Ghost comedy

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Movie
German title Ghost comedy
Original title Blithe Spirit
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 1945
length 102 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director David Lean
script David Lean,
Anthony Havelock-Allan ,
Ronald Neame ,
Noël Coward
production Noël Coward,
Anthony Havelock-Allan
music Richard Addinsell
camera Ronald Neame
cut Jack Harris
occupation

Ghost Comedy (Original Title: Blithe Spirit ) is a black, British comedy film directed by David Lean from 1945 . The film is based on the play of the same name, Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward .

action

The writer Charles Condomine has been happily married to Ruth for five years; his first wife Elvira died of a heart attack seven years ago after a laughing fit . As a study for his new novel The Unseen , which is to deal with a psychotic ghost seer, Charles invites the whimsical Madame Arcati into his house. The Condomines want to attend a séance with their friends, the Bradman couple .

After long preparation with strange rituals and record music, Madame Arcati is in a trance , speaks with a child's voice and finally falls over. While Ruth and the Bradman couple are still providing first aid , Charles hears a voice calling his name. Since everyone else tells him that no sound could be heard, he dismisses it as a joke. A short time later, his first wife Elvira stands before him as a ghost.

The next few days are difficult for Charles: Only he can see and hear Elvira. Ruth thinks Charles is crazy at first and then drunk; since she relates every answer Charles' to Elvira's statements, the house blessing soon hangs crooked. Evidence of Elvira's existence - the ghost slams doors and transports vases and chairs through the apartment before Ruth's eyes - makes Ruth doubt her sanity rather than believe in Elvira's existence. It is only when she visits Madame Arcati that she learns that Elvira may well have returned.

On the evening of the séance, Madame Arcati herself had the feeling that something had happened. However, she has no means of sending Elvira back to the afterlife , and so Ruth first has to share the house with Elvira. Things turn uncomfortable when all the domestic staff are injured by Elvira. Ruth suspects that Elvira is making plans to murder in order to take Charles with her to the afterlife.

Charles promises Elvira to go to the cinema with her, but the weather turns out to be bad, so Ruth uses the car for a short drive in his place. Because Elvira had secretly manipulated the car, Ruth dies in a car accident. Charles now has two dead wives around him; Ruth, too, becomes visible to Charles after Madame Arcati has tried another useless spell on both faded wives.

Elvira in particular longs for the afterlife. It turns out that Madame Arcati's attempts have so far been unsuccessful, because it was not Charles who wanted his former wife back into this world, but his employee Edith. With their help, it finally succeeds in making both wives disappear. Madame Arcati soon realizes that women are not gone, only invisible. She advises Charles to leave his house and he takes action, with both of the ghosts handing him all his suitcases and his coat. Exultingly, he imagines his free life as a widower and drives off in his convertible . In the end, both wife-ghosts sit together on a wall and wait for his car, which finally hits the wall at full speed. Charles appears as a ghost and they both make room for him in their midst - he doesn't react very enthusiastically.

production

Noël Coward's play Blithe Spirit , which was released in July 1941 in London's West End and a short time later on Broadway in New York , was an unexpected success. It ran for over a year on Broadway and over four years in the West End. Coward sold the film rights to the production company Cineguild, having had bad experiences with Hollywood film adaptations of his plays shortly before.

David Lean was supposed to act as the director, but before Coward he confessed that he knew nothing about salon comedies. He was finally convinced that after propaganda films and serious material , the audience would take a light comedy positively. Lean had previously filmed the more serious coward materials In Which We Serve (1942) and Wonderful Times (OT: The Happy Breed ) (1944), the latter already produced by Cineguild.

Margaret Rutherford and Kay Hammond had already played ghost comedy in London's West End and also took their stage parts in the film. For the role of Charles Condomine Rex Harrison was hired, with whom Lean had already worked in 1940 on the film Major Barbara .

