A Haunted Heart: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

By Michael van den Bos

The love story is like the ocean: it’s a genre that comprises an essential element covering movies the world over. The cinematic sea of love is most thrilling when the love boat rides on tempestuous emotional waves and only stays afloat if the romantic leads are of equal ballast somewhere in their temperament, ego, or spirit. This goes for such extreme cases as the fiery relationship between Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, or the sweetly neurotic coupling of Annie Hall and Alvy Singer. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is a spirited love story that expertly navigates the deep, mysterious waters of romance between two unlikely lovers who couldn’t be more similar.

It is England, the turn-of-the-last-century. Mrs. Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney), newly widowed, leaves her controlling in-laws to start a new life with her young daughter. With her late husband’s money, Lucy purchases a quaint seaside cottage, even though she’s warned that it’s haunted. Lucy indeed discovers the cottage is haunted by the ghost of the cantankerous Capt. Gregg (Rex Harrison), but she’s not scared off. A living (and dead) accommodation is reluctantly agreed upon by Lucy and the captain. As tolerance leads from admiration through fondness, and finally to love, Lucy’s money runs out, so the captain helps her and her daughter by “ghostwriting” his salty seagoing adventures, which become a best-selling book. Along the way, Lucy falls in love with a living writer (George Sanders) who manipulates Lucy for his own pleasure, much to the pain of Capt. Gregg.

Rex Harrison defined the cliché of the crusty seadog who once led a seafaring life of wine, women, and song. Though his ghost wants his home to his own, the captain is captivated by Lucy’s timeless beauty, and then touched by her unsuspecting strength and determination to be neither controlled by irritating in-laws nor frightened by an annoying apparition. The captain’s spirit softens as he realizes Lucy is his kindred spirit; two unlikely people from different dimensions align their hearts because they not only share the same characteristics, but they also lovingly share what the other needs to voyage through life and the afterlife.

Gene Tierney was one of Hollywood’s great beauties who could act well with good material when guided by a strong director. Tierney’s felinelike visage has an ephemeral quality in Mrs. Muir, which is fitting for this supernatural love story, as opposed to her erotic and icy-cold mask as the evil wife in the great Technicolor film noir, Leave Her to Heaven.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz, one of Hollywood’s best screenwriters (All About Eve), elegantly directs from Philip Dunne’s droll script. Not usually noted as a visual master, Mankiewicz displays elegant style as crafted by Charles Lang Jr.’s sublime and haunting black-and-white photography (in which all love stories and ghost stories should be photographed).

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is that rare Hollywood love story that balances romance, wit, and genuine sentiment into a completely charming film about transcending the physical plane to a spiritual solstice.