Christmas Holiday - 1944 - 6/10
One of the most misleading Christmas titles ever.
After young lieutenant receives his commission, he shows comrades an engagement ring, then receives the Dear John telegram.
He opts to fly to San Francisco, nonetheless, have it out with the woman who dumped him and married another.
Narrative shifts almost immediately as his passenger plane is forced down by bad weather to New Orleans.
A newsman tags the lieutenant as a lost soul and takes him to a “sporting house” where he meets one of the girls, Deanna Durbin.
They go to Christmas Eve Midnight Mass, then to an all night coffee shop, where she starts to tell how a nice girl from Vermont wound up in a Louisiana brothel.
Look for Gene Kelly in genuinely offbeat casting.
Depressing Christmas Noir, with almost every single character miserable, doomed, unhappy.
Durbin regarded this as her best film.