Product: Holiday (1938)
Rating: 5.0
In the Shadow of "Occupy Wall Street"
One of life's great mysteries for me comes from forgetting why I put almost any film on my netflix queue - the queue is SO long that by the time the movie arrives I cannot recall how it got on the list months before! That was true of HOLIDAY - I have NO idea what led me to reserve it from netflix - but, be that as it may, having watched it, and having been thrilled by the experience, I just ordered my own copy from amazon.com.And I plan to show it to as many people who know nothing about it as I can. I live in Buffalo, where the mayor, yesterday, at 2 a.m., had the police evict the men and women sleeping in Niagara Square in support of "Occupy Buffalo" and arrest ten who did not want to leave. And everything connected to the occupation was removed - including the small library, to which I had donated several books, including one called "The Rise of Selfishness in America." (When Mayor Bloomberg cleared Zucotti Park, you may recall, FIVE THOUSAND books were thrown into a dumpster.) Ultimately - or so I believe - everything basic about the "Occupy" movement ties in with the theme of this extraordinary film - does one live in order to make as much money as possible, or does one live for some other reason? How UTTERLY unable the father and the abandoned sister are to understand why Johnny Case decides not to go ahead with the wedding. UTTERLY AND IN-THE-MARROW-BONE UNABLE! And how many members of the current "1%" are just like them?!?And I haven't even mentioned yet the fact that the cast of this 1938 version of Philip Barry's play is PERFECT - with no exceptions. Or that George Cukor made a mini-masterpiece here! The facial expressions of Edward Everett Horton are alone worth the price of admission - but when one considers all the many elements that make HOLIDAY so memorable, the fact is that the experience of watching THIS film in THESE times is PRICELESS. (If Mastercard has the copyright on that word nowadays, I apologize - and stand ready to pay a small fee for infringing it.)