Ho, Ho, Ho! It’s that time of year again. If it’s worth saying, it’s worth repeating. From November of 2007, here once again are a few of my favorite Christmas films. Though not a Christmas film in the strictest sense, so much of George Cukor’s sublime 1933 version of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women takes place on a Christmas Day during the Civil War that it’s one I always think of on that day. The first and still best talkie version of the beloved classic, it stars Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Jean Parker and Frances Dee as the March sisters, Douglass Montgomery and Paul Lukas as the principal men in their lives, Spring Byington as Marmee, and Edna May Oliver as Aunt March. It’s a picture perfect glimpse into the lives, hopes and dreams of perfect young ladies in the America of almost 150 years ago. MGM’s gloss shone at its brightest in the 1938 version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, directed Edwin L. Marin and executive produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, whose hand is clearly evident in the production. Originally slated to star Lionel Barrymore who had played Scrooge annually on the radio for years, he was replaced by Reginald Owen when Barrymore’s rheumatoid arthritis got so bad he had to be confined to a wheelchair. You would never know Owen was a last-minute replacement by the authority he brings to the role. In fact, the entire cast is pretty wonderful, including the Lockharts, Gene, Kathleen and June, as the Cratchits along with Terry Kilburn as Tiny Tim, and Leo G. Carroll as Marley’s ghost. Not quite as Dickensian as the 1951 British version with Alastair Sim, but a gem in its own right. Written by Preston Sturges and directed by Mitchell Leisen, 1940’s Remember the Night is basically a tale of the redemption of a female thief through the love of a good man and his family. It’s a pill easily swallowed when the thief is played by Barbara Stanwyck and the good man by Fred MacMurray. He is the assistant district attorney who takes custody of Stanwyck after she is caught stealing an expensive bracelet and must keep her under wraps until the courts re-open after New Year’s. It also helps that MacMurray’s mother and aunt are played by two of the screen’s best loved character actresses, Beulah Bondi and Elizabeth Patterson. Though it’s about more than the holiday season, perhaps the finest moment in Vincente Minnelli’s 1944 masterpiece, Meet Me in St. Louis, occurs when Judy Garland sings "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" to despairing kid sister Margaret O’Brien. One of the screen’s best original musicals, Garland, O’Brien, Mary Astor, Marjorie Main, Tom Drake, Lucille Bremer, Leon Ames, Harry Davenport and others skip the light fantastic through such marvelous songs as the title tune, "The Boy Next Door" and "The Trolley Song". Actor-turned-director Peter Godfrey was the helmer behind 1945’s Christmas in Connecticut, an only-in-the-movies tale of a Good Housekeeping-style writer who must pass for the real thing when her publisher invites himself and a war hero to spend the holidays at the Connecticut home she doesn’t exactly have. Barbara Stanwyck is once again at her best as the writer, surrounded by a delightful cast that includes Dennis Morgan as the affable war hero, Sydney Greenstreet as the blowhard publisher, S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall as the world-class chef Stanwyck entices to do double duty as her cook, and Una O’Connor as a befuddled maid. A sequel to 1944’s Oscar-winning Going My Way only in that Leo Carey once again directs Bing Crosby as crooning priest Father O’Malley, 1945’s The Bells of St. Mary’s is completely different in tone and style from its predecessor. The focus this time is not on the relationship between Crosby’s O’Malley and Barry Fitzgerald’s lovable old codger, Father Fitzgibbon, but between O’Malley and the independent Sister Benedict played by Ingrid Bergman at the top of her game. Though the Christmas scenes make up only a portion of the film, the film’s message about giving hope as well as presents is very much in the spirit of the season. Bergman is magnificent in what is arguably her finest screen performance. Modestly successful upon its initial release in 1946, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life became a holiday staple in the 1970s after Capra forgot to renew the copyright and the film fell into public domain where it was snatched up by independent TV stations that showed it incessantly over the holidays. Now of course it is considered both Capra’s and star Jimmy Stewart’s finest film. As the small town banker who sees through an angel’s eyes what the world would have been like without him one Christmas Eve, Stewart hits all the right notes. The wonderful supporting cast includes Donna Reed, Henry