The film version is enjoyable up to a point. Kay Hammond's sardonic and sultry performance is the best thing about it. Rex Harrison is good, but I'd love to have seen the stage version with Cecil Parker - he was so funny. Margaret Rutherford created the role of Madame Arcati, and has imported much of her stage business. Someone should have told her to calm down a bit. She can't throw her head back (she was 53 and you lose flexibility), so she arches her back and flings back her arms as if they were wings - far, far too often. And the dancing about and singing meaninglessly just miiiiight have worked on stage. As might the berating of a ghost you can't see who keeps moving about. However, Rutherford is surprisingly svelte and wears some wonderfully eccentric striped blouses, teamed with unfortunate folkweave waistcoats and tweed skirts. Poor Ruth, the second wife, doesn't have great taste in clothes either, wearing green with rhinestones for the first seance.We assume that Mr Condomine has made a lot of money from his books – you could in those days – enough to fund a fairly lavish but uncomfortably formal lifestyle. Note the changing for dinner, and bowls of flowers everywhere. The C's do not live on an "estate", however, but in a large, fairly modern house with a garden (necessary to supply the flowers).One joke you may miss. Ruth drives into the village to persuade Madame Arcati to exorcise Elvira. She draws up to a picturesque cottage - surely the dwelling of the mystic medium! But no, she stops at the next house: a prosaic suburb pebble-dashed home. The main joke of Madame Arcati is that you expect a medium to be portentous, affected or maybe suburban, but she comes across like a games mistress from a girls' boarding school. This doesn't quite come off – she should seem much more down to earth when she is not doing her act.

Blythe Spirit has been written about by so many viewers here that it would seem redundant to go in to its entire plot summary or the performances of the entire cast. I agree with most reviewers particularly about Margaret Rutherford's performance as the spiritual medium; Rex Harrison has never been one of my favorite performers but he has appeared to good effect in several of my favorite films such as Unfaithfully Yours, My Fair Lady, and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. He was probably the best thing about Cleopatra (1963). On the other hand if you can watch Harrison playing a man bent on driving his wife,(Doris Day)insane with a straight face (his shenanigans include a series of tape-recorded death-threats delivered in a sing-song semi-falsetto that are not to be missed for laughs) in Midnight Lace (1960), than you're stronger than me. In Harrison's defense,most of that film's problems are due to its script, but still... In Blythe Spirit,he is his usual irascible self, and he plays his part well. I would like to make a few comments about the performance of Kay Hammond as Elvira, Mr. Condimine's first (deceased) wife. To me, she is a revelation in this film. She's a knock-out: extremely funny, and timelessly warm. She manages to be ethereal and down-to-earth in her acting while playing the part of someone who possesses both of those qualities.There is a poignant aspect to Ms. Hammond's performance, a tender touch that is slightly heavier than the material calls for. If played by someone else this might have detracted from the humorous nature of the part; Ms.Hammond makes it work by blending it seamlessly within her characterization. One is genuinely touched by her interpretation and we can believe that she indeed pined away for her husband from the "other side". We can also see why Rex Harrison's character would have found her Elvira fascinating and lovable. Then there is the comic side of her performance which effortlessly finds its target and never misses a mark throughout. The emphasis she places on Noel Coward's dialog is letter perfect in its suggestive nuances and she employs a slight slur in her voice that is both whimsical and realistic at once. More than that, her indolent line- delivery using the same 'upper crust' British accent employed by the other main players turns it faintly trashy-sounding, as if in life she wouldn't be bothered to speak with perfect diction (her character would have found that tiresome.) She never uses a staccato or sharp tone; instead she lets the dry observations and criticisms flow from her mouth languidly; they sound pleasantly lilting even as the words are acerbic to the point of acidity! Listen to her murmur "The way that woman harps on bed", "to have me exorcised, of course", "really she's quite bad tempered, I can't see why you married her" or "Look at that awful picture and that terrifying dress". Note – all of these lines are directed towards the character of Ruth, the second Mrs. Condimine. I've never encountered this style of underplaying before which I suppose is what inspired me to write this review. I think Kay Hammond was wonderful! I wish she had appeared more frequently on film.

There is exactly one reason to see this movie--and it's not because of the Noel Coward play or David Lean's direction. Margaret Rutherford, whom few movie goers are likely to remember, steals the movie completely out from under the rest of the cast with her performance as Madam Arcati, the medium who stirs up the spirit that transforms the life of the other characters. Margaret Rutherford was a splendid actress in her day, and this is a wonderful performance. This, I must say, is the least lively performance of "Blithe Spirit" I've ever seen, and David Lean's direction is hugely disappointing because it is so static. It displays none of the visual imagination that has earned Lean his rank among the greatest directors of all time. (He's also credited as one of the writers of the screenplay.) There is also some interest in seeing Rex Harrison when he was young and exceedingly handsome. But I can recommend only to people who've never seen Ms. Rutherford or who are so madly in love with Noel Coward or David Lean that they are willing to endure a turkey.

Noel Coward's brand of comedy has never really appealed to me, and much of the comedy and incidents in this film are too predictable to be truly amusing. Where it does score is by having the wonderfully dotty Margaret Rutherford in the role of Madame Arcati, a crackpot medium who inadvertently calls Rex Harrison's first wife (Kay Hammond) back from the dead, much to the annoyance of his second wife (Constance Cummings).I found Harrison to be quite annoying throughout this film. Not only did his voice grow increasingly irritating as the film went on, but his character seemed to be very poorly developed. One moment he seems happily married to second wife Ruth while also eventually being delighted to be re-united with Elvira, the next he can't seem to wait to be rid of the pair of them so that he can enjoy some newly-found bachelorhood. Perhaps I was missing something, my concentration wavered at times as the film struggled to hold my attention.The production values are quite high for a mid-forties British film, and Hammond's simple but effective ghost make-up is quite impressive. It's just a shame that, by the end of the film you can't help feeling they all deserve to be stuck with each other for eternity