BLITHE SPIRIT (1945) *** Back in the days when people were paying so much attention to plays that they could make it from stage to screen in a scant four years. I don't know whether to be amused at the medium and aristocrats who take sceances to matter of factly, or appalled that they're engaging forces that they so clearly don't understand. It is a comedy, I guess, it's funny anyway, and so I guess that part of Noel Coward's joke is on me for trying to take it seriously. Continuing anyway, I think that it really does say something when Margaret Rutherford, the conduit for an ectoplasmic event that would astound even the Ghostbusters, turns out to have no idea what she's doing. She was, it turns out, the beneficiary of blind dumb luck, and maybe that's a clue to the entire hocus-pocus world. I thoroughly enjoy watching those Rex Harrison type characters, unflappable British upper crust incapable of being even distracted by the most momentous events going on around them. I suppose that they must truly exist, or at least did, even though I've never seen one. Like ghosts, come to think of it. So perhaps there is a connection after all.
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