Blithe Spirit (1945)
It was a mix of incompetence and coincidence that led to me watching this week the DVD of David Lean’s 1945 production of the Noel Coward play Blithe Spirit recently again released as a film.
I fancied listening to some of the songs composed and sung by The Master.
I recall my parents stack of vinyls included Noel Coward at the Desert Inn Las Vegas which featured on the cover Coward in black tie in the Nevada desert drinking a cup of tea.
Unfortunately – or at least it seemed so at the time – I mis-ordered and received a DVD collection of his films and plays.
Then in one of the many reviews castigating the recent film starring Dan Stevens and Judi Dench I read one critic recommending the 1945 version with Margaret Rutherford as the medium Mrs Arcati which I now possessed.
Then in The Week magazine there was an article on Noel Coward’s interest in mediums.
After World War One and the Spanish flu epidemic there were not just many fatalities but the bereaved wanted to make contact with them and mediums so flourished that the conventional church suffered.
Indeed Margaret Rutherford, who was similarly fascinated, initially turned down the role and only accepted it once satisfied that the play was not mocking mediums.
I am getting ahead of myself as some readers may not know the plot.
Charles Condomine (Rex Harrison) is a successful crime writer that enlists a medium initially for the purpose of a potential story.
Mrs Arcati actually summons the spirit of his first deceased wife Elvira (Kay Hammond) who appears as a ghost in translucent green.
Only Condomine can see her, though all can hear their conversation, which leads to great misunderstanding from his present wife Ruth (Constance Cummings) as Charles becomes an astral bigamist.
Though a comedy, like many a Coward play it has a darker side.
Elvira admits to affairs and so does Charles with another man. It’s a cynical view of marriage.
The play was a huge success – only The Mousetrap had a longer run.
In some respects it is dated.
The elegant house in a picture-postcard English village, dressing in black tie for dinner and the dull doctor, all could feature in a Miss Marple Agatha Christie mystery.
In other respects – the references to infidelity and promiscuity – it’s quite daring.
It’s pleasing structure endures for the modern audience and so do the humour and the characters.
Elvira is blowsy and the contrast with the more staid Ruth – Diane Dors meets Anna Neagle – one of the interesting confrontations.
However it is the suave Rex Harrison and the boisterous Margaret Rutherford that deliver the most memorable performances.
It was the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan in the 1950s that did for Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan, yet the then fashionable Angry Young Men’ s (John Osborne and Arnold Wesker) output now seems more dated and certainly less dramatised.
Nonetheless Blithe Spirit is a period piece which explains why this film version works better than the recently released one.