The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947 film) - a meditation on life, death, and love

Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney) tries to recall a never-consummated love for daughter Anna.

I would never have thought that a romantic fantasy featuring a ghost would become my favorite film, perhaps even surpassing life-long-loved classics like "La Strada," but "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" has recently ascended in my film pantheon to a spot bordering on obsession.

This film is so much more than the sum of its parts, gorgeous though those parts may be. The script is restrained, judicious, beautifully balanced between humor, pathos, mystery, and romance. The black-and-white chiaroscuro lends "Gull Cottage," and the faces of its occupants, their own spiritual, nay spectral presence.  The cast is wonderful, particularly Rex Harrison as a pitch-perfect Captain Gregg, with an unexpected bon-bon saved for the end: the radiant, criminally under-appreciated Vanessa Brown as Lucy Muir's grown daughter Anna.

undiscovered treasure: Vanessa Brown

I could wax rhapsodic about Bernard Hermann's incomparable score, which captures life's beauty and sadness with such heart-tearing harmonies. But it's the way the music embarks even before the film starts--its melancholy arpeggios vaulting over the Fox logo, instead of the studio's standard chest-thumping fanfare--that lets you know you are entering another world. Dare I call it spiritual? What else is that light from the sea at the window of Lucy Muir's bedroom at Gull Cottage? What else the misty outlines of cliff and ocean as she paces her solitary way through the years?

This film, so haunting in the non-ghostly sense, sticks its fingers into the heart and touches on the very nature of love, life, and death, in a manner unlike any other, save perhaps "La Strada".  It is not the scenes between Lucy and the captain that seem central to its being, but rather the distillation of feeling long after his spectral presence has vanished.  It's in the next-to-last scene, which I transcribe below (I did say I was obsessed).  Something about a love that is never consummated...

If you're not moved by this scene, you need to go get your stone carapace struck off. See this film (it's on Netflix).

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) Joseph Mankiewicz – Scene 21

Fifteen or so years have passed. Lucy Muir has taken many afternoon naps in the big armchair; many ship’s bells have rung on the nautical wall clock—but there have been no further visitations from the ghost of Captain Gregg; Lucy appears to have forgotten him. She takes daily solitary walks along the cliffs by the sea, whose waves have slowly undermined her daughter Anna’s driftwood post—the one on which a seaman carved her name years ago,  promising the child it would stand there “forever.” But the waves and the music tell a different story.

As Lucy strides along the cliffs, an elegant roadster hoves into view below; a young woman stands up in it and waves. It’s Anna – now grown and studying at university, bringing Bill, her aristocratic fiancé, home to meet her mother. Bill--a bland cypher next to the vibrant Anna—is  consigned to the parlor, while mother and daughter sit in the kitchen for a comfortable chat.

…

Anna: He’s a sub-lieutenant in the navy. You know my weakness for sailor men.

Mrs. Muir: It’s the first I’ve heard of it.

Anna: Oh, it’s a lifelong vice! (speaking to Martha, their loyal housekeeper) Don’t you go making eyes at him, now!

Martha (sniffing): And him a sub-lieutenant? Captains is more in my line. (She exits and shuts the door, leaving Mrs. Muir and Anna at the table in happy intimacy.)

Anna: Oh, I’ve never been so happy in all my life!

Mrs. Muir: Then I’m happy too. And I shan’t waste time with questions.

Anna: I knew you wouldn’t. And wait till you hear--I’ve discussed it with Bill--you’re to come and live with us, you and Martha.

Mrs. Muir: Oh, no, darling.

Anna: Oh, but you must! (Pitying) You’ve been alone so much of your life.

Mrs. Muir (Rising and gazing out the window): You’re very kind, but…It’s hard to explain. You can be much more alone with other people than you are by yourself – even if it’s people you love. (Turning to Anna) That sounds all mixed up, doesn’t it?

