The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947).

 

Captain Daniel Gregg (Rex Harrison) to Lucy "Lucia" Muir (Gene Tierney) in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947).

"You've made your choice...the only choice you could make. You've chosen life...and that's as it should be...whatever the reckoning. And that's why I'm going away, my dear.

Oh, I can't help you now. I can only confuse you more and destroy whatever chance you have left of happiness. You must make your own life amongst the living. And whether you'll meet fair winds or foul...find your own way to harbor in the end..

Lucia, listen to me. Listen, my dear. You've been dreaming...dreaming of a sea captain that haunted this house..of talks you had with him...even a book you both wrote together...but, Lucia, you wrote the book..you and no one else. The book you imagined from his house...from his picture on the wall...from his gear lying around in every room. It's been a dream, Lucia.

And in the morning and the years after. as a dream...and it'll die...as all dreams must die at waking. How you'd have loved the North Cape and the fjords and the midnight sun...to sail across the reef at Barbados...where the blue water turns to green...to the Falklands where a southerly gale rips the whole sea white! What we've missed, Lucia! What we've both missed. Goodbye, my darling."

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

Based on a 1945 novel written by Josephine Leslie under the pseudonym of R.A. Dick

Music by Bernard Hermann

Screenplay by Philip Dunne

Charles Lang received a 1947 Academy Award nomination for his black-and-white cinematography.

The New York Times called The Ghost and Mrs. Muir "a pleasurable film, despite its failings," singling out Edna Best for "by far the best performannce. In the writer's opinion, Harrison "has such an ingratiating personality that this compensates in large measure for the lack of characterization in his role," but Tierney "is a pretty girl, but has no depth of feeling as an actress." (Wikipedia)