Title: Death Takes a Holiday
Year: 1934
Director: Mitchell Leisen
Country: US
Language: English
I have been a subscriber to the Criterion Channel since it began (infact I paid before it began) & have found myself pleasantly delighted when I find out about a film I would not have heard of otherwise. I found out about Death Takes a Holiday when I browsed the "Hollywood Classics" section. This is a classic? Perhaps in terms of the decade, but it's clearly not as accessible or beloved as "classics" like Casablanca (1941) or To Have & Have Not (1944).
In this film, The Grim Reaper takes the form of a Prince (Fredric March) in an attempt to relate to humans and, along the way, also learns what it is to love.
Based on a play by the Italian writer Alberto Casella; the English-language version, written by Walter Ferris, opened in New York in 1929. The play was a success and thus bound for film adaptation. Gladys Lehman and the playwright Maxwell Anderson sought to put this to screen, having had success with We Live Again (1934), an adaptation of Tolstoy's Resurrection. Retaining the play's fascinating dialogue, but opening up the set to make the action more lively, Death Takes a Holiday proved to be one of Paramount's biggest box office successes of 1934.
Director Mitchell Leisen was given an award at the Venice Film Festival for his work on this film. The set design was noted to be remarkable & the acting, lead by a strong performance by Frederic March, enhanced the picture tremendously. A two time Oscar winner (for The Best Years of Our Lives & Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) March manages to even give death a dignified characterization.
The films use of special effects, mainly the ability to make death transparent as he floated around the room with other non-transparent actors, were pretty remarkable at the time. I wondered how they were able to accomplish such a feat in 1934. Death Takes a Holiday is quite a charming film that, with its supernatural fantasy elements, feels like a fairytale at times.
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