HOLIDAY FOR SINNERS (1952)

It's Mardi Gras in New Orleans and we see lots of celebrating revelers, except, as a narrator tells us, down "narrow streets where the bands and cheering were barely heard." Down one of those dark alleys, a handsome priest (Richard Anderson) visits a tenement apartment where a worn out young doctor (Gig Young) has been attending to a dying man. The priest performs last rites and the two, boyhood friends, chat on the way out about the future. Anderson is sure that the diocese will fund a new neighborhood clinic, but Young, no longer very optimistic, has accepted a research position in India, and his girlfriend (Janice Rule) has tentatively accepted his offer of marriage. At his apartment, Young, who owns a pet monkey, is visited by an older blustery but broken down boxer (Keenan Wynn) who is going blind with little hope of a cure, and trying to get $1500 that his former manager owes him. The manager, however, claims that Wynn has gone batty and should be institutionalized. Soon, Anderson finds out that the church has put off investing in a new clinic. One more character is introduced: a reporter (William Campbell) who takes advantage of Wynn's situation to get a headline. These sad lives intersect, leaving at least two dead by the end, but a glimmer of redemption remains.

This gloomy melodrama has some good performances and some nice location shooting in New Orleans (though the overall look of the film is dark and claustrophobic) but ultimately has nothing special going for it to distinguish it from other B-range dramas of the era. Part of the problem is that there isn't a compelling main character. Young is the one who is central to all the stories, but he has little charisma and from the opening he comes off as beaten down and disillusioned. He and Anderson and Wynn are supposed to have been childhood friends but they don’t really come off as strongly connected. Wynn gets lots of critical praise, but to me it felt like he was chewing scenery occasionally, and his character is a self-defeating, sometimes obnoxious mess. Anderson, Campbell, and Rule give the best performances. I could take the gloom and sadness if I cared about the outcomes of any of the character plotlines, but I really didn't. Pictured are Anderson and Young. [TCM]