L'Arbre de Noël

I saw this movie once when I was a small child (4 or 5),this was obviously very shortly after production. I am now 49 and I have thought often about the emotional impact that it had on me at such a young age. I was inconsolable the evening after watching this and the whole next day. I'm assuming this was because I was a very sensitive child and I was so young when I watched it. Back then children weren't so desensitized to raw emotion as they are today. Even still, I don't think that I would show this movie to a child as young and sensitive as I was. Just thinking about it, this movie is still a very memorable and emotional movie to think about. It just shows very well the lengths that a parent will go to to make their dying child happy when they don't know what else to do. It shows the assumptions that people will jump to without knowing the facts, It also shows the loving bond between a child and his pets. If you enjoy tearjerkers, then this one will do the job. I do still think of it most years around Christmas, and I'd really love to see it again. Just writing this review of a movie I saw 44 years ago brought tears to my eyes. A Wonderful depiction of love, humanity and sacrifice.

For tax reasons and to be nearer his beloved African game preserve William Holden spent a lot of time in Europe during the sixties working. At the end of the decade Holden starred in The Christmas Tree which is not what you would think by the title, a warm and fun holiday movie. Christmas is peripheral to this very sad, almost beyond endurance sad movie.

Holden is one of the richest men in the world and a widower who has a young son Brooke Fuller. While on holiday in Corsica and swimming on the beach Fuller is exposed fatally to radiation poisoning. I'm not sure of the science of this, but I think the effects are those that would be sustained in one of those dirty bomb type explosions. You'll have to see the film to see how it is done.

There's no hope but to make the lad's weeks/months as happy as possible. The moral if there is any is that all the wealth and power in the world can never be brought to bear against the inevitable.

The cast also includes Virna Lisi and the great French comedian Bourvil. It's a great film, but not for the Yuletide season.

I was a kid when I first saw this movie, and I cried. I was not a movie critic then (I'm still not), but I know that this movie really tugged at my heartstrings. I haven't seen the movie since, but I would like to. It was so interesting to me at the time, the unique way the father dealt with the impending death of his young son.

I have always seen that movie at each Christmas since I am 7. Few people know it but it is really worth to watch. That is according to me one of these little unknown treasures in the world movie collection.

There is nothing bad about this movie, it is typical of the time it was made. I cannot imagine anyone who knows the plot and then decided to watch could expect or want anything else than that which was shown. Obviously some critics have issues. I wonder if they saw it v.o. or dubbed into English. All film d'époque are OTT and nothing is so subtle that any child could not understand it. This is not an intellectual adult movie, anyone who cannot see why actors did the movie should at least have the courage to ask before accusing them. There are also more messages (social and political criticism) than meet the eye and in this respect it is certainly more daring than the less subtle similar criticism Spielberg tried to shove into War of the Worlds which obliviously passed a hundred miles above the heads of the people it was directed at.