The film was shot from February to May 1944 at Denham Film Studios near Denham in Buckinghamshire . Coward had set the condition for the film that Elvira's spirit should not be transparent in the film. This, as well as the tight financial means during the Second World War , made cameraman Neame and Tom Howard resort to normal stage tricks to achieve the supernatural effects: Objects were lifted into the air on invisible strings and Kay Hammond as Elvira was given a green light. Other effects caused by double exposures , fades and slowly dimming . Howard won an Oscar in 1947 for special effects .

Coward was already dissatisfied with the rough cut version: "You've just fucked up the best thing I've ever written", (Eng. "You just destroyed the best thing I had ever written.") He remarked to Lean . In his autobiography, Coward wrote: “I will draw a light, spangled curtain over the film of Blithe Spirit . It was a great deal less good than it should have been. "(" I'll put a light, glittering cloak of silence over the film ghost comedy . It could have been much better. ")

Although filmed in 1944, the ghost comedy didn't hit British cinemas until May 14, 1945. The film was a hit with audiences and also the first major success for director Lean. In Germany it was launched on March 6, 1946, in Austria with the alternative title Ein lustiger Spuk on February 15, 1946. The German television premiere was on February 4, 1962 on German television .

The original title, Blithe Spirit (dt. "Lively spirit"), comes from the first line of the poem To a Skylark ( "To a Skylark ") by Percy Bysshe Shelley , which states: "Hail to thee, blithe spirit! - Bird thou never worth ”(Eng.“ Heil you, lively spirit! - You never were a bird ”).

criticism

The US trade journal Variety found that although the film was largely the photographed play, the camera work was outstanding and could convey the ghost story more credibly than is possible on stage. The US news magazine Time rated the film “99.9 percent Noel Coward” as “as insubstantial as a cornucopia full of cotton candy”. Lean's directorial work is saturated with dialogue and cannot keep the moviegoers. Only Margaret Rutherford convinced in the funny role of Madame Arcati.

The federal German film service criticized that ghost comedy beyond the fleeting impression could not be affirmed. The afterlife with the resurrection and the world of the separated spirits would be degraded to a "parlor game", death would be "desecrated by an abundance of antics". “The idea of ​​the hereafter, the world of the dead, part of God's great plan of salvation, cannot be presented to a wide audience in this way. In addition, a piquant "marriage triangle" was forged out of spirits and people, in which the two women in particular fight each other in a thoroughly unscrupulous manner. ", So the Catholic criticism. The Lexicon of International Films described ghost comedy as a "witty and witty comedy based on a play by Noël Coward, well done in presentation and direction."

Allmovie noted that light, intelligent salon comedy may have peaked in ghost comedy . Other critics attested director Lean, “Coward's macabre-frivolous original was imaginatively and with due understatement in the picture [to have]. The result was an entertainment film that showed the will to style and a sense of style. "

Awards

Ghost Comedy won an Oscar in 1947 in the " Best Visual Effects " category.

literature

  • Blithe Spirit . In: Gene D. Phillips: Beyond the epic: the life & films of David Lean . University Press of Kentucky, Kentucky 2006, pp. 76-85.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Phillips, p. 76.
  2. ↑ a b See screenonline.org.uk
  3. ↑ Phillips, p. 79.
  4. ↑ a b Phillips, p. 84.
  5. ↑ See original version and German translation of the poem.
  6. ↑ Inasmuch as this is largely a photographed copy of the stage play, the camerawork is outstandingly good and helps to put across the credibility of the ghost story more effectively than the flesh and blood performance does. See variety.com.
  7. ↑ cf. The New Pictures, Oct. 15, 1945 at time.com (accessed October 30, 2010)
  8. ↑ cf. Review in film-dienst 15/1949 (accessed via Munzinger Online )
  9. ↑ Klaus Brühne (Ed.): Lexicon of International Films . Volume 3. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1990, p. 1266.
  10. ↑ Light, clever drawing-room comedy may have reached its zenith in this 1945 film… See allmovie.com.
  11. ↑ Blithe spirit . In: Dieter Krusche: Lexicon of the movies. From silent films to today . Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1977, p. 246.