This is an almost perfect movie, of the sort a Hollywood studio could produce when all its departments were firing on all cylinders on a given project. The director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who was great with actors and with literary material but not a great visual artist, is here taken into a new realm by the ravishing and atmospheric cinematography of Charles Lang, himself liberated from the flatter lighting style Paramount normally expected of him by the demands of this particular show, which he did on loan-out to 20th Century Fox. Rex Harrison is brilliantly cast as the virile ghost who haunts the widow Muir's psyche, and Gene Tierney, not an actress of great range, grounds the film in a kind of sweet commonplace yearning that skews its comic/romantic tone towards the romantic. The script is sentimental but leavened with wit, the design and costuming are first-rate and the truly haunting score by the incomparable Bernard Herrmann is one of his very finest. The result is a superb fantasy, charged with subtle eroticism, mystery and emotion. It is a civilized entertainment for grown-ups and wise children of all ages.
