Christmas Holiday (1944)

[Raven]

Sunday, December 24, 2006
Christmas Holiday (1944)

Written by Raven

With the exception of an extended scene which takes place at midnight mass, there’s little here to suggest either Christmas or a holiday. What we have is two stories of lost love and final redemption woven together in a drama/noir under the direction of one of the incomparable masters of noir, Robert Siodmak.

The protagonist in this piece is played by the songbird of Universal, Deanna Durbin. According to reports, Durbin was single handedly responsible for pulling Universal from the grasp of bankruptcy. Seems I’ve seen this same remark applied to everyone from Frankenstein to Abbott and Costello but that’s beside the point. Here Miss Durbin is allowed to forsake her schoolgirl persona and actually display both her ample dramatic talents and cleavage. Seeing them both is a pleasant surprise given her cinematic resume up to this point.


Starring in the role of the homme fatal and also playing against type is the master of acrobatic dance, Gene Kelly. This was an early screen appearance for Kelly and perhaps the powers in Tinseltown had yet to determine in which direction his career would go. If so, with the release of Anchors Aweigh the following year, the point would be moot.

The story unfolds with the receipt of a “Dear John” letter to a newly graduated Army officer (Dean Harens) who hops on the first flight heading west to confront his former lover in San Francisco. Fate steps in to play a hand with foul weather forcing the flight to land in New Orleans to wait out the storm. While drinking away his misery in the hotel bar, the young Lieutenant is visited by a drunken (is there ever any other type) news reporter who also serves as a pimp for the local house of pleasure. Convincing the young officer he can offer a solution to his problems, he gets him to ride out with him to the whorehouse that supplements his reporters pay and keeps him well liquored up.

Arriving at Madame Valerie de Merode’s joint we and the Lt. are introduced to Durbin’s character, the resident canary, Jackie Lamont. Little surprise that with Durbin in the film we’ll of course be “treated” to the obligatory staged musical number found in most noirs of the period. Rather than being the classy numbers we’re accustomed too, here the lighting is bleak and the mood somber. In other words, just what one would expect given the type of establishment and the direction of Siodmak. While others within the place are doing what comes naturally, boozing and hooking up, Jackie and the Lt. decide to attend mass! In an elaborately staged scene in church Jackie breaks down to the point of being inconsolable when the weight of her troubles can no longer be contained. We’re now sure things are not what they appear to be and the Lt.’s problems will soon become secondary to the story about to unfold.

Moving on to an all-night diner Jackie reveals herself to be one Abigail Martin, and tells her story via the staple of noir flashback. The story is one of her meeting and marriage to the lying, gambling, murdering, and generally no good momma’s boy, Robert Monette (Gene Kelly) and his overbearing mother played beautifully restrained by Gale Sondergaard. Suffice to say, Robert turns out not to be the man Abigail fell in love with or more correctly she was blinded by love to the real man he was. As if building a house of cards, one by one the foibles of Robert manifest themselves to the point that the inevitable collapse must occur.

While lacking some of the action we’ve come to expect from noirs, Christmas Holiday nevertheless packs an emotional punch that more than makes up for those missing on the physical side. While Kelly’s adequate here, the real centerpiece here is Durbin in a performance that’s sure to change one’s impression of her talents.

Backing up the stars in addition to Harens, and Sondergaard are a bevy of noir stalwarts; Gladys George, John Hamilton, Oliver Blake, John Berkes and Charles Cane. While not Siodmak’s strongest noir outing (my vote would be for The Killers, while many would opt for Criss Cross) Christmas Holiday is thoroughly entertaining.

Couple of last notes; while Durbin get the opportunity to warble though a couple of songs, Kelly’s not given the same chance to demonstrate his non-parallel dancing talents. That said, in an obvious tongue in cheek move there is a scene in which Kelly asks Durbin to dance. Precisely upon the point of arriving on the dance floor the band concludes the number and the dance never comes off. Lastly, when if came time to hand out the Academy Awards, Christmas Holiday walked away with one Oscar, that for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. With Durbin and Kelly how could it not win something related to music?

[Haggai]

I finally got to see this one at a pleasantly surprising screening, shown at my local rep house as part of a Christmas movie series (and the advertising was accurate--they weren't trying to fool anyone into thinking it was a heartwarming holiday tale!). The print quality was quite good.

