Herrmann claimed this was the favourite of all his scores—tender and gravely romantic. The film is an exquisite fantasy in which Rex Harrison plays the ghost of a sea captain who haunts the house and heart of a young widow (Gene Tierney) and starts interfering in her creative and emotional affairs, particularly when she is courted by a suave, unscrupulous suitor (George Sanders). It was a happy collaboration, for director Joseph Mankiewicz was often drawn to stories that explored the grip of past on present, the dead on the living, and Herrmann seemed similarly inspired by ghost stories that were also love stories.