Some Christmas Films I've Enjoyed

I don’t feel holidayish, for reasons you may share, so let’s just revisit some of the films that have lightened our spirits often over the years.

Maybe I so enjoyed Home Alone (1990) because I saw it with a kid.

The Shop around the Corner (1940), starring Jimmy Stewart likely inspired You’ve Got Mail.

Silent Night (2002) may belong here. A German woman with a son enforces a Christmas truce between three German and three U.S. soldiers who somehow happen to be in her cabin. I dimly remember liking it.

In Remember the Night (1939), district attorney (Fred MacMurryy) delays prosecuting a shoplifter, because a jury might let her off with Christmas coming, but takes pity on her, a stranger in town, and takes her home with him to his mother’s for Christmas. Yep, you guessed it. But it’s fun.

In Christmas in Connecticut (1945) a magazine writer (Barbara Stanwyck), whose columns have portrayed her (wholly fictional) delightful farm life with husband and son, (but nonexistent) country life suddenly has to make it all look real when her boss and a returning war hero are coming for Christmas dinner.

Miracle on 34^th Street (1947) is dopey, but endearing: Kris Kringle is put on trial to prove his identity, which we all know is phony, but he does it, with us rooting for him.

In Frank Capra’s last film, Pocketful of Miracles (1961), New York gangster (Glenn Ford) thinks apples from an alcoholic street peddler bring him luck. Apple Annie’s illegitimate daughter has always lived in Europe, believing Annie is an upper-class New York matron. So when Louise plans to visit, bringing her aristocratic Spanish fiance, the Duke and his pals have to concoct a convincing scene, complete with wealthy “husband.”

Holiday Affair (1949) features Robert Mitchum as a seasonal department store clerk who catches a woman in a fraudulent shopping scheme but lets her go because she’s a war widow with a young son. He gets fired, but befriends her son. Mitchum’s footloose and casually defiant manner help the film avoid sappiness. – and confuse Janet Leigh, whose fiance is nice but dull.

Love Actually (2003) jauntily explores varieties of love in ten interlinked stories set in London. The ensemble British cast has fun and provides fun. It’s goofy, but irresistible. I know, audiences have loved it more than critics have; but it’s just a lot of fun. Irresistible.

In It Happened on 5^th Avenue (1947) hobo Aloyisius T. McKeever, sneaks each winter into a rich New Yorker’s boarded-up home while the owner is in Virginia, then spends summers in the rich man’s Virginia vacation home. Each year, he and his dog carefully leave everything just as they found it. But this winter, he can’t resist taking pity on several others, each with a moving tale of woe, and lets them move in, with results full of comedy, discovered and rediscovered love, and a comeuppance for rich folks.

Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) is a delightful reverse Christmas Carol: instead of Scrooge being forced to face his greed, the grief he’s caused everyone, and his pathetic aloneness, George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), standing by the Bedford Falls bridge ready to jump, is shown how much good he’s done for everyone, and how much they love him. It’s the sort of reminder we each sometimes need that we have much to be grateful for.

So be grateful, despite surrounding tragedies.

                                                     --30--

[The above column appeared Sunday, 3 December, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, as well as on KRWG’s website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/).

[Almost neglected to do this, because today doesn’t feel like a Sunday, because Monday will be even quieter. ]

[Anyway, that’s my list. I’m not sure Joyeux Noel might be interesting, too, but I’ve never seen it. ]

[Since I haven’t spend many Christmases with kids (and the last time I did, there was no TV in the house), my list likely omits some really well-done films for kids. ]

[We happened to watch Pocketful of Miracles this weekend. I’d forgotten that Edward Everett Horton was in it, as the butler. Probably I’d last seen the film before I discovered what a fine character actor he was, enjoying him in The Front Page (1931), Holiday (1938), Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), and others I can’t recall just now.

I'd seen and enjoyed the film without realizing (or, at least, recalling) that it was Capra's last. I certainly hadn't realized that, sub nom Lady for a Day (1933), it was also one of his early successes, and earned him his first Academy Awards, for Best Director and Best Production. (That is, the 1961 film was a remake of his own 1933 film, which I'm now curious to see.) That it was based on a 1929 Damon Runyan story explains the gangster backround, which felt a little anachronistic in a 1961 film. Damon Runyan's brilliance was one of the few things my father (who'd have been a ten-year-old kid in Brooklyn when the story was published) and I always agreed on. (One of the last books he picked up, on a weird night when he got up out of bed, a night or two before his death, was an old Runyan collection.) I think that by the late 1950s Capra felt at sea, aware that he and popular culture were no longer in any kind of synch, and started reading back into his own past works to see if something might still have some magic in it. ]