The Holly and the Ivy (1952) brings together a
stellar cast in the simplest of settings: a country church parsonage, but
against the backdrop of a family reunion made anxious by unresolved
issues. It is Christmas, when the ethereal
joyous aspects of the holiday fight all-too-human depression, where a need to
mend ties is hampered by resentment of those ties. The movie is a British production in a
decidedly good old English story, but the theme and the feelings are universal
to any culture.
The British seem to have mastered Christmas, giving us many
of our customs, our carols, and inasmuch as Dickens has provided our most
treasured allegorical Christmas theme of modern redemption in the form of A
Christmas Carol. The Holly and
the Ivy also gives us redemption, in a much softer manner: Ebeneezer Scrooge
had a restless night with three ghosts to take him backward and forward decades
in time to learn his lesson, but while it takes the Greogry family roughly the
same overnight Christmas Eve hours to ride a storm and emerge the better for it
on Christmas Day, their challenges are easier to overcome, with a little
understanding.
One of the criticisms of the movie seems to be that it does
not deal in depth with the characters’ problems and motivations. That’s usually a fair complaint, but in this
movie, I think the brief sketch we are given is enough. Certainly, animosity between family members
is not always due to complex reasons or ferocious events; quite often it stems
from ordinary misunderstanding and miscommunication. We are not mind readers, and that is
sometimes our biggest hurdle in human relationships. We rarely forgive each other for it.
Sir Ralph Richardson plays a clergyman running a rural church
in the county of Norfolk, the part of England bordering the North Sea known as
East Anglia. He was originally from
Ireland, but settled into his assignment in this parish as a young man. The parsonage may be a simple home, but the
church is described as a venerable edifice from the 14th century. We don’t see much of the church, just a few
Currier and Ives-type shots of a snowy village church that belong on a
Christmas card—a comforting and inspiring illusion.
Sir Ralph is elderly, a bit of an absent-minded professor,
with a cheerful nature and a kind heart, but may overpower his family with his
chatty enthusiasm that won’t let them get a word in edgewise and that serves as
a barrier to them ever piercing his optimistic armor with their nagging
problems.
He is a widower, having lost his wife earlier in the year. One criticism I would make is that we don’t
know enough about her and her influence on her family and their sense of loss
and grief, but the kids’ issue is really Pop.
Every Christmas, he extends invitations to his sister, his wife’s sister
and brother, and to his three grown children to gather at the parsonage for
Christmas Eve. The movie opens with the
ebullient carol, “The Holly and the Ivy,” and the family receiving their
invitations and deciding whether or not to come—all but Celia Johnson, who
plays his eldest child, who still lives at home and runs the household for her
father. We’ll come back to her.
The first invitation comes to his sister-in-law played by
Margaret Halston, herself a childless widow who lives in a residential hotel. She hopefully collects her mail at the front
desk and happily sees the envelope from her brother-in-law, anticipating it to
be the annual invitation to spend Christmas with his family. The desk clerk asks if she’ll be remaining in
the hotel for Christmas, as they have some refreshments planned to cheer up those
with nowhere to go. When Miss Halston
opens her invitation and reads it, she triumphantly responds, “No, I shall not
be here for Christmas.” Her eyes shine
with anticipation and relief that is touching and sad.
Like Sir Ralph, she is also elderly, playing a kind aunt,
appearing at first to be somewhat dotty, but through her fey appearance, we come
to see she is wise, intuitive, and with a generous heart.
The other aunt, Sir Ralph’s Irish sister who has not lost
her Dublin accent, is played by Maureen Delany.
She is a spinster, renting a room that is far simpler than Miss Halston’s
lodgings, denoting her reduced circumstances.
She is blunt, occasionally rude, and quite funny. She delivers frankness with a deadpan
expression, and if her standards are rarely met to her satisfaction, we may
realize that that is not really her greatest disappointment; she rather enjoys
human failings after a fashion. However,
she does carry a regret that has hampered her happiness and even brought about
her reduced financial circumstances: she,
like Celia Johnson, remained at home to care for her elderly parents and lost
the chance to have a life of her own by putting them first. She and Aunt Margaret Halston have become friends
through these annual Christmas visits, and Miss Halston even gives up her first
class train carriage to sit with Miss Delany in third class so they can catch
up.
