Christmas Holiday

Christmas Holiday. Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly star in this 1944 film noir set in New Orleans during the Holiday season. Durbin’s personality and singing voice made her a box office sensation but here she appears in a serious role as a night club singer with a dark history who meets a stranded soldier, played by Dean Harens, on Christmas Eve. Directed by film noir master Robert Siodmak, the film is based on a Somerset Maugham novel. 93 minutes. 

The film makes many changes to Maugham's novel. The setting is not a Paris bordello but a thinly disguised one in New Orleans where Durbin works as a singer but is obviously one of the girls. Here is a link to her singing "Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year," while the club's business goes on in the back ground. 

Still, the film is remarkably true to the novel's core with its emphasis on tragic love, sin, suffering, and  redemption. Christmas Holiday is a dark film superbly directed by Siodmak, one of the great masters of what would later become known as film noir. The writer, Herman Mankiewicz of Citizen Kane fame, produced a brilliant script full of rare depth and meaning. The screen play is supported by a musical score created by Austrian Hans Salter that ranged from Durbin’s rendition of Irving Berlin’s ballad, Always, to a magnificent orchestral version of Wagner’s Liebestod performed in a packed concert hall, and again at the film’s finale. 

Speaking of the finale, the film’s creators dramatically changed what I consider to be Maugham’s very weak and ambiguous ending. The ending is still somewhat ambiguous but like the rest of the film, the direction, the acting, the writing, and the musical score transcend the novel on which it is based.

Deanna Durbin regarded Christmas Holiday as her best performance. She certainly demonstrated that the child singer had become a fine mature actress. Five years later she would leave Hollywood for good, and retire to a farm in France with her French husband. I don't think Gene Kelly ever played another dark role like this one. His great career as a dancer was still in the future. 

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Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly