Son dernier Noël (1952)
Directed by Jacques Daniel-Norman

Film Review

If a résumé of the plot doesn't make you sick, watching the film certainly will.  Son dernier Noël marks the absolute nadir of Tino Rossi's film career, and makes even some of his earlier slush-drenched screen abominations bearable by comparison.   Even more poisonously saccharine than his earlier Christmas atrocity, Destins (1946), this one is almost lethally nauseous, particularly as it contains one of Rossi's most stomach-churningly mawkish numbers, Petite Étoile de Noël.  Apart from Rossi, who is as dull and expressionless as ever, the cast isn't bad - Marcel Pagnol favourite Édouard Delmont and the adorable Georges Poujouly (recently made a star through his appearance in René Clément's Jeux interdits) give the film some legitimacy.  However, it is the sheer awfulness of the chronically contrived and unbelievably misguided script, coupled with Rossi's predictably toe-curling presence, that makes Son dernier Noël so unbearable to watch for anyone except those who are chronically addicted to soppy, sentimental sludge of this kind.

Film Synopsis

According to Professeur Valensio, little Angèle has only a short while left to live.  The child knows that she is likely to die before Christmas, but she also believes that if she can survive the festive season, she will be saved.  All her neighbours decide to rally round and organise an early Christmas party for the stricken child.