Hugh Williams plays an uncle reading his invitation in a pub
with friends around discussing his Christmas plans. He is one character I would like to know more
about, as there is some great depth of understanding about him. He is godfather to the younger daughter,
played by Margaret Leighton, whom we only hear discussed but do not see until
the movie is halfway through. He makes
special effort to contact his niece, Miss Leighton, to get her to go to the family
gathering, but we are told she is very busy with her career as a fashion
journalist. There is more to his concern
for her, but we shall see that soon.
There is something poignant in him, this dapper career army
officer with the trim mustache, when his mates remark that it must be boring to
visit a country parson for Christmas, but Mr. Williams confides that he once
wanted to be a clergyman. When he was a
young man, his father offered him two choices: go into the army or to the
church. When Williams replied he wanted
to become a clergyman, his father laughed at him, “and I found myself at
Sandhurst.” Sandhurst, of course, is the
British military academy.
Fathers have a lot to answer for in this movie, as one way
or another, they are the deciders of their children’s futures.
The last member of the family is currently in the British
army, too, but he is a lowly enlisted man fulfilling his couple of years of “national
service.” He is Sir Ralph’s son, played
by Denholm Elliot, and he also has a choice waiting for him when his service is
completed. His father is saving his
meager clergyman’s salary to send his son to Cambridge University, but Mr.
Elliot, a roguish, boyish scamp, wants nothing to do with higher education when
he gets out of the army. He doesn’t seem
to know how to tell his father. There
are many strong and wistful characters in the movie, but Elliot just seems
weak, and maybe that happens when so many about one are strong.
Now we come to Celia Johnson, busily decorating (with holly
branches) and cooking and preparing for the family Christmas. We might expect
her to be a sentimental homebody, but there is a hard edge to her that suggests
something more under the surface. Though
she dotes on her father and briskly handles the hostess duties for this family
holiday, she seems to steel herself with a resolute sense of duty, rather than enjoying her position in the family.
She has a problem. Unknown
to her family, she has a fiancé, played by John Gregson. He is an engineer, and has a job lined up in
South America for the next five years and wants to take her with him. They are not children; they are in their
thirties, their lives been on hold for many years due to her late mother’s
illness, passing, and her father’s needing her.
She turns him down, but Mr. Gregson continues to implore her to
reconsider. He thinks her younger sister
should take a turn at looking after the old man. Naturally, no one considers the son to be an
appropriate caregiver; he has an education, a career, and one day, a family of
his own to pursue, as is the prerogative of male children.
“I don’t know what I’d do without her,” her father exclaims
more than once, meaning it to be a compliment, but we flinch, as she does,
because it is a burden.
The guests arrive, and the uncle, Hugh Williams, explains Margaret
Leighton’s absence with the excuse that she has the flu. That is a lie, and he will feel foolish when
she finally arrives by herself.
She is a sophisticated Londoner now, a professional. Her father admires her success and takes an
interest in her work, fusses over her when she comes home, but she is distant
with everybody except Uncle Hugh, with whom she appears to have a comfortable
relationship. He knows her secret, but
protects her privacy.
Aunt Maureen Delany, with her caustic Irish manner of being
funny without realizing it, scoffs at Celia Johnson’s sacrificing her future
to care for her father, reminding her that she did the same and regrets
it. “There I was stuck looking after me
mother until I’m 45 and my figure gone.”
Celia Johnson, considering the holly branch in her hand,
notes it has a bitter smell when broken, as in the song, “bitter as any gall.”
The aunts feel the father should retire, move to smaller
digs that would enable him to care for himself, thereby sparing Ceilia any
further responsibility for him, but Sir Ralph, who does not know about his
daughter’s fiancé or his son’s wish to not go to university, has no intention
of retiring. He feels vital and vibrant
still, despite always needing someone to hand him his galoshes. Yet, he also has regrets about his work.
He knows that during his Christmas sermon, one of thousands
he has written in his lifetime, his congregation would rather be home, “basting
the Christmas goose.”
Meanwhile in the kitchen, the sisters have a showdown while
washing dishes. Celia comes out with her
problem and asks her sister to stay and look after Pop, but Miss Leighton
refuses.
Celia observes, “You’ve grown hard.”
Margaret replies, “Life does change people.”
Celia notices that her sister is not happy, and finally
gets her secret from her. Miss Leighton
had an American lover during the war, and he was killed. She was pregnant. The mores of the day made coming home to her
parents with this problem difficult for her, but worse, she felt, since her
father was a minister.
