Death Takes a Holiday **** (1934, Fredric March, Evelyn Venable, Guy Standing) – Classic Movie Review 1784

Fredric March stars as Death who decides to take a holiday in Italy, in the 1934 fantasy film Death Takes a Holiday. 

Director Mitchell Leisen’s 1934 fantasy film of Maxwell Anderson’s play about the Angel of Death is still a delightful experience.

Fredric March stars as Death who decides to take a holiday in Italy and poses as the mysterious and alluring Prince Sirki, who calls in on a family of Italian country nobility and spends three days with Duke Lambert  (Sir Guy Standing) and his guests on his palatial estate. Death  is anxious to find out why everybody is terrified by him, everyone, that is, except a beautiful young woman called Grazia (Evelyn Venable, in a role planned for Claudette Colbert), who falls for him, even after she knows who he is.

[Spoiler alert] And so Grazia decides to take the plunge and follow Death, leaving behind her parents and her betrothed, the Duke’s son Corrado (Kent Taylor).

Appealing and delicate performances from the stars, adroit and deft direction by Leisen, Charles Lang’s classy black and white cinematography and the Paramount studio’s handsome and lavish production (sets by Hans Dreier and Ernst Fegte) combine with the haunting story to make this a venerable and winning Thirties Hollywood classic. Not surprisingly given its age, Death Takes a Holiday may seem a tiny bit creaky now but it is still a splendid achievement and a box of delights.

The screenplay is by Maxwell Anderson, Gladys Lehman and Walter Ferris, based on the play by Maxwell Anderson and the Italian original play La Morte in Vacanza (Death Takes a Holiday) by Alberto Casella.

Katherine Alexander, Gail Patrick, Helen Westley, Kathleen Howard, Henry Travers, G P Huntley Jr, Edward Van Sloan and Otto Hoffmann are also seen in the movie.

Death Takes a Holiday was remade as a 1971 TV movie and again in 1998 as the fascinating mega-budget box-office flop Meet Joe Black with Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins and Claire Forlani. At only 79 minutes, it runs around 100 minutes less than Meet Joe Black.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1784 

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