Still Life (play) in Paris in 1968 under the title "Brève Recontre" (presented in tandem with "Nous Dansons"), and in the same year, along with "Fumed Oak", it formed the basis for a musical, not by Coward, called "Mr. and Mrs". The film was remade in 1974 starring Richard Burton and Sophia Loren. In 2008, a stage version of "Brief Encounter" was presented in London at the Haymarket Cinema and on tour by Kneehigh Theatre using a combination of the text of "Still Life" and the screenplay. In May 2009, Houston Grand Opera premiered an opera in two acts based on "Brief Encounter",
Blithe Spirit (play) his own view of things on the brute facts of existence," and Michael Billington of "The Guardian" wrote of Coward's influence on Harold Pinter. In 2004, Charles Spencer of "The Daily Telegraph" wrote, "With "Hay Fever" and "Private Lives", "Blithe Spirit" strikes me as being one of Coward 's three indisputable comic masterpieces. [It is] the outrageous frivolity with which Coward treats mortality that makes the piece so bracing." "Blithe Spirit" was made into a successful film in 1945, adapted by Coward and directed by David Lean. The cast included Rex Harrison as Charles, Constance Cummings as Ruth, Kay Hammond