This is most drôle. Ghosts and romance.
Hang on… Is that a young Jacques Tati?
It’s even got a ghost dog!
This started off really well, with lots of zip and pep. It’s still amusing, but it’s gotten a bit bogged down? We’ve been introduced to three fake ghosts and one real, and several other people, so we’ve kinda lost track of the initial characters.
It’s dark, see?
This is a most amiable movie — very pleasant to watch. But it does plod along when it should be doing snap-snap-snap hi-jinx at times. The liner notes mention Blithe Spirit, but it really suffers in comparison: While this has a pretty good premise, they really needed somebody like Noel Coward to step in and make the repartee better.
The ghostly special effects are great, though — and done practically, with two identical sets and optical effects.
Sylvie et le Fantôme. Claude Autant-Lara. 1946.
This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.
