I was at 44 seen out of 116, and I've seen another 5 out of today's 12: "Splendor in the Grass", "The Candidate", "North by Northwest", "A Streetcar Named Desire", and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?". SO now 49 seen out of 128 takes me to 38.2%.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Over Her Dead Body" (Movie #4,634)
THE PLOT: The ghost of a dead husband haunts his wife after she moves back to their house in NYC - she's about to marry an egyptologist there.
AFTER: I might be making a mistake here, because just like with "Murphy's Romance", there are a bunch of older actors and actresses here who have credits from classic movies from the 1940's and 1950', so there could have been a path back to older romance films via Charles Lane, and then this film could have been the way BACK to the 1980's, via Mildred Natwick or Claire Trevor. And then James Caan's my link back to more modern movies tomorrow. I just fooled around a little bit with the Oracle of Bacon, and I couldn't really find some older classic movies about love that would link those people, which I also wanted to watch, so hey, maybe there aren't any. But I definitely gravitate toward actors with LONG careers, like Jeff Bridges and James Caan, if I have to bounce between the decades.
Here's a twist on the omnipresent "love triangle" idea, when 1/3 of the triangle is a ghost who has decided to haunt his widow. He's so into her that he doesn't let the fact that he's dead get in the way here, he still wants his wife to be faithful to him, even if he wasn't faithful to her when HE was alive. Again, there's a fine line between being in love and being overly possessive - we want what we have, we want to KEEP what we have, plus we all want just a bit more, the double standard is "I should get to cheat, but I want my partner to not be able to." We are, at heart, very petty people.
The film kind of tries to have it both ways - is Jolly an ACTUAL ghost, or merely a figment of his widow's imagination, caused by her moving back into the house they shared together, and being reminded of the parties they used to host, the meals they ate in the dining room, etc. This is almost a NITPICK POINT to me, like who keeps a house for three years and lives somewhere else during that time? Sure, her husband died there and she needed time to deal with that, but really, you can rent the place out or sublet it or sell it, all better solutions than letting it be empty while you still make mortgage payments and pay real estate tax, utilities and general upkeep. Must be nice to have money...it's a NICE big Manhattan residence, three floors but a walk-up and the top floor's a dance studio that probably can be converted to any kind of rehearsal space. As a choreographer Jolly probably got a tax credit for a home office, part of the cost of the house was deductible, or could be balanced as a work expense against the income from a successful Broadway show if needed.
From a relationship standpoint, I don't know if it's a good idea to invite her fiancé to live with her in the SAME NYC property after they get married, there are probably figurative ghosts there in addition to the literal one. Even if ghost Jolly isn't real but only imagined by Kay, the fact that she's imagining him is a sign that something's not right with the relationship, Rupert is very different from Jolly, so maybe she just hasn't made that mental adjustment yet, and getting married again (plus living in the same house) is reminding her of what went down in her first marriage, so boom, ghost Jolly. So whether this is more of a "Sixth Sense" thing or a "Fight Club" thing is a topic for some debate. Ghost Jolly somehow knows details about Rupert's childhood trauma, which he would have no way of knowing unless he had some kind of contact through the spirit realm with either God or Santa Claus.
The movie "Ghost" pulled something similar, and now we have the TV show "Ghosts" on CBS that draws from a similar playbook, the ghosts can only be seen and heard by one person who is sensitive to the vibrations from the spirit world, or whatever BS reason the writers come up with. You might think that a ghost would haunt a building and therefore be kind of location specific, but here ghost Jolly goes on a road-trip with his ex-wife and her fiancé, and it does not go well. Jolly keeps forgetting that he's a ghost and he can't EAT the cheeseburger that he ordered, and well, that's a good metaphor for wanting to keep his relationship with his ex-wife, even though he can't kiss her or touch her, and even THEN when he realizes this, he still doesn't want to see her date anybody else. Why can't he just watch her having sex with her fiancé and enjoy that? Too creepy?
Instead Jolly shows Kay how to break into a Broadway theater after hours so he can - what, practice dancing? That's a misdemeanor, breaking and entering. Ahh, Jesus, why not just tell us what your unresolved beef is so we can settle it and you can move on to the afterlife? His presence is so disruptive that it causes Rupert and Kay to fight all the time, and also the other couple staying at the quaint country inn, who can't quite understand why Rupert is so into saying he can see ghosts too, even though he can't, and they don't know the whole back-story here, so there's nearly a double-break-up at the motel, and it's all Jolly's fault. Rupert's so used to dealing with Egyptian mummies who are usually very quiet, he's not prepared to deal with a chatty ghost who's got strong opinions about the validity of "Till death do us part."
I know they WANT us to root for the very alive Rupert over the rather dead Jolly, but James Caan is so charming and debonair that he almost makes the choice difficult. And Rupert loses his cool in the second half, and kind of undoes any good will he fostered with the audience by being the nicer guy and trying to understand why his future wife insists she's seeing a ghost. You can't just learn to be cool by tap-dancing one night with the museum cleaning staff, after all. But ultimately Kay's just got to choose the live husband over the dead one, because come on, logistically, how is the relationship with the ghost going to WORK?
With the rising cost of Manhattan real estate, why not just all share the building together? Just let Jolly keep his top floor dance studio and you can carry on just fine living as a married couple on the other two floors. Then they can make some money when they invent the "Ghost Hunters" TV show, just a suggestion.
I know I see the resemblance to a film I watched last year, "Over Her Dead Body", but that film was made years after this one, so if there's any connection, it's the other way around. This also evokes other classic films like "Blithe Spirit", but really it's based on a 1976 Brazilian film called "Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands", which is based on a book of the same name.
Anyway, onward and upward to other romance films - it looks like I've got at least three other wedding films coming up in the next week, which really is just where you want to be, with Valentine's Day on the horizon. OF COURSE it's peak romance week here at the Movie Year.
Directed by: Robert Mulligan (director of "Same Time, Next Year")
Also starring James Caan (last seen in "The Yards"), Jeff Bridges (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Paul Dooley (last seen in "Clockwatchers"), Claire Trevor (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Mildred Natwick (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Dorothy Fielding (last seen in "The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper"), William Prince (last seen in "Destination Tokyo"), Maryedith Burrell, Alan Haufrect (last seen in "Coma"), Stephen Elliott (last seen in "Arthur 2: On the Rocks"), Michael Ensign (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), Edith Fields (last seen in "Over Her Dead Body"), Lee Weaver (last seen in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back"), Lyla Graham, Chris Graver, Bernadette Birkett (last seen in "St. Elmo's Fire"), Barret Oliver (last seen in "Cocoon"), Robert Miano (last seen in "Loser"), Wolf Muser, Norman Alexander Gibbs, Adam Wade.
RATING: 5 out of 10 crates full of... mummies?
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