The Holly and the Ivy DVD | Classic Movies

Star Review

Patrick Peters rediscovers a heart-warming piece of vintage British filmmaking that's a welcome addition to the available selection of great films about Christmas.

With sister Margaret Leighton writing for a London fashion magazine and brother Denholm Elliott doing National Service, Celia Johnson feels obliged to reject John Gregson’s proposal to accompany him to South America as someone has to care for her widowed father, Ralph Richardson’s Reverend Gregory. However, as the ancient aunts (wonderfully amusing caricatures of the holly – prickly and the ivy – loving and clinging) settle in for the festivities with soldier nephew Hugh Williams, the younger generation’s guilty secrets begin to emerge and Richardson is forced to realise that the vocation he embraced in order to help his fellow man has rendered him a pious tyrant to his children.

Russian screen writer Anatole de Grunwold imbues this poignant adaptation of Wynyard Browne’s West End stage hit with Checkov’s spirit and relocates the Russian’s genius for deftly drawn characters to a rambling Norfolk parsonage on Christmas Eve.

Apart from a few introductory scenes in the capital, director George More O’Ferrall does little to hide the story’s stage origins. But the family’s confinement in a remote, snowy village reinforces the sense of detachment that Richardson’s offspring have mistakenly imposed upon him and allows the screenplay to focus on such Chekhovian themes as the vagaries of emotion, the agony of disillusion, the breakdown of communication and the desecration of authority.

The performances and clipped enunciation may seem antiquated to those reared on the kitchen sink realism that was about to transform British filmmaking. But to austerity audiences, a clergyman accepting his daughter drowning her sorrows after personal tragedy would have seemed daring in both its honesty and its humanism. So while The Holly and the Ivy now radiates a nostalgic glow, it is actually a revealing record of a country on the cusp of the dramatic social, economic and cultural change that has, sadly, made faith, fidelity and family feel like relics of a distant past.

Altogether, this is a very British, feelgood film, complete with laughter and tears, that provides a welcome addition to the usual Christmas line-up of favourites.

Patrick Peters on 30th September 2009

Film Description

A family re-unite to celebrate Christmas in this heart-warming piece of vintage British filmmaking.

Ralph Richardson plays Reverend Martin Gregory, a recently widowed minister who is reunited with his family one Christmas. He is torn between his roles of Clergyman and father, and the zeal he shows in attending to his parishioners leads him to neglect the needs of his own family, until emotions boil over one Christmas.

Adapted from the stage by director George More O'Ferrall, this is a charming and moving seasonal favourite, peaking with the family's poignant reconciliation as they re-discover the true spirit of Christmas.