HAVE YOURSELF A MOVIE LITTLE CHRISTMAS: 2016 EDITION
I’m guessing that you, just like most of us, have always had
seasonal favorites when it comes to movies that attempt to address and evoke
the spirit of Christmas. Like most from my generation, when I was a kid I
learned the pleasures of perennial anticipation of Christmastime as interpreted
by TV through a series of holiday specials, like How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A
Charlie Brown Christmas, Santa Claus is Coming to Town and even musical
variety hours where the likes of Bing Crosby and Andy Williams and Dean Martin
et al would sit around sets elaborately designed to represent the ideal
Christmas-decorated living room, drinking “wassail” (I’m sure that’s what was in
those cups) and crooning classics of the season alongside a dazzling array of
guests. (We knew we were moving into a new world of holiday cheer when David Bowie joined Bing Crosby for a Christmas duet of “Peace on Earth” and
“The Little Drummer Boy” on a Christmas special in 1977.)
TV was always a dominant window onto Christmas for kids my
age, and so it was when it came time to discovering, absorbing and then
engraining into perennial ritual some of the Christmas–themed movies of the
classic Hollywood era. I’d wager that most of us got our introduction to
pictures like It’s a Wonderful Life, Meet
Me in St. Louis, White Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, The Bishop’s Wife
and Christmas in Connecticut via
network broadcasts or, even more likely, reliable appearances as filler on
local weekend afternoon TV schedules. And for many those movies became as much
a part of the annual celebration of the holiday as decorating the tree, or
attending Christmas Eve church services, or pretending not to notice the
Salvation Army guy clanging away outside the local supermarket.
But there are those who are always looking for additions to
the Christmas canon, or simply alternatives to the usual green-and-red-lit
movie fare. Maybe you’ve toured Bedford Falls with Jimmy Stewart once too
often. Perhaps you’ve had one too many merry little Christmases in the company
of Judy Garland and Margaret O’Sullivan. It just could be that you’re looking
for something beyond watching Bruce Willis load a dead, Santa cap-clad terrorist
into an elevator to deliver a very special holiday message. And maybe your
particular need cannot be filled by heading to the Redbox for Krampus or Jingle All the Way or any of the apparently thousands of
sentimental, often-Hallmark-produced paeans to the presumed ideal of the
season. (If something like Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas is
what you’re looking for, you might be well advised to go pick that one up and
stop reading this article right now.)
Over the last decade or so I’ve cultivated a few new
perennial favorites, some of which are actually relatively “new,” a few of
which are demonstrably “old,” a couple featuring only isolated segments that
call up unusual manifestations of Christmas fear and alienation, and all of
which speak to my own particular wants and desires when it comes to conjuring
up a little anticipatory Christmas atmosphere in the age of the 65-inch flat
screen. These, then, are five of my essential Christmas classics, movies
without which Christmas just wouldn’t seem as rich and rewarding and somehow
reassuring. What Grinch would deny a garland-and-tinsel-encrusted movie fiend
such moments of delight?
Black Christmas (1974) Director Bob Clark’s elegantly
eerie, crudely effective shocker was one of the two seminal Christmas-themed
shockfests (the other one is mentioned here a bit further down the page) that,
when I saw them in a theater in the early ‘70s, highlighted for the first time
for me the rich possibility of terror and suspense that was if not inherent,
then only slightly papered over during the usual seasonal celebration.
Predating John Carpenter’s Halloween by four years, Black Christmas, along with Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood (1971), to which the initial Friday the 13th movies owe a great debt, laid out the POV-laden
template for holiday-themed slashing that is still referenced by a host of
forward-thinking, backward-glancing filmmakers. Here the Christmas stockings are
hung by the chimney with care, along with the housekeeper and sundry other
unfortunates of a sorority house besieged by an obscene phone caller who has
more on his dirty mind than just getting his ornaments off. Olivia Hussey, Keir
Dullea, Andrea Martin, John Saxon and a glorious foul-mouthed Margot Kidder
head up a cast of Canadians whose indulgence of seasonal carolers is
interrupted by a real killer performance, and director Clark stuffs his
stocking with appearances by familiar faces like Lynne Griffin (Strange Brew, Curtains), Doug McGrath (The Outlaw Josey Wales) and Cronenberg
vets Art Hindle (The Brood) and Les
Carlson (Videodrome) too. The movie
leaves a genuinely wintry, icy chill in the air, one you take with you when the
lights come up.
