One Paragraph Movie Review: The Ghost and Mrs Muir

One hundred and seventy-sixth film: The Ghost and Mrs Muir, a 1947 film about how dead blokes make better boyfriends than alive ones. Except for a couple of instances of time-stamped sexism, this film is ridiculously charming, especially for a story about a widow who moves into a haunted house and falls in love with a swearing ghost. If it didn’t have me at female lead Gene Tierney being robustly relatable by saying “I’ve always wanted to be considered obstinate”, I was certainly sold by the time she called Rex Harrison a sailor and he objected angrily by shouting “SEAMAN!”. There were more than a few properly lovely romantic moments, one or two moments that afforded the opportunity to whisper “oh, you CAD” at the screen, and at least one line that encourages the viewer to be grateful that the Me Too movement happened between then and now. Salty, cantankerous seaman or not, when a woman is kissed unexpectedly it is not, Captain, because deep down she secretly wants to be. Still. Nice movie. Three extremely terrible picnic outfits out of five.