Kodie Bird
True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.
Mehdi Hoffman
There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.
Cassandra
Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.
mark.waltz
Between Deanna Durbin, Gene Kelly and Gale Sondergaard, the realm of talent is incredibly high. What is missing is a sensible structure, a fully believable script and enough motivation to make thus work. There are confusing starts and finishes, flashbacks out of sequence, and a blaze way of presenting the facts and characters. It starts off with characters unrelated to the three leading characters flying into a storm for the titled Christmas holiday, and it is there where the title and its relevance ends. Spring may have been a little late that year, to paraphrase the Frank Loesser song that Durbin sings, but the script and its sensibility never seemed to arrive.The main plot involves Kelly meeting Durbin at a concert, their courtship and sudden marriage, and the twist that Kelly is a sociopathical killer. Sondergaard, as his loyal mother, initially praises Durbin for her seemingly indestructible strength (indicating that she knows that there's something horribly wrong with her son), but when Durbin disappoints her, only a slap across the face seems to be warranted. The scenes between Kelly and Sondergaard suggests a mother love that goes way beyond reality, while Kelly and Durbin totally lack any sort of heat to make their whirlwind romance believable.Perhaps better to be viewed as a character study than as a plot oriented film, this is a disappointing film noir directed by one of the best (Robert Siodmark). One flashback within a convoluted narrative is plenty, but this takes it way overboard. Gladys George and Richard Whorf try to fit in to the bookends of the main story but the results are unsatisfactory. Hearing Durbin sing the Irving Berlin classic, "Always", is a nice touch, but ultimately, this is a Christmas holiday that ain't so merry.
Rich Wright
FALSE CLAIMS ALERT!! This may have 'Christmas' in the title, and indeed set around the Yuletide period, but is in fact an attempt at a film noir. It mainly concentrates on a young army man (played by Gene Kelly) meeting a singer at a bar when his plane home is delayed. He then proceeds to hear her life story, which involves her sadistic husband being convicted of murder a few years ago. And Whatdoyouknow... Her partner escapes from the slammer THAT VERY SAME NIGHT... And guess who's first on his hit list...I don't know if they were familiar with the concept of 'filler' back then... But there's lots of it here. As well as Deanna Durbin's impromptu musical performances (She's a singer... REMEMBER?) We also have a five minute section devoted to a church service. Now, as nice as it is to see a film which celebrates the true meaning of the season, it slows the action down to a grinding halt.Also, they have a cheek referring to Durbin as a 'femme fatale' in the publicity text. She's completely subservient to her man, puts her life on hold while he's in solitary confinement and only begins to see him as the pig he truly is when he tries to MURDER her towards the conclusion. 'Battered Housewife' more like it. Still, that was the 40's, and we've made GREAT STRIDES SINCE. Now, it's men who say "Yes Dear" a lot and rush around on command. Oh, happy day.The whole unholy, tedious hullabaloo is resolved in one of those overblown melodramatic scenes that bad black and white films do so well. No-one in real life talks like that, and no-one ever will. And as our put-upon lass stares out of the window at the dawning of Christmas day, you think to yourself: this would be the perfect opportunity for a shot of Santa riding home in his sleigh, to make up for the distinctly unfestive 90 minutes that preceded it.But, nope... They even mess that one up. 4/10
GManfred
This is the story of a Christmas holiday, but it doesn't belong to either of the two principals, Gene Kelly and Deanna Durbin. It belongs to Dean Harens, who has just graduated from Officer school from what seems to be the Marine base at Quantico, Va. He is heading home for Christmas when his flight gets diverted to New Orleans. Waiting overnight in a hotel for the weather to clear, he meets Deanna. So far, so good.Here the story takes a strange turn. She tells him her story of courtship and marriage to Gene Kelly, who turns out to be 'disturbed' (the book may have divulged his problem, but we are left to guess - Gamblers Anonymous candidate? card-carrying Mamma's boy? flat out wacko?). In any case, he is sent to prison for murder, his Mama (Gale Sondergaard) blames Deanna, and she becomes a, um, 'hostess'.The story is engrossing and absorbing and keeps you guessing where it will go next (if, like myself, you didn't read the book), and it is interesting to watch the two stars play against type. Kelly was OK. but I thought Deanna was overmatched as a lonesome hooker, and looked more like a lost pudgy-faced teenager. Her best scene was the one everyone mentions, at Midnight Mass, but was not up to her climactic scene with Kelly, and it cried out for a better actress. Her oeuvre was her musicals, although she did better with "Lady On A Train", a murder mystery made the following year. The supporting cast of "Christmas Holiday" was so good it overshadowed the two stars.The picture is worth seeing for yourself, to judge the performance of its two stars and because of the peculiar nature of the plot. The story is a good one and could have been even better with a Warner Bros. treatment - the story was made to order for John Garfield.
ChorusGirl
OK first...how funny to read these reviewers feeling cheated and misled because the movie with "Christmas" in the title doesn't have santa and egg nog and snow and jingle bells and holiday cheer. Not enough that a pivotal scene occurs at midnight mass during the gloomy homefront years of WWII...no, it must have mistletoe & holly if the word "Christmas" is in the title. (I wonder if they got mad when DINNER AT EIGHT actually ended without showing the dinner party...?) Good grief, let me dislodge my rolled-back eyeballs and move on.For those with broader minds, this ultra-elusive little film noir is worth seeking out. There is something grave about seeing two sunny, legendary musical stars in such brooding circumstances, especially Deanna Durbin--world-weary and gorgeous as Jackie, who tells her sad tale (in two elaborate flashbacks) to a pilot on his holiday leave.Durbin's musicals are an acquired taste, but this dramatic turn requires no suspension of disbelief--she's entirely plausible as the luckless prostitute who must sing for her supper. Clearly, we are no longer in THREE SMART GIRLS territory. When she first enters the film to sing "Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year", she is both poignant and bored to death, a combo I tend to love in my leading ladies (Dietrich, anyone?).Kelly always seems self-conscious and over-rehearsed to me (this mommas-boy-psycho role might be a little out of his grasp), but OK, I'll buy his shift from smirking charmer to brooding villain, especially since he's terribly sexy when he emerges in the final reel with his 3-day beard.I wouldn't call Christmas HOLIDAY a raging success--so much needs to be squeezed into this running time to make the finale ring true, and yet it still feels rather sleepy (I have similar issues with Siodmak's PHANTOM LADY). But its always these oddball, subversive products of the studio system that are most fascinating, so it needs to be seen (it has never made it to video in the US). Fans of noir will appreciate the relentlessly grim atmosphere, even if it doesn't have a Christmas tree.
