We are used to family-problem plays, but this movie works up a problem where it seems none exists. Sisters Margaret Leighton and Celia Johnson (supposed to be 31 but really 44 and looking it) each have secrets they keep from their father, minister Ralph Richardson, because they are sure he wouldn't understand.
Yet, from what we see, this is utterly ridiculous. Leighton says people are individuals, not types. Yet she (and her brother, a very young and rather dishy Denholm Elliott) keep shouting at the poor man that he can't be told the truth, not because, as she says, of "anything personal," but because he is a clergyman. But all clergymen are not alike. Indeed, Richardson never is shown to be anything but an old sweetie, very mild-mannered, thoughtful, and self-deprecating.
Then there is what we can conjecture. In more than twenty years, haven't the three of them had more than enough contact with their father to know that he is neither a rigid moralist nor a hypocrite? Why do they just characterise him as "a parson" rather than the father they know and love.
Not only is this very silly, but Celia Johnson's character is nothing like as sympathetic as it is intended. Her fiancé wants her to marry him and join him in South America, where he has to be for five years. Yet she firmly brushes off love, sex, children, and warm weather, saying that she must stay and look after daddy. And this a daddy who has nothing physically or mentally wrong with him and who plainly has the money to hire help. Not to mention that her mother has been dead barely six months--it shouldn't be long before all the unmarried women in the countryside will be batting their eyes at him!
Yet a story so contrived and false is presented as tremendously heartwarming. Leighton is, as usual, divine, and the carols were nice, but that's about it.
Yet, from what we see, this is utterly ridiculous. Leighton says people are individuals, not types. Yet she (and her brother, a very young and rather dishy Denholm Elliott) keep shouting at the poor man that he can't be told the truth, not because, as she says, of "anything personal," but because he is a clergyman. But all clergymen are not alike. Indeed, Richardson never is shown to be anything but an old sweetie, very mild-mannered, thoughtful, and self-deprecating.
Then there is what we can conjecture. In more than twenty years, haven't the three of them had more than enough contact with their father to know that he is neither a rigid moralist nor a hypocrite? Why do they just characterise him as "a parson" rather than the father they know and love.
Not only is this very silly, but Celia Johnson's character is nothing like as sympathetic as it is intended. Her fiancé wants her to marry him and join him in South America, where he has to be for five years. Yet she firmly brushes off love, sex, children, and warm weather, saying that she must stay and look after daddy. And this a daddy who has nothing physically or mentally wrong with him and who plainly has the money to hire help. Not to mention that her mother has been dead barely six months--it shouldn't be long before all the unmarried women in the countryside will be batting their eyes at him!
Yet a story so contrived and false is presented as tremendously heartwarming. Leighton is, as usual, divine, and the carols were nice, but that's about it.