Christmas Holiday

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Steve D Nothing new but the acting is strong and it is great to see these stars play against type. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 06/20/23 Full Review Audience Member Christmas Holiday (1944) is a musical Christmas(?) noir. Filled with murder plots, music, and with Hollywood locations standing in for New Orleans. This is an adaption (sort of) W. Somerset Maugham book of the same name (with different setting ...and characters). Gene Kelly is in the movie but doesn't sing or dance (or attempt to do New Orleans's or Southern accent). At one point we get a large part of a Latin Mass and two orchestra numbers. Durbin sings 2 songs as well. This movie made money when it came out and was nominated for an academy award for its score. The dialog is fairly snappy but both Durbin and Kelly seem miscast (and fail to stretch into the material). The supporting cast is great. 3 stars out of 5 but you have to be in a odd mood for this to be the holiday movie you go with. If you know the Hayes code it is fun to see the numerous ways the film had to try to navigate around subject matter that they were not allowed to do or show. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/24/23 Full Review camille l Christmas Holiday est un petit film noir qui permit à Gene Kelly et Deanna Durbin de changer de genre et de s'essayer à du contre-emploi. Si Gene Kelly campe un méchant plutôt réussi, Deanna Durbin ne s'en sort pas aussi bien (malgré ses numéros musicaux) et on s'ennuie quelque peu quand le premier n'est pas à l'écran. Robert Siodmak filme le tout en roue libre, sans réel intérêt. Sans être un véritable pensum, Christmas Holiday est tout de même peu important dans la filmographie de Gene Kelly et peut tout à fait être ignoré. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Unusual ingredients make up this strange pudding that wants to be a film noir but lands closer to melodrama, of a particularly bleak variety. Perhaps it doesn't feel quite like noir because the central protagonist, the narrator of the flashbacks, is female (played by teen actress Deanna Durbin in a grown up role). Watching women suffer the cruel twists of fate that the noir deals out doesn't create so much darkness as pity, especially when the woman is steadfast in her commitment to the wrong guy, the guy who caused her so much pain and misery. That guy is Gene Kelly in an early role - he always seemed to have a sinister problematic quality and he plays it up here. He is believable although Durbin (whose character has sunk to presumed prostitution) is not. Director Robert Siodmak (The Killers, Phantom Lady, etc.) lays all the noir trappings out but the underlying story by Somerset Maugham (The Razor's Edge), written for the screen by Herman J. Mankiewicz (Citizen Kane), is missing some edge. An odd framing device involving a soldier on Christmas furlough doesn't quite fit. As I said, it is a strange pudding that might have tasted better if it weren't a Deanna Durbin vehicle (albeit one designed to remake her image). Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Audience Member Interesting casting, solid performances that almost elevate the thin script. Departures for both Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly, I wish Durbin had gotten more roles like this (or at least had been cast in some of Kelly's later musicals). Has a sort of strange framing device, it kind of messes with the pacing. Christmas Holiday is also surprising in that it was directed by Herman Mankiewicz, known probably most famously as the writer of Citizen Kane. This appears to have been his one chance at directing. I doubt he would have ever had the level of success as his brother, but it would have been interesting to see what he could have come up with in the future as a writer/director. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/16/23 Full Review Audience Member I was intrigued to see Gene Kelly play against type in this interesting if predictable noir. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/05/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Christmas Holiday

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