddenly a mysterious man named Dudley (Cary Grant) appears. He sets out to charm nearly everyone in the Bishop’s orbit, including Julia, the Brougham’s agnostic friend Professor Wutheridge, and the ornery parishioners, particularly crotchety Mrs. Hamilton, who holds the purse strings on the church funding. Only the Bishop himself is unmoved by Dudley’s philanthropy. In fact, he’s a little irritated by Dudley’s presence.
Wouldn’t you be a little jealous of a magnanimous stranger who looked like Cary Grant? Dudley’s intentions are good but go beyond just helping raise money for a new church; his mission is to help restore faith to the Bishop and those around him.
In the hands of Cary Grant, Dudley is urbane and charming. Grant was a genius at making every performance look effortless, and when you’re playing an angel, you’d better be nimble. By 1947, Niven and Young were seasoned professionals, and the cast is rounded out by some plumb performances by terrific character actors like Monty Wooley (irascible and funny as the Professor), Gladys Cooper (as the mean but wounded Mrs. Hamilton), Elsa Lanchester (as the Brougham’s befuddled housekeeper Matilda), and James Gleason (appearing for the third time in this blog series in a small role as a taxi driver who ends up believing in angels). Fans of “It’s a Wonderful Life” will recognize two children in this movie: Karolyn Grimes, who plays George Bailey’s daughter Zuzu, and Bobby Anderson, who plays George as a boy. Ain't old movies fun?
Like most of the films in this series, special effects are not central to the development of the story, but there are some fun moments when Dudley decorates a Christmas tree in seconds, dictates a sermon on a typewriter that types by itself, and continually refills the Professor’s glass of wine with the knowing wave of a finger.
As in “A Guy Named Joe,” the guardian angel in "The Bishop's Wife" is a figure of calm who is there to guide the protagonist (in this case, Niven’s Bishop Brougham). Once the angel's mission is accomplished, he can head back to heaven, satisfied that his job is done. It's a nice thought, that there is a guardian angel for each of us.
This is a holiday movie that, oddly, doesn’t make it onto a lot of favorite Christmas films lists, but it’s a quiet, carefully paced picture with a lot of charm.
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
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| "It was only a dream." |
Set in early 1900s England, Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney) rents a cottage at the seaside with her little girl Anna (an eight-year-old Natalie Wood). Her first night in the cottage, she is startled by a visit by the ghost of its former owner, Captain Daniel Gregg (Rex Harrison). He’s a salty but unthreatening old rascal who insists that Lucy write down his colorful memoirs of life at sea in the old days.
Lucy brings her manuscript to a London publisher, where she meets children’s author Miles Fairley (George Sanders). Miles, intrigued by the lovely Lucy, helps facilitate a meeting with his publisher, and Lucy’s book is a hit, enabling her to buy the captain’s cottage.
Miles courts Lucy, which raises the ire of Captain Gregg; the crusty captain, although dead, fell in love with the earthly Lucy during his dictation. But being an honorable ghost, he decides to leave her entirely so as to not interfere with her burgeoning romance. So, while she sleeps, he whispers in her ear that he was only a dream.
While visiting London, Lucy surprises Miles at home, where she discovers that he is not as innocent as his pen name of “Uncle Neddy” would indicate. He has been lying to her; married with children, Miles has a well-known reputation as a philanderer. Humiliated, Lucy vows to return to the cottage and live out the rest of her life by herself, with no romantic entanglements.
Through the years, she senses that something is missing. Years pass, and Lucy is now elderly. One evening, she sits in the chair facing the ocean, where she first encountered the captain. Content with her life, she dozes off. Just before she dies, Captain Gregg comes back and Lucy, young again in spirit, takes his hand, steps out of the old char, and they walk out of the cottage together to eternity.
Sounds corny, but through a sumptuous production, atmospheric cinematography, and excellent characterizations by Harrison and Tierney, this film is a highly rewarding experience. Unlike his flummoxed character in “Blithe Spirit,” Harrison is handsome, grouchy, imperious, funny; like Tierney's role in “Heaven Can Wait,” she is beautiful, strong, dignified, noble. Captain Gregg and Lucy are a mis-match that matches, a pair that was destined. This handsomely-mounted film is anchored in old-fashioned, but arguably admirable, notions about kindred spirits who can’t connect in life, but reunite in death—reaffirming a romantic notion that love is eternal.
Conclusion
The types of fantasy films I've discussed in this post, which deal in frivolous or serious fashion with the ideas of life after death, second chances, the meaning of existence, and beneficent spiritual intervention, all but dried up by the end of the decade; maybe it was the advent of television, which irrevocably changed Hollywood’s output in many ways, or the increasingly serious-minded post-war world. But the films I’ve discussed in the last two installments of In a Movie Place stand as thought-provoking and entertaining examples of a specific genre during a transitional decade of film.
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