Last Holiday

Alec Guinness - George Bird
Beatrice Campbell - Sheila Rockingham
Kay Walsh - Mrs. Poole
Grégoire Aslan - Gambini
Jean Colin - Daisy Clarence
Muriel George - Lady Oswington
Brian Worth - Derek Rockingham
Esma Cannon - Miss Fox
Bernard Lee - Inspector Wilton
Sid James - Joe Clarence

J.B. Priestley was a prolific novelist (26 solo novels), dramatist (nearly 50 stage plays), essayist and much else but his contribution to the cinema was intermittent. True, a number of his plays and novels have been adapted for the screen, with no more than middling success, except in one case. This is The Old Dark House (US,1932), an adaptation of the novel Benighted, directed by the British-born expatriate James Whale and now lauded by critics to the extent that it has become a cult classic. Otherwise, there are two versions of Priestley’s most popular novel, The Good Companions (GB,1932 and 1957), the former being generally regarded as superior to the latter, which perhaps inadvisably updates and broadens the original rather cosy story of a travelling concert party attempting to make waves in the late 1920's. The film version of Priestley's finest play An Inspector Calls (GB,1954) is a reasonably good treatment, which benefits from a typically charismatic performance by Alastair Sim, but Ealing Studios adaptation of his wartime play They Came to a City (GB,1943) was something of a critical and box-office disaster. It does, however, have the interesting feature of the author himself making rather more than a brief appearance and is significant in foreshadowing (and implicitly advocating) the Welfare State ethos of post-war Britain.

Priestley made a few contributions to other British features as the author, or co-author, of the story or screenplay (e.g. Sing As We Go (GB,1934), a vehicle for Gracie Fields, and The Foreman Went to France (GB,1941) but the only film which one might say received his undivided attention was Last Holiday (GB,1950). Directed by Henry Cass for A.B.P.C./Watergate (Priestley's own joint production company), it stars the inimitable Alec Guinness as George Bird, a very ordinary young man with few friends (and no wife) who is told that he only has one month to live. He decides to spend his savings on a holiday at a fashionable seaside hotel (location scenes were shot in Torquay). He finds relationships difficult at first but takes time to help people in trouble. Then, to his (ironic) surprise, he is offered interesting jobs and when the hotel staff go on strike leads the other guests in organising themselves, which brings everyone out of their shells. He also finds a touch of romance. His new life takes another intriguing twist when he accidentally finds out that he may not, in fact, be dying after all. He leaves the hotel and later checks with his doctor, who confirms the good news. But returning to the hotel in his car he swerves to avoid an accident, there is a crash and he is killed.

The supporting cast is a large and quite interesting one. The female lead is taken by Kay Walsh (as Mrs Poole), who two years previously had been Nancy to Guinness's Fagin in David Lean's Oliver Twist, and ten years on from Last Holiday played opposite him again in Ronald Neame's Tunes of Glory. Also on hand are such familiar and reliable names as Bernard Lee before his 'M' days, Sidney James before his 'Carry On' days, Wilfrid Hyde White, Helen Cherry, Gregoire Aslan, Moultrie Kelsall and Ernest Thesiger.

In his book Particular Pleasures, Priestley wryly observes that Last Holiday is 'a film that (has) various depths of irony that London critics seemed to miss as they shrugged it away', adding that 'it was more successful on the Continent and in New York and Hollywood'. But Priestley's excellent screenplay, Guinness's typically accomplished performance (one which has a graceful fluency) and the film's many incidental, if quiet, pleasures have resulted in its acquiring, over the years, a number of admiring critical judgements. That high priestess of film criticism Pauline Kael has been positively lavish in her praise: 'a lovely ironic comedy', 'an almost perfect little picture', 'the dexterity - the impeccable rightness - of the screenplay', 'the film is rounded and complete'. Leslie Halliwell calls it a 'slight, amusing and moving comedy drama'; which, however, he feels is 'spoiled by an unnecessary double twist'; (a criticism which is certainly worth arguing about). Tom Charity in the Time Out Film Guide is also troubled by the final twist but pronounces the film as (otherwise) 'surprisingly moving, delicately handled and full of lovely vignettes'. David Quinlan, in British Sound Films The Studio Years 1928-1959, calls it 'a sympathetically characterised, well-written film', while Leonard Maltin summaries it as (having) 'a droll, biting script with sterling performances by all'.

It would, perhaps, be going too far to call Last Holiday even a minor classic but this is a film which makes one deeply regret that a writer of Priestley's very considerable accomplishments did not make a stronger commitment to the British cinema when it needed all the good writers it could get.

Review© Michael Nelson.