Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

James Hitchcock Wynyard Browne was, along with the likes of Noel Coward, Terence Rattigan, N C Hunter and J B Priestley, one of the school of playwrights who dominated the British stage during the thirties, forties and early fifties but whose work came to be seen as outdated after the revolution kick-started by John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" in 1956. Their drawing-room comedies and well-made middle-class family dramas looked very old-fashioned in the brave new kitchen-sink world of the Angry Young Men. Coward's biting wit has kept his work alive, Priestley's "An Inspector Calls" had remained a perpetual favourite and there has been a recent revival of interest in Rattigan, but Browne is today a largely forgotten figure."The Holly and the Ivy" is a film adaptation of one of Browne's plays. As the title might suggest, the action takes place at Christmas, and this was an early example of the made-for-the-Christmas-market movie, opening on 22nd December 1952. The main character is the Reverend Martin Gregory, an elderly Irish-born Norfolk clergyman. Gregory, who has recently been widowed, lives with his elder daughter Jenny, who acts as his housekeeper. Gregory and Jenny are joined by his other daughter Margaret, his soldier son Michael, two ageing aunts and Richard Wyndham, a family friend. Jenny's fiancé David Patterson also pays them a visit. (There appears to be some confusion about David's geographical origins. We are informed that he is the son of a local farmer, but the script also states that he is from Aberdeen, and John Gregson plays him with a Scottish accent).David wants to marry Jenny, but as his work as an engineer will take him to South America in the near future, this will mean that Jenny will have to leave her father. Gregory has no objection to his daughter's marriage, and would welcome David as a son-in-law, but the rest of the family know that Jenny will never leave him alone in his rambling parsonage. They therefore try to persuade him to retire and move to somewhere where he can more easily be looked after, but he is unwilling to do this, believing that he still has something to contribute to the work of the Church in his parish. As the holiday season progresses, the family's other hidden secrets start to come to light, especially as regards Margaret.Even if I had not known that the film was an adaptation of a stage play I could have worked that out from the style of film-making. Like most British films based upon theatrical plays from this period, there is little attempt to open it up; nearly all the action takes place in the snow-bound parsonage. (There is, of course, snow on the ground outside. In Britain white Christmases are much more common in literature and the cinema than they are in reality; in southern and eastern England they are quite rare). This closed-up, stagey look, however, is not necessarily a bad thing in the context of this film, as it contributes to a sense of claustrophobia, a sense that this family, some of whose members have been avoiding each other for some time, have been forced together into a greater, but not necessarily welcome, intimacy.The film stars some of the leading lights of the British acting profession at this period. I felt that at 44 Celia Johnson was miscast as Jenny, who is only supposed to be 32. Jenny, however, feels that her biological clock is ticking and that David represents her last chance of marriage and a family of her own, so her age is an important plot point. A 44 year-old Jenny would probably have long since resigned herself to a future as a spinster. Denholm Elliott as Michael has surprisingly little to do, but the real stars of this production are Ralph Richardson and Margaret Leighton.At only fifty (only six years older than his supposed daughter Johnson) Richardson was, strictly speaking, too young for the role of Gregory, who is probably supposed to be in his sixties, if not seventies, yet he seems convincingly older. Gregory is a man seemingly cut off from the twentieth century, worrying about the decline of faith and fretting that the cinema rather than his church now seems to be the spiritual centre of his small Norfolk town, and even more cut off from his own family. Paradoxically, it is his religious calling itself which has contributed to this estrangement; as a clergyman Gregory believes that everyone should be able to come and discuss their problems with him, but his family see him as a remote figure, more concerned with God than with other people. Margaret, as played by Leighton, is a brittle young woman, superficially glamorous and successful but underneath lonely and deeply troubled.From the viewpoint of 2017, "The Holly and the Ivy" might seem like a rather old-fashioned drama, but in fact it was in some ways controversial in 1952. Theatre and cinema audiences of this period were not used to seeing respectable vicars' daughters portrayed as alcoholics or unmarried mothers, especially at Christmas time. In many ways it still holds up well- rather better, I suspect, than many of today's cinematic Yuletide offerings will hold up six-and-a-half decades from now. 7/10