Her child was born, and she kept him and raised him with the
help of a friend in the city. She named
her baby boy Simon, and apparently enjoyed motherhood even as she kept the
secret from her family. Simon died six
months earlier, just before her mother, of meningitis.
Coping with this heartache meant drinking, and Uncle Hugh
kept both secrets from the clan, letting Margaret lean on him when she
chose.
Celia Johnson is
surprised and moved, and understands the awkwardness of telling their father. Margaret remarks offhandedly, “He thinks of
me as someone I no longer am.”
Christmas and its preparations are painful for her, and yet
something has brought her home. Perhaps
it is no longer needing to hide Simon.
As cranky as Aunt Maureen Delany is, she’s the one to answer
the door to carolers and drops coins in their box.
As the older relatives settle for a quiet Christmas Eve
night around the fire and each other’s company, Margaret Leighton and brother
Denholm Elliot head out for the movies, which dour Aunt Maureen thinks is
scandalous, and even Sir Ralph sheds some of his affability by remarking with
disgust that the cinema has more influence in the lives of people than the
church does.
Later on, son and daughter both return drunk. They have not gone to the cinema. Margaret Leighton passes out on the floor,
and Denholm Elliot has found the courage from the bottle to shout at his father
and accuse him of being someone who cannot be told the truth.
The tense, dramatic scene melts into the next morning,
Christmas Day, with the bachelor uncle quietly coming down the stairs with a
few wrapped presents to place under the scraggly tabletop tree. There’s something quite poignant about that,
but we never get more info on the uncle.
Miss Leighton plans to leave this morning, not able to endure anymore
Christmas with her family, and he will drive her to the train station.
Denholm Elliot, no worse for wear for a night drinking, and
not even particularly shamefaced about it, offers a begrudging apology to his
father, and there is a nicely framed scene of their difficult discussion
through the branches of the tree, with the Christmas tree between them. Sir Ralph demands to know why he cannot be
told the truth, and the son finally explains that because he is a clergyman,
his children cannot come to him with their problems. He tells Sir Ralph about Margaret’s issues
and that Celia wants to get married and go to South America.
He's crushed and feels like a failure as a father, just as
he has often felt ineffectual as a minister.
“I’ve been of no use to you.”
But despite what his children believe is his innocence due
to a religious life, their father manfully tackles this problem and their image
of him head-on. In another nicely framed
scene, he sits on the stairs with his daughter Margaret and confronts her, and expresses
heartfelt sympathy and understanding for all she has experienced. He takes charge and provides the guidance she
needs and proves, as he states, “Do you think that because I’m a parson I know
nothing about life?”
He knows more than they do, and in his empathy, shows far
more sophistication than his children.
As a clergyman, moreover, he is distressed that their impression of him
means he has been distorting and misrepresenting religion. He warns her not to turn her back on
life.
Margaret Leighton, suddenly as if a great weight is lifted
on her shoulders, decides to stay, not only for the rest of the Christmas
family holiday, but to remain with her father (one suspects he needs no one but
she needs him), so that Celia Johnson can marry her beau and take off for
South America.
The son seems to have no great resolution for his
complaints, but perhaps they were petty after all and he just needs a little
more growing up to do. Quite possibly
his bellowing sergeant may knock the self-pity out of him, if not his
mischieviousness.
The end credits roll as they head off next door to church to
watch the old man do his thing. One
senses it is without a sense of obligation this time, but rather a sense of pride that
they gather in the back pew for a little Christmas magic.
Next week, Christmas Day, we’ll have a look at some Hollywood
stars’ voicing 1960s and 1970s television Christmas cartoons.
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GIFTS FOR THE CLASSIC FILM FAN!!!!!!!
Christmas in Classic Films provides a roster of old movies with scenes to conjure Christmas of days gone by. Makes a nice gift, if you know an old movie buff, or if you just like to give presents to yourself.
The paperback is available at Amazon, but also here at Barnes & Noble.
The hardcover, so far, is available only at Amazon.
Here are a few other classic movie books I've written for your gift-giving pleasure:
Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. - for sale in paperback and hardcover at Amazon,
And in paperback and hardcover here at Ingram,
And in paperback and hardcover here at Barnes & Noble.
And in paperback here at Walmart.
Hollywood Fights Fascism - here in paperback at Amazon.
Movies in Our Time - here in paperback at Amazon.
And all of these books are available as well at my page on Bookshop.org, which helps support independent bookstores.
