American Drama Christmas Holiday

Christmas Holiday is a 1944 American drama film directed by Robert Siodmak. The black-and-white film noir is loosely based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Producer Felix Jackson chose this project as a dramatic vehicle for Deanna Durbin. The screenplay was adapted by Herman J. Mankiewicz, who counted it among his 40s successes of which he was most proud. Gene Kelly and Deanna Durbin are cast against type in this sordid and dark film. Kelly, soon to become one of MGM's leading musical stars, plays a charming yet murderous cad, while Durbin, usually the girl next door in Universal musicals, plays a naif who falls for him and sticks with him even knowing he's a killer. Gale Sondergaard is wonderfully cast as Kelly's tyrannical mother. Music director Hans Salter earned an Academy Award nomination. Although the film was a box office success for Durbin, she was criticised for having tarnished her trademark persona playing a dance-hall "hostess". "Christmas Holiday" is considered one of the bleakest noirs of the 1940s, and one of Siodmak's most personally realized films.