The Holly and the Ivy (1952) – A Movie Review

Here’s one last Christmas movie review for the season.  It’s a small British film from 1952 with Ralph Richardson cast as Reverend Martin Gregory, a parson in a small Norfolk village.  He is recently widowered and lives with his older daughter Jenny.  His younger daughter Margaret lives in London working as a fashion journalist and his son Michael is in the British Army.  Jenny is in love with an engineer named David Paterson but David has a job offer that would send him to South America for five years.  But Jenny says she cannot leave her aging father alone and refuses to even tell him about her love because then he would sacrifice his needs for the sake of her happiness.

The siblings will be returning home for Christmas along with two elderly aunts and a friend of the family.  The drama turns on the tensions arising out of the grown children’s fears about what they believe are their father’s intolerant religious principles.  The younger daughter lives in London to hide the existence of her illegitimate child from her whole family so that they wouldn’t be burdened with hiding this secret from their father.

During the course of the Christmas visit all these secrets come out and Martin realizes that his manner has made him unapproachable to his children thereby isolating and harming them.  He has frank discussions with his visiting son and daughter and does his best to convince them that he is not an inhuman religious fanatic but a man who loves his children and is not unrealistic about his expectations for human beings and their problems.  And once the secrets are exposed a resolution of the practical problem of Martin’s household needs is very satisfactorily found.

Ralph Richardson’s Martin is quite moving in his portrayal of a man struggling to connect with his children through the distance that his station in life has created.  He shows compassion and humility when his children relate the tragedies that have plagued them and he defends the life affirming nature of his faith and rejects the idea that he has not faced similar problems in his life.  He shows himself a warm human being and dispels the illusion that he has allowed his children to build of him as some kind of caricature of an Old Testament prophet summoning down lightning on the heads of his erring descendants.

All the actors perform admirably including the more ancillary characters like David, the aunts and the family friend.  The script is warm and intelligent and the plot plays out in a streamlined eighty minutes.  In fact, I could have wished it had been a little longer.  As opposed to the bleak cinema that Britain produced in the 1960s this movie, based on a play by Wynyard Browne, is life-affirming and ultimately optimistic.  Highly recommended for Christmas time but really enjoyable at any time of the year.

The 2020 OCFers

That’s pronounced like okfers.  Not to be confused with the Oscars which aren’t real awards.

Best Photos of the Day

Reindeer Lichen, Cladina spp. (possibly Cladina stellaris)
Late April in Southern New England

 

 

Best Quotes of the Day

 

07AUG2020 – Quote of the Day

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit

Aristotle

 

13JUL2020 – Quote of the Day

All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage.

Cormac McCarthy

 

31MAR2020 – Quote of the Day

The truth frequently seems unreasonable; the truth frequently is depressing; the truth sometimes seems to be evil, but it has the eternal advantage, it is the truth and what is built thereon neither brings nor yields to confusion.

Henry Ford

 

04FEB2020 – Quote of the Day

It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

 

Most Viewed Posts of the Year

The Deplorables Are Waiting for a Sign

Anti-White Lives Do Not Matter to Me

Which State Will Grovel the Least to the Looters?

Never Let Your Enemy’s Stupidity Go to Waste

 

Most Viewed Non-Political Post

William Shatner – A Demigod of Bad Acting

 

I wish I had Ricky Gervais to host the Ocfers.  I could use the publicity but if I had my choice there would only be one spokesman for OCF and that would be the inimitable William Shatner   His terrible acting would provide the perfect distraction from the awful things that went on around us this year and allow us to enjoy the ridiculous things that make life fun.

It’s been a tough year but even so I think some good has come from the horrible things that went on.  I think so many eyes have been opened that change will finally start happening on a large scale.  Goodbye to 2020 and good riddance.  Here’s to a much better year in 2021.  Happy New Year to all the folks out there on our side of the aisle.

30DEC2020 – OCF Update – End of Year Roundup

Well, I’ve posted my New Year’s Resolutions and now I will do a review of the site content and select my favorite photos, quotes, and posts from the last twelve months.  There are bound to be some surprises in there.  Hopefully I’ll post them today or tomorrow.  I’ll try to keep bitter irony to a minimum because it’s best to start the New Year as optimistically as humanly possible.  Hope is a flickering candle and should be protected from the cold wind of reality as well as can be.

And just to get the ball rolling on my endeavor here is the photo of the day from last January 1st.  This definitely won’t be a best of but it is the first picture of 2020.

New Year’s Resolutions for 2021

I was trying to think of some clever resolutions associated with the election but it all just sounded like rants and raves.  I guess I’m pretty much finished shaking my fist at the zombies running on the grass.  Let’s face it, unless some pretty high-powered people decide to throw their weight around, the Uniparty is going to get away with stealing the election.  But either way I don’t get to have a say about it at all.

So instead, I’m going to think about things that I can do that are meaningful and possible.

I resolve to support my children and grandchildren in every way I can.

I resolve to teach my grandkids all the useful things I know and tell them the truth about the world.  I’ll start by giving them some pointers on how to research whatever projects they think they want to accomplish.  I’ll also tell them what things I have found to be useless in order to save them some time.  I’ll give them the “so you think you want to be an engineer” speech.  And I’ll start the conversation rolling on how to attract and identify an acceptable wife.  I may recruit Camera Girl’s help in this.  After all she is a girl.

I resolve to get into the best shape I can.  Healthcare is expensive and the quality of it is decreasing rapidly.  The best way to cure health problems is to avoid them.  So, dropping some weight and adding some cardio to the weights is a good idea.  I’m buying a high-end rowing machine and when the snow makes it impossible to go walking in the woods Camera Girl and I will be pretending to row a boat through a window and across the landscape or something.  I was thinking of finding the soundtrack to Ben Hur and making a loop out of the galley slave portion of the movie.  I’ll call my workout “ramming speed.”

I resolve to get to know my neighbors at least to the point of inviting them to a cookout.  I’m sure half of them are not my political allies but at least knowing something about the people who live around you is worthwhile.  Who knows, some of them might be on our team.

I resolve to start doing some of my own home repairs.  Winters where I live are very tough on external wood surfaces of which I have an enormous area.  If I start doing some of the carpentry repairs, I can save a lot of money and money is hard to come by in the horror show that is post-America.

I resolve to investigate the local (town) Republican party club.  Who knows, maybe one of them isn’t a JEB! voter.

I resolve to finish my first science fiction novel.

I resolve to put together a usable handbook of practical rules of thumb and lists of information for people on the right to avoid the petty annoyances and more serious problems associated with living in post-America.

I resolve to increase my web traffic to 1 billion pageviews a day (more or less) and become the source for right-wing punditry.  Well, you have to dream a little bit, don’t you?

So that’s what I’ve thought of so far.  All (most) of them are easily doable and all of them will make my life better and help people I like.  Notice none of it hinges on anything to do with the 2020 election.  I will admit that the COVID nonsense will delay some of these things but eventually we will escape most of the restrictions the psychos have burdened us with.

So Happy New Year’s and here’s hoping 2021 will be a hell of a lot better than 2020.

Feel free to leave your resolutions in the comments.