Christmas in the Movies: 30 Classics to Celebrate the Season by Jeremy Arnold

Author:Jeremy Arnold [ARNOLD, JEREMY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: 0762492481
Publisher: Running Press
Published: 2018-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

The Holly and the Ivy is a modest British drama that builds to a gripping conclusion. That the conclusion consists merely of two people having a frank talk in a room is actually a point in the film’s favor—a tribute to excellent acting, intelligent writing, and direction that gives this stage adaptation the needed energy of a movie. The “frank” talk is key, for this is the story of a family whose dysfunction stems from unexpressed feelings and the difficulties in understanding each other’s points of view. The Christmas holiday brings them together—first by placing them under the same roof, but ultimately by enabling them to be a family again.

Set almost entirely on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the story plays out in the house of a parson, Martin Gregory, in a small English town in 1948. Since his wife died earlier in the year, his grown daughter Jenny has been living at home. Martin is a good-hearted man yet so wrapped up in preparing his sermons and tending to his parishioners that he has no idea Jenny feels trapped; she wants to marry and move away but believes someone must be there to look after her father. Her brother, Michael, arrives on military leave and her sister, Margaret, arrives from London, but both also have trouble confiding in their father. All three are sure he is too conservatively religious to understand their lives and will only judge them. As Jenny says, “People just don’t feel free to behave naturally when he’s there.” This is news to Martin, who starts to figure out what is going on and is challenged to rethink his set ways—and even his value as a parson.

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