Sunday, May 8, 2022

The Devil's Holiday (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A savvy city girl is hired to sugar an earnest farm boy into a business deal, but loses her heart.
Directed by Edmund Goulding. Starring Nancy Carroll, Phillips Holmes, and James Kirkwood.

The Devil's Holiday reminded me very much of another movie from 1930, F. W. Murnau's City Girl. Both feature a naive young farmer who comes to the big city for business and returns home with a wife his family is skeptical of -- only in this case, the family is right to be skeptical, since she's only there for his money. There's a simplicity to this movie that is very appealing, and our young female lead is pretty good, especially in the sequences where she's starting to have a change of heart. She is snippy and irritable, and while at first it seems like it's because she's an unpleasant person, it starts to become clear that she's not really happy with herself for the decision she's made, and it comes out as anger. It never quite reaches the heights of City Girl when it comes to charm, but it's a quiet, sweet little movie that was just fine to watch.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Devil's Holiday < Dark and Stormy Night
The Devil's Holiday > Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
The Devil's Holiday > Sullivan's Travels
The Devil's Holiday > Get Shorty
The Devil's Holiday > Senna
The Devil's Holiday > After the Wedding
The Devil's Holiday > Safety Not Guaranteed
The Devil's Holiday > Le Week-End
The Devil's Holiday < Malcolm X
The Devil's Holiday < The Elephant Man
The Devil's Holiday < Something to Sing About
The Devil's Holiday > A Cure for Wellness
Final spot: #1797 out of 3569, or 50%.

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