Doomtomylo
a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.
Erica Derrick
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
Marva
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
blanche-2
I saw the last two scenes of this strange film when I was living in Germany. When American films are shown in Germany, and they have music, the dialogue is dubbed, but the songs remain in English. I always wanted to see the whole thing.Don't be fooled by the title "Christmas Holiday." This 1944 Universal film is no Christmas movie, but instead, a quasi-psychological story of obsessive love and guilt. Sounds just like a Deanna Durbin movie, doesn't it?Durbin here plays Jackie Lamont, who tells her story to a soldier, Charles Mason (Dean Harens) grounded in New Orleans during bad weather. He's received a telegram from his fiancée telling him she's married to someone else, but he's decided to take his Christmas leave in San Francisco anyway, possibly to confront her. When he can't leave New Orleans, a newspaperman, Simon (Richard Whorf) takes him to a club, Maison L'affite, run by Valerie (Gladys George). Jackie is a singer there and, like the other women who work there, talks to the male guests. There's a strong implication that they do something else for the male guests as well, but the code is in place so no one comes out and says it.At her request, Charles takes her to midnight Mass - I haven't heard a mass in Latin in decades - where she breaks down. Afterwards, she explains that she is in reality Abigail Martin, the wife of Richard Manette (Gene Kelly), in prison for killing a bookie. She tells him the whole story of how in love with him she was and still is, how they met at a concert, and how his mother (Gale Sondergaard) obviously knew something Abigail didn't know: that Richard was a charming, scheming, thieving weakling, and she was hoping Abigail could change him. She didn't.One night he comes home with blood on his trousers and a lot of dough. It's not long before he's put on trial for murder and found guilty. His mother blames Abigail, and Abigail changes her name to Jackie and goes to work at the club, apparently as some sort of punishment.This is pretty heavy going. It's suggested by a Somerset Maugham story - he wasn't known for light comedy. The casting of Durbin and Kelly is certainly interesting, plus the name. Imagine walking into a movie theater knowing nothing about this movie. You would assume you were about to see a cheerful musical.Durbin sings "Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year," and "Always," which she does beautifully. She was a good actress and able to pull off the drama.Kelly is a charmer in the beginning and then reveals his true colors. He was good, as was Gale Sondergaard.The theme from Tristan & Isolde is played at the concert and at the end of the film. Always surprises me to hear Wagner in a film made during World War II, because all the German arias were taken out of the compilations of arias for various voice types during the war. Nevertheless, it's quite an arresting theme. Tristan & Isolde is similar, and predates, the legend of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot. Its theme doesn't seem to have much to do with this movie.Deanna Durbin would leave films four years later and told an interviewer once that Universal was giving her worse and worse films. Given how much money she had made for them, the powers that be never knocked themselves out finding her good material."Christmas Holiday" is an aberration, but so odd and so oddly cast that it's worth seeing. I love Deanna, and I'll take her any way I can get her.
bkoganbing
Before MGM decided that they would be the only ones commanding Gene Kelly's services, they did lend him out for two memorable roles. One was Cover Girl for Columbia which firmly established Kelly as a musical star and the second was as Deanna Durbin's co-star in Christmas Holiday. Deanna sang a couple of numbers, but Kelly didn't even tap his foot to keep time. Yet he showed he was an actor to be reckoned with.Through a combination of circumstances soldier on leave Dean Harens who was supposed to be getting married but has just gotten a 'dear john' letter is alone and at sea in New Orleans and meets up with Deanna Durbin who is singing in a nightclub. Trying to console each other Durbin tells the story of her marriage to Gene Kelly who has enough charm for ten men, but at heart is a wastrel. The blood of the original French settlers in the New Orleans are has become pretty thin. He lives with his mother Gale Sondergaard in genteel poverty. Sondergaard's hopes is that marriage might straighten her boy out, but that doesn't work out. Kelly kills Cy Kendall, a bookmaker he's into for some big bucks and eventually the cops catch up with him.But that is hardly the end of the story as both Harens and Durbin learn a lot about life and love in that Christmas Holiday season.New song that Deanna sings is Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year and Irving Berlin's classic Always is given a fine rendition. Christmas Holiday got an Oscar nomination for Best Musical Scoring in 1944.But it's both Deanna and Gene's acting is what you'll remember most from Christmas Holiday.
smurky
While purchasing another Deanna Durbin movie on DVD at Amazon, I saw this title and it peaked my curiosity. I wondered why, with two such great stars as Gene Kelly and Deanna Durbin, I had never heard of this movie before. So I ordered it...I watched it....and now I know why I 've never heard of it before. It is terrible. It is the worst performance ever, in the careers of both Gene and Deanna. And, as other reviewers have said, it has absolutely NOTHING to do with Christmas...nor is it a musical. Gene doesn't dance a single step, and the only time Deanna sings is when she is expressing undying passionate love for this vicious, psychopathic murderer she is married to. In the opening scene, we are introduced to two military men having a conversation about the upcoming nuptials of one of them. We grow to like these two men, and I felt cheated, because one of them we never see again, and the other, the engaged one, merely serves for the rest of the movie as a body for Deanna to tell her story to. In this scene we learn that he is taking military leave to visit his fiancé, when he receives a "Dear John" letter saying she has married someone else. He is devastated, and plans to go back home anyway to confront her. Due to bad weather, the plan has to stop in New Orleans, where he meets Deanna in a sleazy night club. The proprietor is the enchanting Gladys George. Deanna tells him (and us) how she met Gene...they were sitting next to each other at a symphony concert. She was captivated by his shy, "aw shucks" demeanor. They married and moved in with his very strange mother, played by Gale Sondergard, who horror movie fans will know very well. Gene and Gale are the creepiest mother & son team since Sante and Kenneth Kimes.The are blissfully married for 6 months. All of a sudden, he starts displaying signs of criminal behavior, and starts abusing Deanna...but still she stands by him! Before you know it, the police come looking for him, and he is on trial for murder. Deanna and Mom sit together in the courtroom, and when the guilty verdict is read, Mom turns to Deanna, slaps her in the face and declares her responsible for sonny going to jail. Needless to say, she kicks her out of the house.Now Deanna has to find work, so she gets a job singing at Gladys George's sleazy nightclub. Eventually, Gene escapes from prison and hides out in the nightclub to kill Deanna, because he assumes since she's working there, that she must be sleeping with all the patrons. The unbelievable part of this plot, is that when she sees him hiding in the back room, she runs to him with open arms, ready to run off with him ! I really hate to make you watch this to find out the ending, but we're not allowed to give "spoilers"....You know, I always believed that even the greatest of stars made some clinkers in their careers that we never see....and this film is proof!
writers_reign
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.