Anna: No, not a bit. But if you ever change your mind--

Mrs. Muir: Get a plate, darling… and some extra cups. (Standing and slicing the cake, she speaks contentedly.) No, I won’t change my mind. I love this house and I’ve been very happy here. And I shall live here till I die.

Anna: (busy with the cups) With Captain Gregg?

Mrs. Muir (stunned): What did you say?

Anna (coming near with tray of cups): With the ghost of Captain Gregg?

Mrs. Muir: Anna, what are you talking about?

Anna (placing tray on table): Oh, I knew the captain very well…when I was a little girl, the first year we lived here. We used to have the most wonderful talks.

Mrs. Muir (stricken, hardly breathing): You didn’t.

Anna: It was all a game I’d made up, of course—sort of a dream game. But it was very real while it lasted. (Haunting music on high violins begins as the camera closes in on Mrs. Muir – she is transported-- her eyes shine – while Anna arranges the cake slices on the plate and chatters happily behind her, unaware of her mother’s turmoil.)

Anna: Then he stopped coming, suddenly—I suppose I was growing too old and sophisticated for him. But I grieved and grieved. I was hopelessly in love with him. (Turning, she glimpses her mother’s face, and her smile morphs to astonishment.) Heavens –you look as if you’d seen a – don’t tell me you saw him too?!

Mrs. Muir: No. (Turning her back, she goes off into her own world.) No, not for years…

Anna (understanding the truth): Then you did. Oh, Mummy, you don’t suppose he really haunted us?!

Mrs. Muir (Gazing far off): No, darling. Things like that can’t happen. It was only a dream. (Yet her face clearly reveals the opposite; she’s protecting her secret world from trespass.)

Anna (circling round her mother, puzzled and disbelieving): The same dream for both of us?

Mrs. Muir (using maternal condescension to shut Anna out): Perhaps I set you off by telling you about my dreams. Little girls are very impressionable.

Anna: I don’t remember you telling me. Oh, tell me now. I’d love to hear about them! (She pulls her mother to sit back down at the table. She is radiant, irresistible.)

Mrs. Muir:  But I can’t remember them very well—just bits and pieces—a phrase here and there—a look. And I think I dreamed most of my book, “Blood and Swash”—I must have! I never could have thought of it. All these years, I’ve tried to remember—but I can’t.

Anna (close-up, her face luminous): Do you know what I think? I think you fell in love with him, too.

Mrs. Muir (indignant): I did nothing of the sort.

Anna (filled with understanding): Oh, I wouldn’t blame you if you had. When did you stop seeing him?

Mrs. Muir (dropping her stiffness): After about a year…I dreamed we quarreled. It was about a man.

Anna (knowingly): Uncle Neddy.

Mrs. Muir (indignant again): Anna, did you know that Miles and I—

Anna: I used to pray you wouldn’t marry him.

Mrs. Muir (confidingly): And you were so right. I saw him about five years ago, at a dinner party. He was bald and fat and he drank too much, and then he cried. It seems his wife finally had enough and took the children away. (She drifts back into her own inner world.) You never can tell, can you...once I thought I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.

(Music swells to its most romantic and melancholy—this is the very heart of the scene, indeed of the entire film)

Anna (face aglow at the thought): Perhaps he did exist—the captain—perhaps he did come back and talk to us. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he had? Then you’d have something –you know what I mean—to look back on, with happiness.

Mrs. Muir: No, darling. He never existed. We made him up, you and I. (Her smile of secret inner joy belies her words.) I just wasn’t intended to have that kind of happiness, and I haven’t missed it, really I haven’t.... I’ve been lonely at times, but there’ve been compensations—you, and now Bill—and dear Martha—we sit and chatter like a pair of parrots. (Rising, her hand on Anna’s shoulder, she gazes off) And this house…and the sea…and the gulls… (she goes to the door) …and memories. (At the door now, she turns back to look at Anna) I have those, you know—even if it was – a dream.

(She opens the door; the moment of transport is past, her voice is once more businesslike) Now come along and we’ll join your young man for some tea.

(Anna joins her and they exit, shutting the door.)