Directed by David Lean • 1945 • United Kingdom
Starring Rex Harrison, Margaret Rutherford, Kay Hammond
BLITHE SPIRIT, David Lean’s delightful film version of Noël Coward’s theater sensation (onstage, it broke London box-office records before hitting Broadway), stars Rex Harrison as a novelist who cheekily invites a medium (Margaret Rutherford) to his house to conduct a séance, hoping the experience will inspire a book he’s working on. Things go decidedly not as planned when she summons the spirit of his dead first wife (Kay Hammond), a severe inconvenience for his current one (Constance Cummings). Employing Oscar-winning special effects to spruce up Coward’s theatrical farce, BLITHE SPIRIT is a sprightly supernatural comedy with winning performances.
Up Next in Technicolor
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Henry V
Directed by Laurence Olivier • 1944 • United Kingdom
Starring Laurence Olivier, Leslie Banks, Robert NewtonOlivier mustered out of the navy to film this adaptation of Shakespeare’s history. Embroiled in World War II, Britons took courage from this tale of a king who surmounts overwhelming odds ...
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The Horse’s Mouth
Directed by Ronald Neame • 1958 • United Kingdom
Starring Alec Guinness, Kay Walsh, Renee HoustonIn Ronald Neame’s film of Joyce Cary’s classic novel, Alec Guinness transforms himself into one of cinema’s most indelible comic figures: the lovably scruffy painter Gulley Jimson. As the ill-behave...
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The Mikado
Directed by Victor Schertzinger • 1939 • United States
Starring Kenny Baker, Martyn Green, Sydney GranvilleThe legendary Gilbert and Sullivan troupe the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company joined forces with Hollywood for this 1939 Technicolor version of the beloved comic opera “The Mikado,” the first w...
