Christmas Holiday (1944)

Directed by Robert Siodmak. Starring Deanna Durbin, Gene Kelly, Richard Whorf, Gale Sondergaard, Dean Harens, Gladys George, David Bruce.

Good-looking but middling crime story set on Christmas Eve (told largely through flashbacks) of a woman (Durbin) married to a charmer (Kelly) who winds up being a mentally-disturbed murderer. She tells her story to a G.I. (Harens) while her hubby is in jail, but in the movies, jails are always waiting to be broken out of. In one of his rare non-singing/dancing roles during the first couple decades of his career, Gene Kelly is too light and jaunty for his pathological character; Durbin is also best known for her musical films (and as a nightclub singer, she gets to warble a couple of tunes), but she’s better served than her co-star, tacklling a sad-eyed victim with that fasshionable Hollywood style of luminous heartache. Woody Bredell’s morose camera shots and lighting set the scene of turmoil well. Herman Mankiewicz scripted from a W. Somerset Maugham plot, with the action moved from the UK to the States.

57/100