The Big Picture

• The romance The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is an underrated classic about an Edwardian widow who falls for the ghost of a surly sea captain.
• The characters' inability to touch makes The Ghost and Mrs. Muir a mature, melancholic love story that emphasizes emotional connection.
• The Ghost and Mrs. Muir's ending anchors itself in tenderness and emotional intimacy.

Even within the unique playground that is supernatural romance, the ghost romance has an extra je ne sais quoi. Vampires, for example, might be dead, but they interact with the material world. Ghosts have a trickier time. With exceptions, an inherent barrier separates the planes of the living and the dead. If you can't be with the one you love because they can neither see nor touch you, that's a situation ripe for angst, longing, and emotional intimacy. Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore's tragic love affair in Ghost might have whipped the mainstream world into a frenzy, but Hollywood's best ghost-human romance happened years earlier.

1947's The Ghost and Mrs. Muir doesn't often appear on "the best of Golden Hollywood" lists even though it's an underrated gem with abundant talent on both sides of the camera. The tale of a headstrong Edwardian widow who moves into a seaside cottage inhabited by the ghost of a cranky sailor would be deliriously appealing in and of itself. Neither a rom-com nor a Gothic romance, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is instead a daydream anchored by a mature, melancholic love story with enough tenderness to melt stone. When a human and a ghost are soulmates but literally incapable of touching, a potent authenticity develops by necessity. Add themes of feminine independence and living a satisfactory life even when it becomes different from what you envisioned, and the result is a haunting classic.

What Is ‘The Ghost and Mrs. Muir’ About?

20th Century Fox wanted The Ghost and Mrs. Muir to be silent film sensation Norma Shearer's comeback. Instead, Gene Tierney, the performer Martin Scorsese deemed "one of the most underrated actresses of the Golden Era," assumed the lead role of Mrs. Lucy Muir, a fiercely independent widow tired of living under the roof and thumbs of her husband's family. Tierney already had two career-defining roles — Laura and Leave Her to Heaven — under her belt. Rex Harrison, completing the title's duo as the ghostly Captain Daniel Cregg, had garnered attention for 1941's war film Major Barbara and Fox's 1946 hit, Anna and the King of Siam.

Prolific screenwriter Philip Dunne adapted Josephine Leslie's book of the same name, with emerging industry mainstay Joseph L. Mankiewicz in the director's chair and frequent Alfred Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann as composer. Set in 1900, Lucy Muir abandons her irritating in-laws and moves to the White Cliffs of Dover. After marrying her late husband at age 17, she craves a fulfilling life subject to no one's terms but her own. Once she finds the rundown Gull Cottage, it calls to her; to paraphrase Lucy's words, she feels it begging her to rescue it from its loneliness. (This is the first clue that the chipper Lucy is lonelier than she lets on.) And when Lucy Muir's mind is set, heaven help any dismissively sexist realtor or surly ghost trying to convince her otherwise.

In fact, the cottage's last resident haunting her new home makes things even better. Lucy declares with a massive grin, "Haunted! How perfectly fascinating." Yes, Lucy is one of us, a girl who romanticizes the Gothic and cherishes the charms of an introverted seaside life. When men declare her obstinate, she takes pride in earning the term. Graceful, composed, and unconventional, Lucy strides into her future with clear-headed earnestness and a stubborn wistfulness that's delightfully contemporary.

Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison Are a Perfect Romantic Match

Likewise, Daniel's parlor tricks, designed to frighten away potential buyers, don't sway Lucy. "Is that all you're good for, to frighten women?" she baits. "If the demonstration is over, I'll thank you not to interfere while I boil some water." Naturally, Captain Gregg interferes, but his growing fondness for Lucy tempers his boisterous irascibility. Her spirit amuses him. What's more, he respects her staunch autonomy where other men belittle. Gregg also recognizes Lucy's sincere connection to Gull Cottage. This isn't just architecture for her, but the chosen haven for which her solitary heart has been desperate.

Gene Tierney's subtle emotiveness and fiery undercurrents both offset and complement Rex Harrison's more demonstrative demeanor. Initially, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir brims with light but prickly banter. Lucy and Gregg are opposites attracting, which means they butt heads during the world's uniquest roommate scenario. Daniel, a flirtatious and foul-mouthed scoundrel, clashes with Lucy's prim-and-proper upbringing until he starts rubbing off on her already acerbic temper. Daniel's capable of tenderness, but Lucy prompts him to rediscover his quieter side. Their rapport blossoms from tolerance to friendship, and from friendship into a true love that can seemingly never be.

‘The Ghost and Mrs. Muir’ Is a Mature Romance

As bewitching as any doomed romance is, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir's finely crafted vulnerability stands apart from the flock. Daniel and Lucy immediately demonstrate mutual empathy. It's as inconsequential as turning on a light or Daniel tending to her distress by bolstering her confidence. The more late nights they spend writing Daniel's life story (talk about a "ghostwriter"), the more they connect over their shared interests as much as their differences. An easy vulnerability develops, which affords a naturalistic comradery neither can find with anyone else. With compassion and recognition as their baseline, they become one another's refuge.

