Christmas Holiday (1944)

Thanks for the memories!

Really Surprised!

just watch it!

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

This is the story of a Christmas holiday, but it doesn't belong to either of the two principals, Gene Kelly and Deanna Durbin. It belongs to Dean Harens, who has just graduated from Officer school from what seems to be the Marine base at Quantico, Va. He is heading home for Christmas when his flight gets diverted to New Orleans. Waiting overnight in a hotel for the weather to clear, he meets Deanna. So far, so good.Here the story takes a strange turn. She tells him her story of courtship and marriage to Gene Kelly, who turns out to be 'disturbed' (the book may have divulged his problem, but we are left to guess - Gamblers Anonymous candidate? card-carrying Mamma's boy? flat out wacko?). In any case, he is sent to prison for murder, his Mama (Gale Sondergaard) blames Deanna, and she becomes a, um, 'hostess'.The story is engrossing and absorbing and keeps you guessing where it will go next (if, like myself, you didn't read the book), and it is interesting to watch the two stars play against type. Kelly was OK. but I thought Deanna was overmatched as a lonesome hooker, and looked more like a lost pudgy-faced teenager. Her best scene was the one everyone mentions, at Midnight Mass, but was not up to her climactic scene with Kelly, and it cried out for a better actress. Her oeuvre was her musicals, although she did better with "Lady On A Train", a murder mystery made the following year. The supporting cast of "Christmas Holiday" was so good it overshadowed the two stars.The picture is worth seeing for yourself, to judge the performance of its two stars and because of the peculiar nature of the plot. The story is a good one and could have been even better with a Warner Bros. treatment - the story was made to order for John Garfield.

OK first...how funny to read these reviewers feeling cheated and misled because the movie with "Christmas" in the title doesn't have santa and egg nog and snow and jingle bells and holiday cheer. Not enough that a pivotal scene occurs at midnight mass during the gloomy homefront years of WWII...no, it must have mistletoe & holly if the word "Christmas" is in the title. (I wonder if they got mad when DINNER AT EIGHT actually ended without showing the dinner party...?) Good grief, let me dislodge my rolled-back eyeballs and move on.For those with broader minds, this ultra-elusive little film noir is worth seeking out. There is something grave about seeing two sunny, legendary musical stars in such brooding circumstances, especially Deanna Durbin--world-weary and gorgeous as Jackie, who tells her sad tale (in two elaborate flashbacks) to a pilot on his holiday leave.Durbin's musicals are an acquired taste, but this dramatic turn requires no suspension of disbelief--she's entirely plausible as the luckless prostitute who must sing for her supper. Clearly, we are no longer in THREE SMART GIRLS territory. When she first enters the film to sing "Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year", she is both poignant and bored to death, a combo I tend to love in my leading ladies (Dietrich, anyone?).Kelly always seems self-conscious and over-rehearsed to me (this mommas-boy-psycho role might be a little out of his grasp), but OK, I'll buy his shift from smirking charmer to brooding villain, especially since he's terribly sexy when he emerges in the final reel with his 3-day beard.I wouldn't call Christmas HOLIDAY a raging success--so much needs to be squeezed into this running time to make the finale ring true, and yet it still feels rather sleepy (I have similar issues with Siodmak's PHANTOM LADY). But its always these oddball, subversive products of the studio system that are most fascinating, so it needs to be seen (it has never made it to video in the US). Fans of noir will appreciate the relentlessly grim atmosphere, even if it doesn't have a Christmas tree.

DEANNA DURBIN begged Universal to let her play a dramatic role after her great success in a string of mostly mediocre films where she played a Little-Miss-Fixit in featherweight romantic comedies who sang operatic ditties with great skill and charm. She was always involved in a scheme to reunite her mother and father for the final clinch.Here, she handles her very adult role with competence, quite believable as a torch singer in a disreputable nightclub, a troubled woman seeking redemption for problems in her twisted past relationships with a mother and son (GALE SONDERGAARD and GENE KELLY).Deanna shines in the role, giving it shades of both simplicity and charm while playing the happy bride, but convincing when she becomes the bruised and fragile woman who manages to tell her tale of woe to a young lieutenant. The soldier is nicely played by DEAN HARENS, an officer on Christmas leave who is on his way to San Francisco when a storm forces his plane to land in New Orleans. The film structure is not always smooth, burdened as it is by a couple of flashbacks in the middle and a rather weak ending that is over too abruptly. But Robert Siodmak and cameraman Woody Bredell give the whole piece a fluid style with long tracking shots and superior cinematography for several key scenes, notably the one that takes place at a church service on Christmas eve, and another in a concert hall.Durbin's fans will certainly appreciate her rendering of "Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year" and Irving Berlin's haunting ballad "Always." The background music, a mixture of popular songs and classical pieces, is effective, especially for all of the nightclub scenes. Hans J. Salter deservedly won an Oscar nomination for his detailed and meticulous score.Effective supporting performances from GALE SONDERGAARD, GLADYS GEORGE and RICHARD WHORF strengthen the tale. Well worth watching. Oddly enough, Deanna handles her dramatic chores in much better style than Gene Kelly, who's unable to do much with his role of a weak-willed wastrel who turns to crime for reasons unexplained.Trivia note: David Bruce has a small role at the beginning. Two years later he'd be co-starring with Deanna in much bigger parts in CAN'T HELP SINGING and LADY ON A TRAIN.

There are, I suppose, as many reasons for seeking out specific films as there are specific films, bearing in mind that one man's specific is another man's Huh! In my case I have other passions besides movies one of which is what used to be called Popular Song in the days when the only other categories were Classical Music or Country Music and I had long loved the gorgeous ballad Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year which I knew Frank Loesser had written for Christmas Holiday making that reason enough to search for the film (for the record my life is crammed with movies I've never seen that contain great Frank Loesser songs: College Swing (1938) Moments Like This; Some Like It Hot (no, not THAT one, the Bob Hope entry from 1938 with The Lady's In Love With You); Thanks For The Memory (1938) Two Sleepy People; Kiss The Boys Goodbye (1940) Sand In My Shoes; Seven Days Leave (1943) Can't Get Out Of This Mood; The Glass Key (1943) I Don't Want To Walk Without You; Happy Go Lucky (1943) Let's Get Lost; The Perils Of Pauline (1947) I Wish I Didn't Love You So; Neptune's Daughter (1949) Baby, It's Cold Outside; Red, Hot And Blue (1950) Where Are You, Now That I Need You. For good measure Loesser actually appeared in the latter as a piano player) and eventually I tracked it down and was disappointed to say the least. Now, thanks to my good friend in France, I actually own it and I'm still disappointed, not least with the travesty of the beautiful ballad which is stepped up to a Dixieland tempo and completely thrown away by Deanna Durbin. Apart from that director Siodmak seems to be having a bad air day all round. He proved himself time and again a master of noir and that very same year he would helm The Suspect, followed the next year by The Spiral Staircase but here, possibly hampered by a script from Mank's big brother Herman that plays fast and loose with Willie Maugham's novel, he is curiously inept. For one thing we waste a good reel and a half on something that is totally superfluous; a passing-out parade, a Dear John letter, a plane journey interrupted by bad weather that could all have been eliminated leaving us with the main story of Deanna Durbin's ill-starred marriage with Gene Kelly who, in addition to enjoying an all-but-spelt-out incestuous relationship with his mother, Gale Sondergaard, is also addicted to gambling and not above murder. Maugham's novel of pre-war Paris has been transposed to present-day New Orleans, a bordello has become a night club, a hooker a singer and ... well, you get the drift. Almost nothing works though Siodmak does his best, still, everyone's entitled to one mistake.