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Holiday



Two years before stars Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant and director George Cukor would collaborate on The Philadelphia Story, they brought their timeless talents to this delectable slice of 1930s romantic-comedy perfection, the second film adaptation of a hit 1928 play by Philip Barry. Grant is at his charismatic best as the acrobatically inclined free spirit who, following a whirlwind engagement, literally tumbles into the lives of his fiancée's aristocratic family—setting up a clash of values with her staid father while firing the rebellious imagination of her brash, black-sheep sister (Hepburn). With a sparkling surface and an undercurrent of melancholy, Holiday is an enchanting ode to nonconformists and pie-in-the-sky dreamers everywhere, as well as a thoughtful reflection on what it truly means to live well.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Holiday (1930), a previous adaptation of Philip Barry's play, directed by Edward H. Griffith
• New conversation between filmmaker and distributor Michael Schlesinger and film critic Michael Sragow
• Audio excerpts from an American Film Institute oral history with director George Cukor, recorded in 1970 and '71
• Costume gallery
• PLUS: An essay by critic Dana Stevens

sherlockjr wrote: Wed Nov 30, 2005 2:46 pm Digitalbits is reporting that the Grant-Hepburn classic Holiday is being released in February as part of a set. Not sure if it is being released separately, but I would imagine so.

Thank goodness. I feel about this one the way Matt was anticipating Twentieth Century. Woo hoooo!

It appears it's a Cary Grant box set and Holiday will be the only as-yet unreleased title in it (so that disc had damn well better be available separately). The others in the box are Only Angels Have Wings, Talk of the Town, His Girl Friday, and The Awful Truth.

I've wanted Holiday on DVD for so long that I'll buy the box set if that's what it takes. For those unfamiliar, it's very much in the mold of Katharine Hepburn's 1930s films, except that instead of Hepburn's rebellious young woman from a wealthy family being in sharp conflict with a straight-laced Grant (as in her next film, Bringing Up Baby) they're both iconoclasts. I believe that, along with Bringing Up Baby and Stage Door, it's one of her most completely satisfying films.
Only Angels Have Wings is another one I love and find very moving. It's quintessential Hawks and anticipates many of the themes he would later develop, especially in To Have and Have Not.
The Awful Truth is one of my very favorite screwball comedies (again, up there with Bringing Up Baby) but I'm already over my praise quota so I'll say no more about it for now. What I'm wondering is, what are the chances this will be a remastered release of The Awful Truth? It will have been nearly three years since Columbia released its truly awful first DVD of the film. I'm not sure whether the film has been restored since then, but even if it hasn't it would be worthwhile for Columbia to try a new transfer.

Thanks, David, I'll keep that option in mind. I knew there was a European DVD of Holiday and I'd heard the transfer was poor, but I didn't know about the Australian release.

Holiday is one of my favorite movies and I could not be happier. I have been hopping all around the room and may even squeak a bit. I hope this is really true.

In an ideal world, the DVD would also include the 1930 version of Holiday, but I suspect that's unlikely to happen anytime soon.

I understand that Holiday is soon to be released as part of a Cary Grant boxset. However, I already have all the other films in the set and can't get very enthusiatic about purchasing it just to buy Holiday, even though this is a top-notch Grant favorite of mine.

Does anyone know whether this will, or will in the future, be released individually?

It's also available in a tolerable transfer from the UK. Contrasts are weak to the point of distraction.

DVD Beaver has their review of the boxed set up. Unfortunately, it appears that Sony have dumped all of the films into one ugly digipack.

Holiday will get the individual release everyone expected on December 5. Amusing that Sony have the balls to charge $24.95 MSRP for a title that you can buy in a box set with three other great films (and one merely good film) for just twice the price (MSRP).

Holiday finally receives its own DVD release separated from the lovely Cary Grant Box Set released earlier this year. Even though I already own the Grant set, I'm very excited about Holiday being released on its own in the DVDland.

Holiday is a holiday - the most wondrous film filled with pure feeling and magic. And quiet but tangible epiphanies.

Stephanie Zacharek expresses her love for Holiday so beautifully: http://www.salon.com/march97/zacharek97 ... SAL&DN=110

There's a scene in the woefully neglected Igby Goes Down where wealthy bipolar paterfamilioas Bill Pullman takes his kids to a screening of Holiday. It's his way of explaining to them who they are.

Every once in a while I get burned out on films and watching movies becomes something of a chore until I come across a movie that reminds me of how great films can be. Holiday rescued me in such a fashion today. Holy cat, what a fantastically paced and executed film this was! I wanted the whole movie to just stay with their club in the playroom and never end

I completely agree. I had the same feeling with "The Gay Divorcee" a few days ago. And if you couldn't get enough of "Holiday", you should have treated yourself with a double bill with "Philadelphia Story".

Nice that they’re throwing in the 1930 version too. Still, look at that release date: ONE week too late!

domino harvey wrote: Wed Oct 16, 2019 9:38 pm Nice that they’re throwing in the 1930 version too. Still, look at that release date: ONE week too late!

