The mid-forties saw something of a vogue in 'ghost' films; 1945 brought a film adaptation of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, with David Lean at the helm, 1947 yielded Mank's The Ghost And Mrs Muir (with Rex Harrison as the ghost rather than the object of the ghost's desire) and in the middle was Claude Autant-Lara's Sylvie et le fantome with a screenplay by Jean Aurenche. At 32 Odette Joyeux was arguably a tad old to play a teenager and it may be more than coincidental that she later married her lighting cameraman here, Philippe Agostini, though at the time she was still married to Pierre Brasseur - their ten-year old son, Claude, would turn out to have as distinguished an acting career as his father. Despite a fairly respectable acting CV - she appeared in both Douce and Le Marriage de Chiffon around this time - Joyeux never really enjoyed star status and soon branched out into writing for both big and small screens but this time around she is both effective and charming as the endearingly naive teenager with a romantic attachment to the 'white hunter' in the life-size portrait in her château. Alas, times are hard and head of the family Pierre Larquey is obliged to sell the portrait on the eve of Sylvie's birthday and in an effort to make some sort of amends he hires someone to impersonate the White Hunter as a spirit and one becomes three when the elderly actor supplied by an Agency is supplemented by a shy suitor and a criminal, all of whom are out-spirited by the REAL ghost in the (spectral) form of Jacques Tati. This is nothing less than a delight, a wonderful confection, exactly the kind of film despised by the spoilt children of the New Wavelet and far superior to any of the bile they vomited onto the screen a decade later. A worthy 9 out of 10.
Review of Sylvie et le fantôme
