Blithe Spirit is a 1945 British supernatural black comedy film directed by David Lean. The screenplay by Lean, cinematographer Ronald Neame and associate producer Anthony Havelock-Allan, is based on Noël Coward's 1941 play of the same name, the title of which is derived from the line "Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert" in the poem "To a Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The song "Always", written by Irving Berlin, is an important plot element in Blithe Spirit.

Plot

Seeking background material for an occult-based novel he is working on, writer Charles Condomine invites eccentric medium Madame Arcati to his home in Lympne, Kent, to conduct a séance. As Charles, his wife Ruth and their guests, George and Violet Bradman, barely restrain themselves from laughing, Madame Arcati performs peculiar rituals and finally goes into a trance. Charles then hears the voice of his dead first wife, Elvira. When he discovers that the others cannot hear her, he evasively passes off his odd behaviour as a joke. When Arcati recovers, she is certain that something extraordinary has occurred, but everyone else denies it.