BLITHE SPIRIT (1945)

Noël Coward’s stage comedy about a writer whose flighty first wife starts haunting him and his more conventional second wife after an ill-advised séance provided the reassuring image of life continuing beyond the grave for audiences during the horrors of the London Blitz. He handed the film rights to director David Lean, who directed his In Which We Serve (1942) and This Happy Breed (1944), though he had never helmed a comedy. To make the ghost ethereal, Lean had actress Kay Hammond dressed and made up in green, using a special light to make her glow. He also used point-of-view shots from other characters who couldn’t see her, showing props and furniture moving on their own. His ingenuity won the film an Oscar for Best Special Effects. Rex Harrison stars as the writer with Kay Hammond as wife number one, Constance Cummings as wife number two, and a scene stealing Margaret Rutherford as the medium.

d. David Lean, 96m, 35mm

Courtesy of The British National Archive and Park Circus.

Print source: BFI National Archive. Restored by the BFI National Archive and ITV, supported by The David Lean Foundation. 35mm print made in 2008.

The British Film Institute is the UK’s lead organization for film and the moving image. In 2025 the BFI National Archive turns 90 years old. From preserving early silent films on fragile nitrate film prints to collecting contemporary work via the latest digital innovations; from bringing to life unproduced ‘lost’ works through scripts and production sketches, to caring for the stills and posters of familiar cultural touchstones; and from their holdings of small-scale home videos to the most epic of cinematic odysseys, since 1935 the BFI National Archive has been a gateway to the past, present, and future of screen culture. The BFI National Archive at TCM Classic Film Festival this April, celebrating this major milestone, are presenting a number of rare archive film prints (including nitrate), new 35mm prints and restorations from their collection.