Good Monday Morning all!
Moira, I'm always amazed what some manage to find online. Did you specifically go to Youtube looking for Christmas Holiday or was it just by chance you found it? ~dianabat
Dianabat, how nice to have you drop by the site! No, I wasn't looking for anything specifically related to this movie, but I was researching something about film noir in general when I came across it by accident.
I primarily posted this link to
Christmas Holiday (1944) for four reasons:
1.) It is a very rare, hard to find film, and this YouTube video is a good, clear print.
2.)
Robert Siodmak's rich and dark exploration of human nature in movies from
Menschen am Sonntag (1930) to
Phantom Lady (1943) to
The Killers (1946) to
Custer of the West (1967) fascinate me. Since his films--other than the better known noirs, are often unknown and unavailable to others, I'd hoped to share this rarely shown film.
3.) I believe that several of us have only relatively recently had an opportunity to see the interesting range of work of
Deanna Durbin. Even though her acting was never going to make a Bette Davis or a Katharine Hepburn shake in her boots, the girl had a voice I like, as well as a presence and a matter of fact style that I find engaging, even in her less successful roles.
In this particular movie, she brings a ripe, almost unself-conscious sensuality and an intelligent, reflective quality to the part that seems quite unusual to me, especially in the forties. Though the script doesn't develop the relationships between
Durbin, Gene Kelly & Gale Sondergaard as fully as I'd like, I think that she managed to create an intriguing character in this little movie. She is also especially touching in the scene at Midnight Mass. In several scenes her weary resignation to her situation is quite well done, and her almost motherly attitude toward the young lieutenant (
Dean Harens, who's pretty lame) interests me. I also think she does a heckuva job singing two very languid and plaintive versions of standard ballads (S
pring Will Be a Little Late This Year &
Always) in this movie. I really believe her when she explains the exaltation that music gives her to her new acquaintance (Mr. Kelly) at the concert hall.
4.) As one of those people who enjoys
Gene Kelly anytime--even when his feet have some clay on them and in part
because of the juxtaposition of the aggressive side of his talent with that gentler, almost poetic facet of his screen persona--this movie is pretty interesting. I like the fact that I get to see him at the beginning of his film career trying something he's clearly not all that comfortable with in his dramatic scenes. I also like the way he was cast in a part that gave him a chance to show flashes of that dark, and yes, Irish streak of aggressiveness as well as a dreamy longing to 'lose himself' (as his character puts it), in music or the girl played by
Durbin. He is a weak character looking for a life raft and, in a sense, that's one of the things that appeals to Durbin too, who probably sees something of herself in him too. There seem to be elements of pity, desire, loneliness and delusion in
Durbin's love for this character.
Btw, I think the movie pretty much falls apart in the scenes in which we're supposed to believe that
Kelly has an intense relationship with his mother (
Gale Sondergaard) and by asking us to believe that
Kelly could possibly have grown up in the South, much less New Orleans! *lol* Yeah, yeah, I know there's a big Irish-American community in NOLA, and the New Orleans accent does have traces of Brooklyn in it, but please don't ask me to believe that this obviously Northeastern born boy grew up there.
Other than that, I really like this movie. Not great, but maybe we could file it under "interesting failure"?