the Ghost of Valentine's Day

Valentine’s Day is a nice idea—celebrating love and warm colors. However, rather than wait until February when you’re cold and angry at the cold, why not watch “The Ghost and Mrs Muir” just about any day of the year? Far more restrained than today’s romcoms etc., this still manages to evoke all the humor, sadness, and longing that make romance the fascinating topic we all love… no pun intended, of course.

Gene Tierney is a young widow feeling free for the first time in her life, not due to spite, but to the constraints of society and her chosen life. Given a second chance, she escapes to the sea where she finds an undesirable house, deemed so due to its otherworldly resident. Rex Harrison (whom some of you will recognize as the vocal father of Family Guy’s Stewie Griffin) plays the titular ghost who refuses to leave his erstwhile home. He stubbornly refuses to leave any new tenants in peace, having gotten the house just to his liking. Mrs. Muir, however, is just as obstinate, reasonably believing that she has every right to live in the house, since it’s, for that particular purpose, empty.

The banter between the two is enjoyable, the cinematography and scenery are lovely—the fact that they lack color does nothing to lessen their beauty. I’ve always looked at black and white films as a sort of memory. Whereas new movies generally push color and sound and even themes until I stop believing in them, some old movies like this one have a sort of dreamy quality that mixes with some gothic sensibility. It makes for an experience that seems like sifting through the thoughts of some mysterious person who one can only tell has lived long. The only people who seem able to make subtle but stunning movies today are Guillermo del Toro (subtle when he wants to be—Pan’s Labyrinth) and Peter Weir (stunning in his subtlety—Picnic at Hanging Rock).

Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney make for a believable couple, who seem to love each other as much for their similarities as their differences. One is worldly and bored by his current approximation to life, and one unwilling to accept limits in her actual one. It sounds like something we’ve often heard, but rarely done so well. It was also at a time when it was not unheard of for a woman to be a free spirit and to think and make a life for herself, but it certainly wasn’t the theme in every other movie proclaiming to be about and for women. Tierney is convincingly tenuous in her attempts at adventure, and I root for her wholeheartedly as she shakes off every non-believer, including herself. I wonder if some of today’s actresses could watch her performance and see that there is something to be said for restraint, even when taking life for all it’s worth.