capsule reviews

death takes a holiday, mary rinehart, hiromi kawakami

Death Takes A Holiday (Mitchell Leisen, 1934)

Very strange little movie—a little ornate and preachy in a way that is very much of its time,¹ and hindered from ever really hitting its stride by an absolute dud performance from Evelyn Venable, who plays its heroine.² But its various rhetorical flourishes are all in service of an ending that is unexpected and even a bit shocking. I can’t really imagine a contemporary popular movie being willing to end the way this movie ends without becoming extremely controversial. So by the time the movie was over it had established itself as something I was glad to have seen, without ever quite being good.

As far as the premise goes: Death is tired of being Death, tired of watching people shrink away from him screaming. What’s so great about being alive, he’d like to know. Why are people so reluctant to follow him? So he decide…