• It’s Lean’s third film, one before Brief Encounter (also 1945) and one and three years before his beautiful Dickens adaptations
  • It’s more a Noel Coward film than a Lean film (though it’s beautifully shot) as evidenced in the opening credits when Coward gets the last title after “directed by David Lean”- weird seeing that when you watch as many movies as I do
  • It’s great Coward—sophisticated and witty- Cheeky and cocktail humor-y—and both Rutherford- and especially Rex Harrison are perfectly suited for it- dry and pointed
  • It’s color- in England and 1945—that’s very rare (love that the Brits are forced to spell color correctly because it’s “technicolor”- and it’s not by the Archers – Powell and Pressburger- who could get the color pulled off
  • Rutherford does the “Great Scott” line stolen for Back to the Future and used routinely by Christopher Lloyd
  • Breezy, innuendo, cheeky, double entendres, high society,
  • Rutherford is a vibrant character- a bit of a bitter beer face, baggy eyes
  • Harrison is always hiding his teeth- different than the 1964 more confident My Fair Lady Harrison
  • The same joke gets dull—It’s of Harrison talking to his ghost ex-wife and his current wife thinks he is talking to her—it’s funny—but not the 5th Similar work in 1950’s Harvey with Jimmy Stewart and Topper– both great comedies
  • Lean isn’t given much to do but there is a very nice tracking shot as he glides through the house like a ghost and then bounces the actors off a window
  • I adored a fight between the two couple at the table done through editing in a two-shot—Citizen Kane before it and up to Chazelle’s La La Land– great execution
  • Another shot of clever direction comes when we cut to Harrison’s current (alive) wife’s POV by taking the camera over her shoulder (where she does not see the ghost)
  • Morbid black comedic ending
  • Recommend