For me, the moments that are most and moving and that can often bring me to tears are:
Lucy's reply to Capt. Gregg, after he has just finished telling Lucy about his aunt who brought him up and how he thought that she must have been glad to be rid of him, after he'd left home and gone to sea, what with his filling the house with mongrel puppies and tracking mud on her carpets. Captain Gregg looks at Lucy, who appears to be lost in thought, and asks "what is it?" And she replies that she was just thinking how lonely his aunt must have been with her clean carpets. It was a very subtle and sweet way of her saying how wonderful she thought Captain Gregg was. The camera pans back around after she says that and the Captain has vanished, and she goes over and closes the door to the balcony.
The quarrel between Lucy and the Captain, on the country lane, just after she has been "kissed in the orchard all over again" starts out sounding like a jealous lover's spat but ends very sweetly with the Captain's very sage warning that "there might be breakers ahead".
The Captain's good-bye speech to the sleeping Lucy. It's beautifully written and full of such sadness and longing for what might have been for them. Rex Harrison delivers this with real mastery, I can't imagine anyone else owning that moment the way he does. It is a very sad and moving moment for me.
Another moment that comes to mind, is that scene where Lucy and Martha are walking upstairs and Lucy is reminiscing about how they had moved there, exactly one year ago to the day, and Lucy goes into her room to take a nap and it appears to be a complete re-enactment of the scene from a year ago, when the Captain first appeared, the ship's clock rings, Lucy instinctively looks around for the Captain, but nothing happens.
Another moment that really gets me is late in the story, when Anna comes home, fully grown, with her young man, Sir Evelyn and she and her mother have a talk in the kitchen. They talk about various things and when Anna mentions that she wants her mother come live with her and her soon-to-be husband, Lucy replies that she wants to stay there, where she is, and Anna asks, quite innocently, "with the ghost of Captain Gregg?" and Lucy's reaction is so palpable, you can see that hits her like a bolt of lightning and then they continue to talk about their first year in the house, when the Captain was very much with them. The moment where Anna first mentions Captain Gregg and seeing Lucy's reaction, makes my heart leap into my throat and then the rest of the conversation we see poor Lucy stuck with thinking it was all a dream, but it also seems that she somehow, on some level, knows something else. It really gets me.
The ending doesn't really do that to me anymore, it seems, but that moment where the camera follows the glass of milk and we see it slip out of her hand and then the Captain appears again, is very powerful!! I've seen this film so many times that by the time the ending comes, I know what's going to happen and possibly because the violins are on maximum soar at that point, which I find a little hard to listen to after many, many viewings, but I don't find it as moving as I once did. Those little moments in the middle of the story are wonderfully acted and I never tire of them and they always get me.
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movibuf1962
10 years ago
I'm glad someone else mentioned the penultimate scene with Lucy and her now grown-up daughter Anna, a beautiful bride-to-be- and probably no more than 19 years old- letting her mother know, if nothing else, that what she experienced that entire first year at the house was not a dream at all. And her mother's unseen realization of it all speaks volumes.
And nothing more need be said when the Captain says goodbye to Lucia as she sleeps, and it looks for a moment like he may even kiss her, but there were enough fireworks going on without, thank you much. What we've missed, indeed.
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