The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) is a fantasy romance you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. An American studio picture, 105 minutes, with a young Natalie Wood in a supporting role.

It is 1900. Widow Lucy Muir escapes her suffocating in-laws by renting a seaside cottage for suspiciously little money. The reason for the bargain: the previous tenant, sea captain Daniel Gregg, died there under unclear circumstances and has refused to leave. He materialises expecting to frighten her off. She stays. What begins as a standoff between a ghost and a stubborn woman slowly turns into something neither of them planned for.

Mankiewicz keeps the film from becoming either a comedy or a horror piece — it sits in its own odd register, genuinely melancholy and oddly precise about loneliness. Harrison makes Gregg imperious and tender in almost the same breath, and Tierney holds the whole thing together with a self-possession that makes Lucy more interesting than most romantic heroines of the era. This is not a film that gives you the ending you expect. Stream The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) online on iFILM.