The Holly and the Ivy

I hadn't intended to blog about a pair of Ralph Richardson movies in fairly close succession, but since The Holly and the Ivy is a Christmas movie I decided I should probably watch and blog about it at Christmastime rather than waiting until sometime in the new year. This even though I recently watched Home at Seven. I had actually planned to do it at the start of the Christmas season, but it had been sitting on my old DVR for a year after TCM premiered it last Christmas. The movie finally got a DVD release about a month ago, which was why I was finally set to watch it, but then the old DVR died. Thankfully, TCM ran it again this year, so here we are.

Ralph Richardson plays Rev. Martin Gregory, a vicar in a small town in Norfolk in December, 1948. We see the Christmas messages he's sending off, which happen to be to his relatives in various parts of England. First off are his two sisters-in-law, Lydia (Margaret Halstan), a widow who wasn't certain she was going to be invited to Christmas dinner this year because her sister, Martin's wife, had died; and bitter Bridget (Maureen Delaney), who is a spinster because she was the one who drew the short straw in life of having to take care of her mother at the end of life.

Indeed, Martin's got a daughter Jenny (Celia Johnson) who's drawn a similar short straw, having taken care of her recently deceased mother and now helping Dad run the vicarage. Her friend David (John Gregson) loves her and the feeling is mutual; in fact they'd be happy to get married although there's the problem of Jenny having to take care of Dad. In some ways that shouldn't be much of a problem, except that David has gotten an excellent job offer to take an engineering position -- in South America. If Jenny were to marry David and go with him, who would take care of Dad?

Well, Jenny has two siblings. Michael (Denholm Elliott) has been drafted into the Army, and is lucky to get leave to be coming home for Christmas. The expectation for him is to go on to university to study, but he believes he isn't cut out for it. Then there's sister Margaret (Margaret Leighton). She has a secret from the war that left her devastated, to which she took up drinking as a response, this even though she's a successful fashion reporter in London. In fact, her drinking prevents her from coming home at first, with cousin Richard (Hugh Williams) having to bring the bad news.

So, as you can see, everybody in the family but Dad has secrets, and nobody feels they can tell their father since they feel he's concerned more with his parishioners than them and because they're afraid of his opprobrium for their wayward actions. So when they get home for Christmas there's bound to be tension. Will anybody be able to reveal their secrets? Will Jenny be able to ask Margaret if she can take care of Dad? If so, would Margaret accept?

Things get more complicated when Margaret actually shows up; apparently she wasn't as sick as Richard suggested. She was of course just drunk. And she's going to get drunker when she and Michael go down to the pub after claiming they're going off to the cinema. Both of them get home drunk, and that's really the catalyst for the final showdown with Dad.

The Holly and the Ivy is a well-acted movie, showing an England that doesn't exist any longer, making it an excellent little time capsule. It's also for the most part not a neat little piece, which would be a plus. But then everything gets wrapped up suddenly in the last five minutes or so, much too quickly and neatly, which is to the film's great detriment, undoing a fair bit of what it had built up. One other flaw is that Johnson is really way too old for her role; she's 44 playing 31 (and looking it, sorry to say) and only six years younger than Richardson. But her acting is good enough to overlook it for the most part. I hadn't heard of either of the actresses playing the aunts, but they're quite good too.

Overall, The Holly and the Ivy is certainly worth watching, although with the Christmas season fast coming to an end you may not want to see it until next Christmas. Still, with it now on DVD it's certainly worth putting on your list to think about for next year.