The Holly and the Ivy - 1952

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 14^th 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.

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