Holiday (1938)

Despite some nice Cary Grant and Katryn Hepburn acrobatics this is not a screwball comedy and it's much closer in tone to the mature, sophisticated comedy of The Philadelphia Story.

Jonathan "Johnny" Case (Cary Grant), an orphan who has worked since he was ten, has planned to 'drop out' (this is before the popular term was coined so instead, he calls it 'a holiday') as soon as he hits a big business score which will allow him to retire so that he can reflect on life and whether it's worth spending the rest of it accruing more wealth than he cannot possibly enjoy.

On his first break ever he meets, falls in love and immediately sets out to marry Julia Seton (Doris Nolan,) a young lady whose own family wealth comes as a late surprise to him.

Her father Edward Seton (Henry Kolker), after being initially distrusting, is impressed by his business acumen if not by his family background, social position or wealth; accepts him and welcomes him into the family as long as he is willing to subject to his authority.

Of course, by doing that would mean Case would have to change his life plans.

On the other hand, Case finds some accomplices in Linda (Katharine Hepburn) the black sheep sister, and Ned Jr. (Lew Ayres) the alcoholic brother who, despite remaining in the fold, are both quite open about their displeasure.

If I were more cynical than I am I would call this a sort of prequel to You Can't Take It with You, with Case as the younger version of the patriarchal Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore,) a man who 'dropped out' long ago and has already established his own crazy, 'utopian' commune, except that I am not, and I can't.

While superficially the films have the same anti-materialistic attitude, Grandpa Vanderhof would seem an exaggerated parody of Case (though seemingly intended earnestly), and his philosophy is repellent to me because of its hypocrisy; the closest Holiday gets to this 'rejection' of material goods is the line about loving Johnny even if he was a peanut vendor, except that in You Can't Take It with You the line would not be uttered in the same manner, it being approached already from the other end of time.

The patriarch in Holiday represents the practical wealthy American reality: The man who after inheriting his riches, carefully controls them in order to transmit them to the next generation but only to the carefully selected or deserving few, (the black sheep sister is at one point kicked out of the family, except this event is already forgotten by the next scene... Why?) suspicious of any strangers whose intentions might merely be to get their grubby mitts on his wealth.

Johnny Case instead represents to me the hard-working, self-made man: An American ideal; but because Case wants time to reflect on his place in the politico-economic system, he actually gets called un-American.

In real life we have often seen the former claim to be the latter: Rich heirs publicly belittling or denying their inheritance, and instead claiming to be self-made men ("...with only the five million dollars I got from Daddy, I made myself the man I am today..."); and the wealthy attempting to pass themselves as members of the working class.

Most of this is simply politically motivated, but it just goes to show how strongly embedded the Myth is in the minds of the American public.

Some have claimed there are no politics involved in Capra's film, (I take exception to that: Grandpa in the play has a lot of speeches and goes on and on about his anti-government beliefs and about living outside of society's norms,) but where Capra uses a satirical sledgehammer, the work here (based on a 1928 play by Philip Barry) is no less political, but also much more subtle.

This was not a crowd pleaser, especially when released at the time of the Great Depression.

The film seems to start on Christmas Day and ends a bit just after New Year's Day.

It somewhat qualifies as a holiday movie, but the dates are mostly incidental: A bit of something is made of Christmas mass and a bit more is made of a New Year's Eve party, but there is no reason why it could not have been set at some other time of the year.

Also with Edward Everett Horton, Jean Dixon, Binnie Barnes and Henry Daniell.