Rent The Holly and the Ivy (1954)

Tidings of Comfort and Guilt - The Holly and the Ivy review by griggs

The Holly and the Ivy looks, at first glance, like a cosy Christmas card from 1950s Britain: snow on the ground, carols on the soundtrack, a vicar in the house. Don’t be fooled. This is a quietly sharp little drama about how families use religion, duty, and good manners to avoid saying what’s actually wrong.

Ralph Richardson plays the vicar, kind but wilfully oblivious, presiding over adult children damaged by his saintly neglect. Celia Johnson and Margaret Leighton are superb as daughters who’ve twisted themselves into shapes to keep the peace, and now find the cracks showing over the turkey.

Yes, it’s stagey, talky, and very much of its time. But if you stick with it, there’s a surprising amount of bite under the tinsel – a reminder that for many people, Christmas is less about joy to the world and more about surviving the relatives.

“You can’t be told the truth!” - The Holly and the Ivy review by LJ

This is a short drama in which the central issue is solved with no issue at all, so who knows why this family waited so long. Some of the cast are distractingly the wrong age for their roles. Ralph Richardson, at only 50 years old, plays an aging vicar while Celia Johnson, in her mid-forties, plays his daughter who is supposed to be fifteen years younger than she actually is. It's so noticeable that these actors are unconvincingly playing older and younger than they really are because their ages are important to the story. Who casts a father and daughter with only five or six years between the actors?