Last Holiday (1950)
Alec Guinness is good in an OK story with a lousy ending.
Last Holiday (1950). Grade: C+
In movies, Alec Guinness seemed to specialize in recessive characters. People who are more a product of their station and position than they know. In Kind Hearts and Coronets he’s eight different aristocrats, most being more-or-less exactly what they’re expected to be. In The Man in the White Suit he dreams of telling the world, “recognize MY GENIUS!” but really is better at hiding his very existence; in The Lavender Hill Mob he’s so meek that, after he rips off his employer for millions, they can’t possibly imagine it was him. (Guinness called this character a “fusby” type; it’s a perfect made-up word.)
Theater critic Kenneth Tynan1 wrote that if Guinness were wanted for murder, a huge number of nondescript Englishmen would be rounded up for looking, vaguely, like him. Guinness was extremely popular in these “fusby” roles, and it’s not hard to see why.
Everyone wants to believe they’re the most important person in their own lives… but we aren’t! Only psychopaths really act as though this is true. The rest of us are just going about and doing the best we can do. That’s why, so often, when we react to a movie about someone making a big life change, we only believe in that change if it’s kicked into motion by some sort of unexpected event; say, a wife realizing her husband had a secret second wife in another town. (And Guinness played that husband, too – one whose plan to control everything leads to disaster.)
Guinness is very much a “fusby” in Last Holiday, yet one who breaks out a little when he receives some surprising news at a regular checkup; he’s got a rare disease and has a few weeks, maybe months, left to live. He cashes in what retirement savings he has and decides to go on an exotic trip to… some boring swank hotel in some boring seaside town.
Maybe it’s just me, but if I was a Brit with one last vacation to take, I’d maybe go to Paris or Rome or something? It’s probably part of the script’s point to show us how the dreary British class system has made regular people dream no higher than being accepted by the posh people. It’s a dull point to make.
Anyhoo, on a whim before leaving town, Guinness agrees to some aggressive selling by a local little shopkeeper and spends a bundle on a fancy secondhand suit; the shopkeeper throws in some sturdy luggage as well, with travel labels from around the world. Once Guinness arrives at the swank hotel, most of the rich guests look at the suit and luggage and assume Guinness is a wealthy, mysterious globe trotter.
So not only is Guinness enjoying the five star service that rich people get, he’s being treated as an equal by the rich people, too. A successful, eccentric inventor (the always fairly amusing Wilfrid Hyde-White of The Third Man) wants Guinness to join him in a venture to improve his most famous invention. A cabinet minister wants Guinness to work for him in a nonpartisan advisory/public liason role. And a rich beauty with a twerp husband is just itching to have an affair with Guinness — he has no wife or children, so he’s possibly never had an affair before.
Had this been written with more wit and irony, it could have been a classic. Guinness is good, here, and best when he seems on the verge of really enjoying himself, or really blowing up — he’s, quite understandably, very frustrated that all these opportunities are coming to him when it’s too late for them to do him any good. That is, except the affair… although the “right” thing to do would be not to have one last fling with a married woman.
The script is by J.B. Priestly, who film historian Michael Korecky tells us was “an immensely popular left-wing radio broadcaster for the BBC and a cofounder of the United Kingdom’s socialist Common Wealth Party.” OK, so I probably would have liked his politics, but — in this case at least — I don’t like his screenwriting very much. Just because I agree with what “side” a movie’s on doesn’t mean I’m going to enjoy the movie.
And, in fact, you can read the politics of the movie in a completely different way. When the hotel staff all go on strike, Guinness gets all the rich guests to work together and do the cooking/cleaning, etc. That’s meant to show that they learn the value of manual labor… but it could also be meant to show that the rich are better at these tasks than the ungrateful poors! (If I hadn’t had read Korecky’s essay that came with the disc, I might not have known Priestly was left-wing.)
In any case, the story isn’t played for humor, when it should be… it’s the setup for a great satiric comedy. And it takes a mean turn at the end. Critic Robert Murphy called the ending “dastardly” and I completely agree; it makes almost the entire movie entirely pointless (except for enjoying Guinness being pretty good in it).
Oh, and that affair Guinness could have? Nah, he doesn’t. There’s some unshown necking in an elevator, which (because it’s offscreen and takes a little while) can be assumed to involve a little heavy petting. That’s IT? This guy deserves better. He does the “honorable” thing and helps out the lady’s useless spoiled brat of a husband with some money to cover the spoiled brat’s debts. Well, that idiot’s just gonna go get himself in debt again! And the wife will end up having an affair with somebody else! You shoulda gone for it, Guinness!
It’s also a bit rich that J.P. Priestly has Guinness do the “honorable” thing by not violating the sanctity of marriage. ‘Cause Priestly sure did. He was married three times and apparently had several affairs (including one with Peggy Ashcroft, who was WAY out of Priestly’s league).
If Priestly wouldn’t let Guinness boink the married broad, he could at least have had him win over the hotel’s head housekeeper! That’s the lovely Kay Walsh, who’d been married to serial cheat David Lean (Guinness’s frequent film director). Walsh seems to have good chemistry with Guinness, and while her character steadfastly refuses not to let herself get pawed by any of the rich guests (which is still a problem for hotel staff today), Priestly could have Walsh learn that Guinness isn’t really rich, and have them fall in love! That would be nice! But the script’s too insistent on making its (obvious, bland) points to be nice.
I liked most of the rest of the cast, and there’s a very brief Ernest Thesiger sighting. The direction (by Henry Cass) isn’t much to hang his hat on, that’s for sure. This would be remade in 2006 with Queen Latifah and L.L. Cool J, who per the Wiki plot summary DO end up together! So that’s an improvement! Although both the director and the writers of that remake are pretty blah, so I won’t be seeing it. (That was the problem with this version, too.) Also, per the plot summary, the happy couple, at the end, together open a restaurant in Vegas, which is visited by Gerard Depardieu and Emeril Lagasse. IS that really such a happy ending?