Review: Death Takes a Holiday (1934)

For today's second review, I'm going to review a film I only discovered recently. It's an old film -- the oldest film I've reviewed so far -- which might put some people off, but I don't think it counts as a period drama because it was set in roughly the same time period as when it was made. It's also quite suitable for Halloween, though it's nowhere near as dark as you might expect.

Death Takes a Holiday is based on a 1929 play of the same name, which in turn was an English version of the 1924 Italian play La Morte in Vacanza ("Death on Holiday"). The film has been remade at least twice. It's also been turned into a musical, which is how I learnt of its existence.

At first I thought the plot was really similar to Elisabeth das Musical, but on a second viewing I realised the only similarity between them is a personification of Death falling in love with a mortal. Elisabeth is primarily a dark pseudo-historical fairy-tale, while Death Takes a Holiday is more a fantasy/romance film.

I'm not familiar with many films of the 1930s, so I only recognised two of the actors:
Fredric March (Earl of Bothwell in Mary of Scotland) as Death
Henry Travers (Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life) as Baron Cesarea

The story begins with a group of friends having a race. Disaster nearly strikes when they meet a horse-drawn cart, but no one is injured and they continue to their home. But when they arrive at the house, Grazia, one of them, has a frightening encounter with a shadow. Shortly afterwards, Duke Lambert also meets the shadow. It's Death, and he intends to take a human form and stay with the Duke's family for three days.

Death (before taking a human form) and Duke Lambert

Death introduces himself to the family as Prince Sirki, a (now-deceased) guest they were expecting. Things start to go wrong almost at once. Grazia falls in love with Death, which annoys her fiancé Corrado. Meanwhile, Duke Lambert is terrified that someone will say or do something to anger Death and bring his wrath down on them.

Death (after taking a human form) and Grazia

Oh, and nothing can die while Death is on holiday. Not even flowers.

Finally Duke Lambert tells his family the truth about who Death is. Grazia reveals she knew all along, and goes with Death when he leaves.

Death (back in his Grim Reaper form) and Grazia

So, what's my overall opinion?

The film is pretty good, and the idea of Death taking a holiday and having to deal with everyday life is an interesting one. Apart from the obvious, there's remarkably little darkness or grimness in it. In fact it can be quite funny in parts. But there's the unfortunate fact that it's a very old film, and falls victim to the problems common to old films. Awkward lines, sometimes-wooden acting, and general melodrama appear to have been par for the course in the 30s. But its age makes it easy to forgive those flaws.

Is it available online?: There's a version on YouTube, but it's such poor quality that it's hardly worth watching it. A better-quality version is available on ok.ru -- a site I'd never heard of until I searched for this film, but it appears to be a Russian-based video site where you can watch several movies from the 1930s.

As mentioned earlier, there's a musical adaptation that premiered in 2011. Some songs and clips from this version can be found on YouTube. I'd love to see how it compares to the film, but annoyingly there's no full video of it (yet).

Rating: 6/10.