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.

Terence Young,even if he never was considered an "author" ,was one of the most eclectic directors I had known :spy thrillers ("thunderball" etc)suspense drama ("wait until dark" ) fantasy ("corridors of mirrors" ,arguably his best movie) sword and sandals (Orazio E Curazio) costume drama ("Mayerling" ).....

Based on Michel Bataille 's moving novel ,it's very faithful to it ,including the famous scene in the zoo .A barrel of laugh ,it isn't ,but it avoids the clichés of melodrama and depicts a real tragedy.The cast can be questionable ,for William Holden had to be dubbed in French and as for Virna Lisi,I'm not sure it's her voice although she is fluent in this language .Both are excellent but are out-shadowed by Bourvil -who sadly was to die the following year-as Verdun.The last scene is one of the saddest I know and if it succeeds without falling into the trap of sentiment,it's due for Young's amazing feeling for economy and sparseness which preclude all forms of cinematographic sentimentality.The last scene might be the saddest of all Christmas scenes.

This was shown at Christmastime on local TV in the late 1980s, back when Leslie Halliwell's conservative Film Guide was the 'Bible' of movie-reviewing tomes – and, since he had disparagingly labelled this "the most lachrymose film of the sixties", I missed out on it! Mind you, this does provide the double threat of being an all-stops-out 'weepie' with child interest – of which quite a few, oddly enough, were made in Europe around this time (including MISUNDERSTOOD {1966}and THE BALLOON VENDOR {1974}, which was a big hit when released in theaters locally)!

By the way, I now caught up with this on Italian TV and, incidentally, in spite of a British director and an American star (William Holden),this is a Franco-Italian co-production, with those countries represented in the principal cast by Bourvil and Virna Lisi respectively. Actually, only the last act deals with the titular decoration and the period itself and, given the subject matter, I am sure it was chosen with ironic intent: in fact, here we have a boy who is fatally stricken with leukemia when exposed to radiation – in a scene virtually replicating the one in the sci-fi classic THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957)! – on the coast of Corsica (where he had gone ostensibly to spend the summer holidays with the industrialist father he barely knew). The latter was nearby (albeit safely underwater) when a plane exploded on top of the child (sitting in a dinghy) and, while killing its occupants, managed to release a parachute containing an atomic bomb into the sea!

Upon learning of this condition (which he naturally keeps from his son at first, by pretending he is the sick one!),the star dedicates himself to the boy unconditionally by taking up residence at a French country-side château he owns (with widower Holden's new girlfriend Lisi coming to visit from time to time). Looking after this property, then, is well-meaning but cantankerous handy-man Bourvil – in fact, it is during an argument with his boss (which is unwittingly overheard by the boy) that the latter gets wind of the true nature of their isolation! Anyway, at this point, Holden cannot refuse the kid anything – even when he requests a wolf for a pet. Since his father and Bourvil had served in WWII together, they were no strangers to dangerous missions – and so it is that they infiltrate a zoo and steal a male and female wolf (Bourvil having read in a book they would not survive apart!). The scene of their capture itself is pretty vivid, as the beasts do not take kindly to the intruders and fight back (injuring Holden) – later, there is a suspenseful moment while transporting the stolen 'cargo' at a gas-station as a couple of policemen want to inspect their vehicle and the men have to use their wits in order to get out of this scrape!

Speaking of animal violence, another strong scene involves the vicious attack by the wolves on a 'mad' steed (who has run away from under his own master, a Holden acquaintance, played by Friedrich Ledebur) – with the horse being eventually put down, actually an act of empathy, by the star! To be honest, though, it is this element above all else which renders the film palatable (though Henri Alekan's cinematography and the score by Georges Auric also help in this regard). The anti-nuclear message, on the other hand, is laid on too thick – with recurring noises of jets flying overhead, at which Bourvil utters accusingly (but also rather desperately),"Assassins"! – ironically enough, the actor would himself die the very next year, at just 53, of a rare disease! As for the child's inevitable death scene (surprisingly, he is not shown to be suffering all that much considering, but I should point out here that the copy I watched ran for just 97 minutes against the film's official length of 110!),this thankfully occurs off-screen – with Holden alerted to the tragedy by the howling of his two loyal pets (for the record, the film was released on VHS in the U.S. under the title WHEN WOLVES CRY!).