The ghosts of past wives have turned up in movies of all sorts, but never so delightfully as in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, faithfully, elegantly rendered here by director David Lean. Rex Harrison is a novelist whose second marriage (to Constance Cummings) is seriously complicated by the arrival of his dead first wife (Kay Hammond) via the medium of Margaret Rutherford. If Blithe Spirit is the least personal of David Lean's works, this is only because he uses the minimum of optical effects in order to spotlight the magnificent dialogue and ensemble acting of Coward's original. “One of the funniest British films ever made”--National Film Theatre.