George Wright The Holly and the Ivy is a far cry from the usual Christmas story since it is more a family drama set during the Christmas season. It is a powerful story with excellent acting as the group gets together in a country village north of London in 1948. The family made up of father, aunts, grown children and two male friends come together at the vicarage of the father, the parson in a local church. Ralph Richardson and Margaret Leighton, as father and daughter, have the key roles and are bolstered by a strong supporting cast, including Denholm Eliot and Celia Johnson. During the evening and Christmas morning, family matters that had been ignored or kept secret, come to the fore. After a series of uncomfortable incidents and heart-to-heart talks, things change and everyone finds comfort and possibly a deeper purpose in this Christmas. This is certainly a serious movie and totally entertaining. Unlike many of the fantasy films we see at Christmas, this offers a dose of reality. The sets are very plain as they were in most British dramas of that era but the acting is superb. It teaches the audience that Christmas and family difficulties are often played out together. In that sense, family Christmas gatherings may not be that different than they were 60 some years ago.

kidboots Wynyard Brown's thoughtful play was a West End success story of the 1949-50 season and writer producer Anatole de Grunwald took a straightforward approach in adapting it for the screen. The action takes place on Christmas Eve and the following day as enjoyed or suffered by the Reverend Martin Gregory (Ralph Richardson) and members of his family who gather at the country vicarage for the holiday.His enlisted son Mick (Denholm Elliott) is home on leave and at the last moment his youngest daughter, Margaret (Margaret Leighton), a London journalist appears. The older daughter, Jenny (Celia Johnson) has never left home, devotedly caring for her father, so much so that she cannot bring herself to marry her fiancée David (John Gregson) who is about to leave the country for five years for work. David is frustrated that Jenny is the only one willing to stay at home to look after her absent minded father and thinks Margaret should have her turn. The play revolves around Ralph Richardson's character of the lovable but eccentric parson who has always been kept "in the dark" about serious family matters by his children who feel that as a parson he cannot deal with life's realities. Everyone knows that Jenny desperately wants to marry and the real reason why Margaret is on her way to becoming an alcoholic and Martin proves that he can certainly cope with any skeletons dangling in the family closet.Christmas Day brings matters to a head - the night before Margaret and Mick head off for the cinema but go instead to the local pub - they both come home drunk. The next thing Martin upbraids Mick for getting Margaret drunk, things become heated and Mick angrily reveals Margaret's secret. She had met an American airman during the war and he had been killed, she had had a child, who, unfortunately, died the year before and she had started drinking to cope with her sorrow. There follows a moving scene between Martin and Margaret (beautifully played by the Richardson and Leighton) which brings them closer together and proves to Margaret that there is a place for her in the world. For Martin, an ironic piece of self discovery when he realises that he, a person whose job it is to help other people, never really knew his own family or how much they needed him. As good as the movie is, without the performances it would have been just another bland play about Christmas. Maureen Delany as the hatchet faced Aunt Bridgit and Margaret Halston as the dreamily sweet Aunt Lydia were retained from the original play. Celia Johnson, as Jenny, is as usual stoical yet ultimately poignant and Ralph Richardson's bewildered despair at realising his home failures, give him a heartfelt sympathy. Margaret Leighton is the real show stopper as Margaret, her initial hardened selfishness is quickly explained and the emotional showdown with her father allows her bitterness to crumble away.

graham clarke "The Holly and the Ivy" is an extremely odd concoction. It's a Christmas movie which is designed to make audiences feel that all is well with world. Yet it also touches on the effects of the stifling British family on its children, in a surprisingly frank manner for the time. It would take another couple of years for the Angry Young Man to fully emerge. But this brave effort is thwarted by a ridiculously shallow and highly unlikely happy ending which weakens the entire film.Still there are some memorable scenes, such as a very young Denholm Elliot getting drunk and expressing his suffering to his unaware, parochial father. In a particularly moving scene the wonderful Margaret Leighton relates her war time affair and the resulting illegitimate child to sister Celia Johnson. Both Leighton and Johnson had limited cinema careers so it's particularly rewarding to be able to watch them together. And of course, Ralph Richardson at the helm is expectedly fine.So, it quite a mixed bag, but definitely way above the average British film of the early fifties.