Word: ghostly
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...some scenes, Willy talks loudly to a not-present individual, and Miller reconstructs the imaginary speaker for the audience, although he remains invisible to the other characters. Willy implores the ghost, Willy's older brother. "Ben, what's the secret to success? Did I do something wrong?" James Bohnen plays Ben's phantom with such presence one feels like reaching out and touching his huge tweed overcoat as he roams around the aisles in the audience. He replies repeatedly, "Willy, when I was 17, I went into the jungle. When I was 21, I came out. And damned...
...most matter-of-fact images is of an orange tree, the fruit dully glistening with the heavy shine of late summer, some leaves almost metallic in density, others a little blurred as the wind stirs them. Into this ecstatically concrete world, a ghost intrudes: the shadow of Atget and his shrouded camera falling across a cabbage plant. Mere shades that whisper "I was here" and so wrench the image away from objectivity toward that sense of mutual dependence between viewer and view that lay at the heart of modernism...
...movie, alas, lacks sustained ability to haunt. Thomas provides the necessary disembodied footsteps and floor creaks, but the rest is silence. The featured ghost--not just an amorphous white cloud, but a nattily dressed gentleman named Marion--offers nothing more threatening than a few cross glares. Overabundant in tension, The Haunting of M lacks genuine fright. In the most important scenes, Marion reveals himself to be a lovesick and slightly wrathful admirer of Marianna, played with calculated flirtatiousness by Sheelagh Gilby. Indeed, in his last scenes, Marion becomes truly tender as he reaches out to Marianna, scowling jealously at those...
...ghost haunts Marianna in a rather benign way; he loves her, even haunts her with a purer, more romantic love than the one offered by her living (and drippy) beau who totes a camera and nasally announces his affection. Indeed, Marianna's sister, played by Nini Pitts, seems more frightened of the spectre than does Marianna. Rather, Marianna is victimized by her visions of romance which cling to her and draw her from her sleep. How such notions could possibly threaten her, we do not know; nor are we shown why she is so enamoured of Marion. For Marianna seems...
HIGH BUDGET FILMS often substitute extravagant endings for meaningful ones, distracting, rather than satisfying us. Some, like the Bond films, require extravagant endings to satisfy the suspense. Thomas has picked a genre which requires not extravagance, but skill. Yet she supplies neither. This ghost story can not succeed without an effective ending, one in which the ghost and its victim confront each other squarely. In The Haunting of M, the ghost is never vanquished, merely disappointed by Marianna. Thomas ending seems muted in its Victorian delicacy. Marion, wrapped in such timeless wrath, should be less amenable to the coquettish defenses...