Holiday for Sinners

But I think that Keenan Wynn is the main thing to remember from this movie, the most interesting. For the rest, the characters study is not always exciting, just a common drama which has many difficulties to find its marks. Not bad, but not more. Gerald Mayer is a director whose films have never excited me that much, mostly dramas such as this one. I suppose he wished to be too much intellectual, and his movies were not distributed, released in France; so no one knows his filmography from this side of the Atlantic, except maybe DIAL 1119. The most worth from him. That's my opinion. This one is not a junk, just a common drama.

"Holiday for Sinners" is a film that lost money when it was released. After watching it, I can certainly understand why. Now it's NOT because it's a bad movie...but it's incredibly grim and unpleasant.

The story is set in New Orleans and it's about three different people reaching important crossroads in their lives. Dr. Kent (Gig Young) is a burnt out doctor who is sick of working with the down and out masses and longs to leave to do research. He's somehow friends with Joe (Keenan Wynn), a down and out boxer who is bling, an alcoholic and punch drunk. And, Father Carducci (Richard Anderson) is suffering from a crisis of faith and it considering leaving the church. How do their stories all intersect, see the film...or don't.

The biggest plus about the movie is that it is actually filmed in New Orleans. Other than that and some decent acting, there isn't a lot to love about this one, as I said it's quite grim. There's even a scene with two bodies lying in the street. They've been shot and it's actually amazingly vivid and depressing. And, by the time the final credits roll, you really feel like drowning yourself in your tub! Inexplicably depressing and seemingly pointless.

From a naturalistic Hamilton Basso novel, Days Before Lent, this is an adult melodrama about three childhood friends, a doctor, a priest, and a boxer,who develop in very different directions, but all leading to a dead end. The priest (Richard Anderson) wants to create a clinic for the poor but is frustrated by the church hierarchy, the doctor (Gig Young) wants to leave his hardscrabble practice and join a research team in India but discovers that he would have to leave his aristocratic fiancée (Janice Rule) back in New Orleans, and the battered boxer, a has-been who is going blind (Keenan Wynn), is merely trying to survive from drink to drink. The performances are more than merely competent, Keenan Wynn's in particular, but the delight is in the urbane and intelligent dialogue by Albert Bezzerides. The melodrama unfolds against Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but very little of what happens is peculiar to that unique city (even the breakfast pastries are called doughnuts rather than beignets).

In brief, the screenplay is a mess, lacking in both direction and point. It looks like it's supposed to follow three story threads, namely, three childhood friends still living in a seedy part of New Orleans. However, one thread, the priest, pretty much evaporates, while the other two, the ex-fighter and the doctor, simply flounder from one scene to the next, reaching a climax so abruptly awkward, they may have run out of film. If there's a governing concept to the pottage, I can't find it

Too bad, because there's a lot of talent involved. Campbell and Rule especially shine in supporting parts, even though Wynn spreads on the punch-drunk fighter pretty thick. What really puzzles me, however, is the talent behind the scenes. Writer Bezzerides is responsible for some of the best noirs of the time, e.g. On Dangerous Ground (1952), Thieves' Highway (1949); at the same time, producer John Houseman was a long-time prestige producer and collaborator with Orson Welles. Given these proved track records, what's on screen here stacks up as a genuine puzzlement. There must be an inside story and I suspect it has something to do with the studio, MGM, which was a late comer to B-movie b&w and not much good at it, anyway. Whatever the reason, at least this odd misfire plays off the colorful background of New Orleans Mardi Gras, which is about the only reason to watch.

Played against the festivities surrounding Mardi Gras, this drama highlights the frustrations of a doctor and priest respectively: the former because his dedicated work cannot relieve the pain and suffering that fill the world he knows; the latter because his idealistic intentions are victimized by the church's bureaucracy. Most notable in this film is an outstanding performance by Keenan Wynn as a punchdrunk former fighter, a childhood pal of the doctor and priest. Surely his finest performance, in a role that challenges him as no other had done, Wynn is heart-rending in developing a character who is trying, without success, to retain a last shred of dignity and sense of self-worth. What could easily have been over-played is handled with sensitivity and restraint. Keenan Wynn.....of all people!