Trust and respect breed closeness, and, as it happens, attraction. Since the Hays Code was in full effect by 1947, the most suggestive The Ghost and Mrs. Muir gets is Lucy hanging Daniel's painting in her bedroom, which was once his bedroom. Sultry insinuations aside, sex doesn't drive Daniel and Lucy's reciprocal kinship. Their inability to touch is yearning of the highest order and boils their connection down to its fundamentals. Without physical embrace as a shorthand, the actors carry the romance's potency through their expressions and body language. Rapid-fire banter falls away into distracted smiles. Silences extend from awkward to heated, their couple's gazes matched. And because Daniel doesn't exist in the material world, there's no chance for either party to just indulge their feelings.

Tierney and Harrison supplement this intentional lack with a choreographed awareness of the other's body (as it were). Daniel stops sprawling on a couch to make room for Lucy, which, logically, makes no sense. They breach one another's spaces. The camera distances Daniel from Lucy by framing him as lingering behind her. The result? A palpable intimacy. Their unfulfilled desires, while sexy, are emotionally charged and refreshingly mature. Lucy and Daniel's displaced souls understand one another. Their spirits match, both being untamed and tempestuous oceans.

‘The Ghost and Mrs. Muir’ Understands That Tension Is Sexy

Therein lies the problem. Daniel is eternally stuck in time. Lucy proactively exists in an ever-moving world. Neither party deludes themselves into pretending there's a solution to their hopeless state. When a morose Lucy can't gain what she truly wants, she pursues her closest living option, the tangible Miles Fairley (George Sanders). Lucy never surrenders her self-sufficiency, but that doesn't discount her desire for companionship. Nor does her naivety weaken her into a wilting flower. She fears wasting her life and thirsts for the vigor Daniel can't provide.

After this development, Daniel selflessly removes himself from the equation. Despite his impassioned heartache, he frees his "Lucia" — a nickname he bestows because it suits "an Amazon, a queen" — from any confusion or guilt that might shackle her to him. Still, the connection never severs. As Daniel tenderly murmurs to a sleeping Lucy, he hovers breathless inches above the lips he can't kiss, the torment evident on his face. Lucy instinctively responds by lifting her head. Their affinity is acute enough that she feels his presence across the double barrier of sleep and death. Mr. Darcy might clench his fist after grazing Lizzie Bennet's hand, but Daniel and Lucy raze a barn down with the air for kindling.

Underscoring this intimacy is 1940s Hollywood's evocative simplicity. Cinematographer Charles Lang's Academy Award-nominated camera knows when to track the characters' movements and when to be still. His compositions give literal depth to the California-doubling-as-England coastline and a sparse but comfortably lived-in set design. For all that The Ghost and Mrs. Muir loves shadowy stairwells, foggy bedroom terraces, and ocean waves majestically crashing over rocks, Lucy and Daniel mostly maneuver in high-key lighting. The film's visual contrast doesn't come from film noir starkness but the incongruity of Lucy's all-black mourning ensemble against the cottage's white-toned rooms. Likewise, Daniel's black wardrobe separates him from the bright backdrop and Lucy's increasingly light outfits. These choices construct the necessary atmosphere, as does Bernard Herrmann's nostalgic score. When the music swells, its haunting — but not frightening – theatricality evokes and condenses the film's themes.

‘The Ghost and Mrs. Muir’s Happy Ending Is Intimate and Earned

After Daniel vanishes from her memory and Miles proves himself a cad, Lucy claims she's content with her isolated lifestyle. Still, she senses that something's missing. She expectantly stares toward the ocean but can't place what — or who — she's looking for. When an elderly Lucy passes away in the same chair Daniel first caught her napping in, he reappears. He extends his hands. For the first time, Lucy takes them. Her death demolished the barriers separating them. Yet the two never take the traditional route and finally, finally kiss. That isn't the payoff. The emotional culmination of this spiritual affair is Lucy and Daniel effortlessly transitioning into the simplest gesture that's always been denied them. That denial, and their conjoint waiting, turn their hand-holding and arm-linking profound.

As they leave Gull Cottage together (never not touching), the house a troubled Daniel haunted and a joyful Lucy made her safe harbor, the couple walk forward into everything — the sights, the sounds, the experiences — they couldn't have until now. That's the purest and rarest intimacy, the type poets effuse over. Even though Lucy's spirit regains her youthful appearance, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir's message isn't about eternal youth or death being a release from pain. Lucy's avant-garde life, full of happiness and hardship, satisfied her. But her soulmate was missing, and with him, adventures specific to that relationship. Their purely emotional bond is profound enough that they both waited decades for the promise of a new, second life. First, fate unites an unlikely pair in unfair circumstances. Then, they discover happiness at the end of a long, aching, and excruciatingly romantic road. And it takes them 100 minutes to even hold hands.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is available to rent or buy on Prime Video in the U.S.

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