Death Takes a Holiday (1934)
Yes, it’s some sort of holiday as the film begins. They are in Europe and there is much laughter and sunlight and flowers. Then they are driving, very fast, in a big, expensive car, and suddenly a shadow comes over the car, and Grazia — a beautiful young woman — is oddly drawn to the shadow. She says “let’s go fast enough to reach the unlimitable.” They crash into a flower vendors cart. They think he’s dead but he’s not. In fact, no one is hurt. They are off to a villa — where nothing but rich people — with fake English accents — live. It’s based on a bad 1924 Italian play, with a ponderous screenplay by Maxwell Anderson (a very bad American playwright) — despite Frederic March, who does the best he can in the leading role (as Death) and Henry Travers (you will think — where have I seen him before?— well he was the feisty little angel who dares to talk back to God in a much better movie — Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life). Death Takes a Holiday is too preachy by far, it’s kind of a sermon really. The highpoint is a speech by Grazia “There’s something out there I must find first….that I must understand” recited over Chopin’s glorious Etude in E (that Chopin piece is better than anything in this damned film!). Yes. Grazia is in love with death. It’s evident from the beginning, and her romance with death is inevitable. This is certainly not an original notion, but instead somewhat timeworn (Freud). Frederic March, as Death, does indeed decide to take a holiday, and people stop dying, but Death has never lived and doesn’t understand what draws people to life. Of course he falls in love with Grazia — one of the many not-particularly-well-thought-out metaphors in this film. For is that what happens when we die? Has death fallen in love with us? Frederic March tells us not to fear death. And in one of the film’s most preachy — and one of its only quasi-religious moments, he mentions the after-life: “Has it ever occurred to you that death might be simpler than life, and infinitely more kind?” I don’t know if it has occurred to all of us, but it is a pleasant thought, especially for Christians. The closest I get to religion is Bataille, who says that we before we are born we are part of what Amanda in Private Lives calls “a rather gloomy merging into everything” (Elyot says “I hope not, I’m a bad merger”). Only for Bataille, the merging is not gloomy at all, for, before we are born and after we die, we are part of a spirit than contains us all. We can’t imagine what being part of a communal spirit with no individual self-consciousness would be — but deep down we long to find it once again. And that’s why we have sex (orgasm; the little death) and read crime novels, and do dangerous things — like when meet some one we haven’t seen for a long time we just have to hug them, even in the time of Coronavirus. We have a primal need to get close to death-- but not die. In Death Takes a Holiday, Grazia does die. Frederic March puts on his black cloak (he’s been on holiday, transformed into a handsome prince with brooding eyes, and in fact all the women at this fancy villa have fallen in love with him, but they are also scared of him; he’s like the bad boyfriend you can't get rid of) and he envelops Grazia in cloak and the movie is over. It was ponderous, so we’re kind of glad it’s over. But might we wonder just a little bit if all this fear is actually getting us anywhere? Because, after all, someday, Coronavirus or not, aren’t we all going to die? That is not an excuse for reckless behaviour, or behaviour that puts others in danger; it’s simply a fact. Ever since AIDS I’ve lived my life as if I might die at any moment, but honestly I think that’s what separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls, and really the bourgeoisie from the very poor. If you don’t have money you are a lot closer to sickness and death, and working class people just seem to know that it’s best to live for today, I mean why not, under the circumstances? And nice bourgeois middle class people are always saying ‘you must think of the future and your children’ but some of us don’t have children, or worse yet we may recognise all too well that no matter what we do our children’s lives are going end up being nasty and brutish and short too. I know all this sounds horrible and depressing, but this is a horrible time. Maybe a time to talk about our very real feelings about death. Because death is with us every day — though we like to pretend it’s not — instead of living in fear of Coronavirus because as good bourgeois we have been taught that we will all ‘pass quietly’ in our sleep? And now I’ve gotten preachy too, and I’m not as handsome — or as good an actor — as Frederic March. I’m sitting here in my air b and b in Toronto writing, and watching people out the window — and everyone is rushing by. Rushing to do what? Buy toilet paper? Really?
