David Lean, UK 1945
Print source: Museum of Modern Art
Running time: 96 minutes
About the print
This is Martin Scorsese’s personal print, on deposit at MoMA. Though the print has some wear, including scratching, the Technicolor imbibition process has kept the colors pristine. There are several areas of edge and perf damage that have been repaired for this screening. A handful of splices per reel and the amount of projector oil and dirt on the film show a healthy lifetime for this print. Shrinkage: 0.8%
About the film
“Noel Coward’s brilliant comedy has been made into a Two Cities film that is just as brilliant, resplendent in Technicolor and full of sparkling dialogue and wit. . . . This is an excellent picture, with all the ingredients of first-class entertainment and really clever trick photography used in the presentation of the supernatural sequences. Don’t miss it on any account!”
– Times of India, September 28, 1945
“The important consideration is that the new manifestation of the tale of a young husband who, through his own prankishness, suddenly finds himself confronted with the ethereal presence of his first wife, seven years dead, and thus brings about the peculiarly unobjectionable demise of his second, and ultimately his own expunction, is so gaily fashioned and expertly played that any spectator must revel in its literacy, wit and swift developments. In this subject, the screen finds a diversion that might be enormously enjoyed with the eyes closed— were it not for missing the miraculously helpful Technicolor camera tricks—so engagingly entertaining is the brilliant humor with which Coward has endowed it.”
– Nelson B. Bell, Washington Post, December 21, 1945