I was fairly let down by the movie, though. My two main problems with it were the Dean Harens storyline--which was uninteresting and went nowhere, existing purely as a framing device with no discernible contribution--and the structure of the flashbacks, which reversed the Durbin story by revealing and showing the aftermath of the husband's crime before eventually working backwards to their first meeting and their blossoming romance. By the film gets to the sequences showing their meet-cute at a concert and the subsequent introduction of the girl to the mother, there's nothing left to keep the audience interested: no real mystery about what's going to happen, or what did happen, or why we should be interested in their backstory in the first place.

Maybe it's due in part to noir flashback structures still being in their infancy at that point; obviously The Killers and Criss Cross show a far nimbler approach to weaving past and present together to boost narrative momentum. But I think Christmas Holiday could have worked better if they had just played it straight, focusing only on Durbin as the main character and telling her story in a straight line from start to finish.

[Steve-O]

Christmas Holiday trailer

[MartinTeller]

(review from November 6, 2010)

One of the last people you expect to see in a film noir is Gene Kelly, especially playing a character with such a dark side. Although this was before his career really took off, he'd had a few big roles in musicals, so I wonder if he would have been known by the general public as a dancer. There's a funny little moment where he asks Deanna Durbin to dance, but they have to descend a long staircase on the way there (one of a few magnificent crane shots) and by the time they get to the floor, the song has just ended. I don't know if this was a wink at the audience ("not in this one, guys!") or not. Between the title and the casting of Durbin and Kelly, it's almost as if they were trying to trick people into thinking it might be a musical. Durbin does get to sing a couple of tunes, however, and they're lovely... as is Miss Durbin herself, a real knockout. The film has a lot of intriguing touches. Siodmak knows his way around a noir, of course, and the lighting and compositions and camerawork are absolutely stunning. There's some seedy subject matter in the thinly veiled prostitution and incest. Some stunning moments in the midnight mass scene and the beautiful finale, which includes a magnificent reprise of "Tristan und Isolde" (a piece of music that I will forever associate with Un Chien Andalou). Some standard noir themes are covered, like the hand of fate, desperation, and doomed romance. Despite all this, the film is a little underwhelming. Although Durbin and Kelly are both charming and good-looking, there doesn't seem to be any chemistry between them, and this is a story that requires some passionate attraction. And a lot of the story, which isn't exceptionally engaging to begin with, comes off as filler. Heck, it's a full 25 minutes before Kelly even enters the picture. I can't be too harsh on a movie that nails the noir window dressing so well, but the substance is lacking. Rating: 7

[cigar joe]

Well caught this one last night, The story was entertaining enough and I pretty much concur with all of the above comments so I'll just add some screen caps to the mix.

Title Sequence



Dean Harrens after receiving his Dear John letter



Plane trouble forces San Francisco bound plane to land in New Orleans



Gotta love Hayes Code Hollywood, after Harren's plane lands in New Orleans and he's put up in a Hotel a guy (actually a pimp for a whorehouse) suggests that they go to a "dance hall" to forget his troubles and after all its Christmas Eve. They arrive and we get subtle shots suggesting what the dance hall really is:

We see two women sitting together, and two women dancing together pass by as the pimp goes to find the Madame.



Songstress/prostitute? Durbin (definitely a whore in the Maugham novel) singing a tune (check out the similar sequence with Isela Vega in Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia where its not hampered by the Hayes Code for a comparison)



Harren & Durbin hit it off



One thing leads to another, in the film Harren's takes her to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve where Durbin breaks down and tell him her tale of woe that brought her to hooking, but none of this is ever spelled out, in the film they wake up in Harren's Hotel room together after a platonic night. Her tale is told in a very long flashback sequence where we first meet Gene Kelly, ner-do-well gambler from one of the better New Orleans families.





Kelly confronted by his mother who has found blood on & a roll of money in his pants



Kelly pushes a shocked Durbin around at the finale



Worth watching for its entertainment value I'll give it a 6.5-7/10 Seeing Kelly against type is a mind-bender, Durbin has a little bit of baby fat and a bit too innocent looking for what it is suggested that she's doing for "work". Too bad it couldn't be remade without the Hayes Code ridiculousness.

[mkhand]

i had video taped this back in the 80's, and always treated myself to a Christmas viewing on through the 90's until i put my video machine out on the electric trash pile in the garage!