Christmas Holiday is a novel by the British writer Somerset Maugham, first published in 1939 by Heinemann. Just before the outbreak of the Second World War a naïve young Englishman travels to Paris to broaden his mind. There he meets a White Russian émigré Lydia, now working as a prostitute. She tells him both of the death of her father during the Russian Revolution and her subsequent marriage in Paris to a man who then murdered his own friend. Despite knowing of his guilt she secretly sends money to him on the prison island in French Guiana because she loves him.[1]
Film adaptation
In 1944 it was adapted into the American film of the same title often classified as a film noir, directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly.[2] [3] While the original story takes place in pre-war Europe, the adaptation shifts the setting to wartime New Orleans in Louisiana.
References
Bibliography
- Calder, Robin. Somerset Maugham and the Cinema. University of Wisconsin Press, 2024.
- Goble, Alan. The Complete Index to Literary Sources in Film. Walter de Gruyter, 1999.
- Schwartz, Ronald. Houses of Noir: Dark Visions from Thirteen Film Studios. McFarland, 2013.
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