Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit" was one of the top theatrical successes of its time and is frequently revived. The 1945 film version directed by David Lean, shot in lush Technicolor during stressful wartime conditions in Britain, also endures. There is even a watchable kinescope of the 1956 U. S. television production starring a flawless Coward himself with Claudette Colbert and Lauren Bacall that also holds up well.
This new version directed by Edward Hall presents the shriveled fruit of three screenwriters who retained only the barest shell of Coward's plot which they then refilled with sometimes clever but mostly witless (and at times embarrassingly anachronistic) dialogue and mundane situations. Dan Stevens is fine, given the gruel he has to work with. The musical underscoring is anti-Coward throughout; the pop songs that are supposed to supply period flavor sound like canned Lawrence Welk arrangements. The only effective music in the whole film is the playing of the record of Irving Berlin's "Always" which kicks off the action.
Judi Dench is always a pleasure, but she is inappropriate as the medium Madame Arcati. Due to Dench's advanced age (mid-80s when this was filmed) her character has been vastly subdued and drained of its veddy English eccentricities.
Hall & Company would have been better off taking a crack of one of Coward's many unfilmed plays or short stories.
This new version directed by Edward Hall presents the shriveled fruit of three screenwriters who retained only the barest shell of Coward's plot which they then refilled with sometimes clever but mostly witless (and at times embarrassingly anachronistic) dialogue and mundane situations. Dan Stevens is fine, given the gruel he has to work with. The musical underscoring is anti-Coward throughout; the pop songs that are supposed to supply period flavor sound like canned Lawrence Welk arrangements. The only effective music in the whole film is the playing of the record of Irving Berlin's "Always" which kicks off the action.
Judi Dench is always a pleasure, but she is inappropriate as the medium Madame Arcati. Due to Dench's advanced age (mid-80s when this was filmed) her character has been vastly subdued and drained of its veddy English eccentricities.
Hall & Company would have been better off taking a crack of one of Coward's many unfilmed plays or short stories.