Travers, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell and Beulah Bondi. Another film about an angel come down to Earth to help us mere mortals at Christmastime, Henry Koster’s 1947 film, The Bishop’s Wife, is another perennial. Cary Grant was originally to have played the Episcopal bishop and David Niven the angel, but they switched roles at the last minute to our everlasting delight. Loretta Young has the title role. All three are at their charming best as are such stalwart supporting players as Gladys Cooper, Monty Woolley, James Gleason and Elsa Lanchester. Also from 1947 is the classic Miracle on 34th Street with Edmund Gwenn a total delight in his Oscar-winning role as Kris Kringle aka Santa Claus. Though it’s basically Gwenn’s film, there are also charming performances from Maureen O’Hara as a career woman who doesn’t believe in Santa, John Payne as a lawyer who does and Natalie Wood as O’Hara’s daughter, who may. Memorable in smaller roles are Gene Lockhart as a judge, Jerome Cowan as a prosecutor, Jack Albertson as a postal worker and Thelma Ritter as a flummoxed Macy’s customer. No holiday viewing would be complete without the definitive 1951 film version of A Christmas Carol (released as Scrooge in the U.K.). Brian Desmond-Hurst directs the superb Alastair Sim in the most faithful rendering of Dickens’ classic yet mounted. It may sounds like a cliché, but this film really is too good just to be seen at Christmas. To not see at Christmas would be a humbug! A huge hit in its day, White Christmas is a quasi-remake of Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen singing and dancing to a hit parade of Irving Berlin tunes. Among them are the title song that won an Oscar when Crosby first performed it in the aforementioned Holiday Inn and "Count Your Blessings", the Oscar-nominated song this time around. Michael Curtiz directed a cast that also includes Dean Jagger and Mary Wickes. The beautifully-wrought All Mine to Give was barely released by RKO at the tail end of 1957, but has enjoyed tremendous popularity as a TV staple over the years and is finally available on DVD. Glynis Johns and Cameron Mitchell are deeply moving as a couple enduring great hardships in 1850s Wisconsin. Two of the best child actors of the era, Rex Thompson ( The King and I) and Patty McCormack ( The Bad Seed), co-star in this very poignant film with a terrific Christmas finish. If two excellent versions weren’t already enough, Leslie Bricusse added music and lyrics to Dickens’ timeless Christmas classic, and Ronald Neame directed it. Albert Finney had the title role of Scrooge with a veritable who’s who of British actors in support, including Alec Guinness, Edith Evans, Kenneth More, Laurence Naismith and Kay Walsh. The sparkling score includes the jaunty "Thank You Very Much" and Scrooge’s 11th hour lament "I’ll Begin Again". Standing out among the myriad of TV dramas about the holiday are two films, one revered as something of a classic, the other not remembered quite as well. First broadcast in 1977, The Gathering is an Emmy-winning production about a woman who gathers her estranged family together for her husband’s last Christmas. Sensitively directed by Randal Kleiser and beautifully acted by Maureen Stapleton, Ed Asner, Stephanie Zimbalist, Gregory Harrison, Bruce Davison and John Randolph among others, it was followed two years later by The Gathering, Part II in which the family comes back together to "protect" their now-widowed mother from the advances of the new man in her life. Not as well known is 1998’s The Christmas Wish in which Neil Patrick Harris stars as a Harvard-educated yuppie who comes back to his old home town when he inherits his grandfather’s real estate business. Debbie Reynolds is his grandmother and Naomi Watts the young divorcee with a precocious kid. What sets it apart is the mystery surrounding a diary entry of the grandfather’s that uncovers a secret not revealed until the very end. All three stars are excellent with Watts especially fine in a throwaway role. Finally, Diane Keaton gives one of her finest performances as the mother of a large modern brood in Thomas Bazucha’s 2005 film The Family Stone. This dramedy about a family’s last Christmas together was poorly marketed as a farce starring Sex and the City‘s Sarah Jessica Parker. It is not a farce, though it does contain a few farcical moments. Nor is it a Sarah Jessica Parker film as she is but one member of an ensemble that also includes Dermot Mulroney, Claire Danes, Rachel McAdams, Luke Wilson, Ty Giordano, Brian White and Craig T. Nelson, all of whom outshine Ms. Parker. There are many other films I could cite, but these are the essentials in my house. -Peter J. Patrick (December 23, 2008) |
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The DVD Report #86
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