Last minute bump from the december schedule for sure.

I'm really curious about the 1930 version. Anyone have any thoughts? A quick search didn't turn any up in the 1930s thread(s), but it's a little hard what with the same name and decade.

In other news, Cukor's is one of the most unexpectedly delightful, purely joyous theatrical experiences I have ever had, and I absolutely cannot wait to own this.

I watched the 1930 version for the 30s list, but I don't think I ever got round to writing about it. It's very much a stagey early sound film, though the source is still plenty compelling. (And ironically it also has a few scenes outside the one location of the house, at a wedding rehearsal, unlike the 38 film.) Edward Everett Horton is the stand out, much more comfortable speaking on film than everyone else. He plays the same character in both adaptation, but his background is different. In 1930 he's some ne'er-do-well relative or friend of the rich family, not a professor friend of the male lead.

We should get this through Criterion UK too, right?

Watched this and All That Heaven Allows for the first time in close succession about twelve months ago, and found them quite complementary. Here's something I wrote on Facebook at the time about the two films:

I liked both of them (the Cukor film a little more), but was particularly struck by the interesting parallels between the two – both are stories about a love affair being policed and undermined by social pressure, both specifically feature a working-class romantic partner being rejected by a petty, image-obsessed social elite, and both function as scathing critiques of conformity. Love versus prejudice is an age-old topic, I guess, and might be seen as a bit of a cliché nowadays; yet I don’t believe that, on a societal level, we’ve quite learned to love without self-consciousness or fear of outside judgement yet, or to let go of mistrust for non-normative relationships. Until we do, I feel like the core arguments of these love-propaganda films will remain as radical as they are relevant.

I don't think it's a perfect film, by any means – it's a little didactic in its presentation of class snobbery, and Doris Nolan's character ends up not being presented particularly sympathetically. But one thing I liked about Holiday, apart from what I wrote above, is that I really wasn't sure where the narrative was heading until very late in the piece; there's such a persistently melancholy edge to the film that, unlike in many romantic comedies, a downbeat ending genuinely seems on the cards. I'm ashamed to admit how few Hollywood movies of this era I've seen, but I do find that there was a lot of very good, often very politically charged work being produced in this particular time period – the superb My Man Godfrey, made a couple of years earlier, is another that comes to mind.

It seems very weird to me that, aside from 20 minutes of audio excerpts from an interview with him on this one, neither of the Cukor films they've released (nor any other Cukor on BD, it seems, at a glance?) have any supplements about Cukor himself.

Does seem pretty funny. I have a very limited familiarity with Cukor, but just off the top of my head, they could have licensed a PBS documentary on the man himself from about a decade ago. (I only saw a third of it, so I can't vouch for the overall quality, but it had some great anecdotes.) Also quite a bit of writing was published to coincide with the Lincoln Center retrospective that was held six years ago.

Anyway, I've heard some people use the term "cream" when discussing vintage film grain, and films like these (basically studio films from the 1930's) bring that to mind. If you see them nowadays projected in pristine 35mm prints, the grain often times looks this thick.

According to Gary, the UK BD was released in 2010 and the US BD on 7 January 2019. How did we all miss that?

As much as I love the playroom scenes, no matter how many times I see this film, my favorite moment is when

Spoiler

Cary Grant enters the mansion and exclaims, “Judas!” and after the butler reacts with a confused “I beg your pardon?” Grant says, “Oh I just said ‘Judas’ but it didn’t mean anything.”

It’s such a sweet film, only screwball in that the two leads refuse to conform to society and cannot confine their own loud self-actualized personalities, but the characters are so honest and relatable that the film defies genre. This is the type of film that celebrates people for who they are, eccentricities and all, and validates all of us for our quirks and individualized values. In providing an offer of encouragement that we don’t need to compromise ourselves for anyone, the return is that embracing the self begets priceless freedom that opens doors to opportunities to seize life. If we look closely enough, we may all find our Hepburn or Grant, and the playroom is always there for us in some manifestation; it’s our choice if we allow it to collect cobwebs or not.

That was a wonderful, touching statement about Holiday...and life.

I thought Cukor's comments on the infamous 'box office poison' line were a particular highlight of the interview on this disc:

Gavin Lambert: It's so extraordinary to think she could have been 'box office poison'.

George Cukor: Well that 'box office poison' thing was, as I said... She'd done some pictures, and then they'd succeed--they hadn't succeeded, and a very smart-ass gentleman, who just made money off these people, who was an exhibitor, he made these pronouncements and of course he was proven over and over again to be an ass. It's as though he were a car dealer, or any sort of dealer or anything, and went around kicking his own product, you know, that he had not made, mind you! It's as if he were a car distributor and he went and dented all the fenders in the car... he had nothing to do with creating, and there was a certain hiatus in their.. I think if someone has a certain acting talent, and they're not crazy, and they're not self-destructive, have character, they will survive. They can survive and change and are different, a lot of the people he dismissed, he wanted to put on the ash heap, like I believe Joan Crawford who's had a long career since, Marlene, I would say that was libelous!