The Ghost Goes West (1935) - film review

In 18th Century Scotland, there is only one thing that the McLaggan and Glourie clans hate more than the English, and that is each other.  On his deathbed, Old Glourie gets his only son, Murdoch, to swear that he will prove himself worthy of the Glourie name.  Before he gets his chance to do this, Mudroch is killed in battle, dying a coward’s death.  His reward is to stay amongst the living as a ghost, haunting Castle Glourie until the day he can get a McClaggan to admit that one Glourie is worth fifty of his own clan.  Two hundred years pass, the castle falls into disrepair, but the ghost of Murdoch Glourie is still there – to the annoyance of his sole descendent, Donald, who is desperate to sell the castle so that he can pay his debts.  One day, Peggy Martin, the daughter of a wealthy American businessman, falls in love with the castle and persuades her father to buy it.  The latter is not put off when he learns the castle is haunted.  On the contrary, he sees that this may be put to good use in marketing his line of grocery products.  So, without any delay, Mr Martin buys the castle and has it transported, brick by brick, to his Florida estate.   It looks as if Murdoch Glourie will remain a ghost forever, exiled to a strange and distant land...

The Ghost Goes West was the first English language film to be directed by the great French filmmaker René Clair, who had previously scored several notable successes in France with films such as Le Million (1931) and À nous la liberté (1931).  The subject and style of Clair’s films both showed a strong American influence, and this is most evident in his appropriation of Hollywood’s most popular genres, the musical and the screwball comedy.  The Ghost Goes West is both a screwball and an all-out satire on American materialism, and remains one of Clair’s funniest films.  Audience in Europe and America loved this film and it was the most commercially successful British film of 1936.

With a plot that appears to have been inspired by Oscar Wilde’s short story The Canterville Ghost, The Ghost Goes West was written in July 1935 and filmed shortly afterwards at Hounslow Studios in England, for Alexander Korda’s company London Film Productions.  Korda had a reputation for being a hands on producer and this film would be no exception.  So great was Korda’s directorial input into the film that Clair seriously considered removing his own name from the credits.  One area of disagreement between the two men was the choice of lead actor – Clair wanted Laurence Olivier but producer Alexander Korda preferred the more bankable Robert Donat, who was the biggest actor in British cinema at the time and had just starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (1935).  

The Ghost Goes West is without doubt one of the most entertaining British films of the 1930s – and not just because of Robert Donat’s amusing attempt to keep up a Scottish accent whilst playing two different characters, "Och, aye".   Clair had perfected the visual gag in his silent films so by this stage making audiences roll in the aisles was second nature to him.  Amongst the plethora of jokes this film has to offer are: a Medieval suit of armour which has been turned into a radio; a Scottish Castle rebuilt amongst the palm trees of Florida; and, best of all, an American’s idea of genuine Scottish music, which turns out to be a West Indian jazz band.   And the special effects aren’t bad either.

© James Travers 2009

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