A Christmas Tale (2008) More than just a spiking of the usual
Hollywood holiday nog, Arnaud Desplechin’s family drama provides a welcome
corrective to movies like The Family
Stone and the usual sentimental shenanigans of the cinematic season while
proving that facile narrative manipulations aren’t required to create a
challenging and emotionally resonant experience. Abel and Junon (Jean-Paul
Rousillon, Catherine Deneuve) head the turbulent Vuillards, a cultured French
family still collectively reeling after the death of a child 30 years earlier, which
gathers together over Christmas when Junon reveals that she has a degenerative
cancer and is looking for a match within the family for a bone marrow
transplant. Unlike The Family Stone,
which also centers on the revelation of cancer devastating the body of its
materfamilias, Desplechin undermines sentimental traps by revealing the disease
right away and making the individual dramas within the group feel like painful
ripples originating from the children’s relationship with their loving but
matter-of-fact mother. Henri (Mathieu Amalric), the disaffected middle child
who may be the only suitable bone marrow donor, has a refreshingly acerbic
relationship with Junon—they openly acknowledge their disregard for each other
while never betraying a wary mutual devotion. He has been banished from the
family by his older sister, Elizabeth, a successful yet recessive playwright
(Anne Consigny) who has a protective relationship with her own emotionally
disturbed son, also a possible donor. And there is a tricky, beautifully
choreographed interplay between Ivan, the youngest Vuillard (Melvil Poupaud),
married to the lovely Sylvia (Chiara Mastroianni), and Simon (Laurent
Capelluto), Ivan’s cousin, a painter who has been obsessed with Sylvia since
they were all young. On paper these relationships might sound as prone to cliché
as those in The Family Stone. But the
magic of Desplechin’s film is in how the writer-director deftly avoids
histrionics while never stinting on substantive and immediate drama,
demonstrating how something likened to a Christmas spirit might reasonably
extend to the everyday. All the actors are grand in ways that perfectly suit
the material and Desplechin’s perspective on it, but special awe must be held
for Deneuve, who convinces us of the wry detachment which informs her matronly
concern and control without ever making an actorly show of it. She’s perfectly
magnificent.
Remember the Night (1940) Easily the most “traditional” movie on this short
list, Mitchell Leisen’s splendid comedy-drama, from a script by Preston
Sturges (the last one he would write before embarking on his own career as a
brilliant director of his own material), sends shoplifter Barbara Stanwyck and
her courtroom prosecutor, Fred MacMurray, on a Christmas road trip to visit
relatives, hers and his. When Stanwyck’s return home proves a devastating
fulfillment of her worst suspicions of maternal disregard, MacMurray decides to
bring her home to meet his own family, where a more resonant and meaningful
holiday lays waiting. The movie beautifully balances Sturges’ peerless wit with
Leisen’s talent for finding the undercurrent of pain beneath the familial pull,
and part of the movie’s enduring appeal for me is not only in its evocation of
a small-town Christmas experience, whether or not any such thing ever really
existed anywhere than in our memories, but also in the gentle reminders woven
within the story of how the joy of the Christmas holiday inevitably must give
way, with melancholy, to a return to the everyday and the unavoidable responsibilities
which come with it. For me Remember the Night has eclipsed the more
celebrated It’s a Wonderful Life, and
certainly the more atmospheric but considerably more synthetic pleasures of
Stanwyck’s other generally beloved holiday entry, Christmas in Connecticut, as the quintessential Hollywood movie
about the spirit of Christmas.
Tales from the Crypt (1972)
Obviously not a Christmas movie, this horror anthology based on stories
from the infamous EC comics series nonetheless sports one smashing
holiday-themed segment, “All Through the House,” in which a murderous spouse
(Joan Collins) gets her comeuppance when she crosses paths with a homicidal
Santa recently escaped from a nearby mental institution. Robert Zemeckis remade
this for the inaugural episode of the ‘90s HBO series (also titled Tales from the Crypt), but when seeking
out this tale it’s best to insist on the original. Here comes Santa Claus, here
comes Santa Claus…
Tommy (1975) Pete
Townshend’s rock opera, as interpreted by cinematic loose cannon nonpareil Ken
Russell (Lisztomania, The Music Lovers),
features one segment early on in which the titular deaf, dumb and blind boy
experiences—or rather remains outside of the experience of-- a typically loud,
ebullient child-oriented Christmas morning celebration. His mother and her
lover (Ann-Margret and Oliver Reed) rail against Tommy’s psychological absence,
the traumatic result of seeing them murder his real father, and despair, with
varying levels of sincerity and anger, over the spiritual vacuum within which
the boy seems trapped: “Tommy doesn’t know what day it is/He doesn’t know who
Jesus was or what praying is/How can he be saved/From the eternal grave?” It’s
a resonant song within the structure of the movie’s narrative, but it also
stands in for the easily accessible emotional and spiritual alienation that for
some is part and parcel of the holiday season.
A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas (2011) If you’re in the mood for an irreverent comic deconstruction of the
various excesses and indulgences of the Christmas season, it’s hard to imagine
how you could do any better than this near-brilliant third installment in the
popular Harold and Kumar series, in which our heroes (John Cho, Kal Penn),
distanced from each other by time, money and the encroaching responsibilities
of actual adulthood, find themselves thrown back together (reluctantly at
first, of course) in a desperate search throughout Manhattan for the perfect
Christmas tree. Along the way they encounter a murderous Russian mobster,
Jesus, Santa and, of course, their personal bête
noire, Neil Patrick Harris, again playing himself in a fearless act of
character self-immolation that ranks right up there with Jennifer Tilly’s
“Jennifer Tilly” in Seed of Chucky
and outdoes even his appearances in the previous two Harold and Kumar movies. Oh, yeah, our heroes also inadvertently
introduce a toddler to the Wu-Tang Clan and the pleasures of pot and cocaine
(this is not your father’s or your mother’s Christmas movie, duh) and end up being
chased by a giant rampaging Claymation snowman. Outrageous to the hilt, the
movie encompasses the relentless cheer, the mania, the materialism, the
sentiment and, of course, the gleeful immolation of everything good and sane
and delightful that Christmas stands for. And somehow it never fails to get me
in the Christmas spirit because, for all its relentless irreverence, it manages
to also sincerely embrace that spirit, however folded, spindled or otherwise
mutilated it may have become since the sorts of Christmases celebrated in
movies like Remember the Night. If
you can somehow see this movie in 3D, please do— along with Piranha 3D it
uses stereoptic technology to greater, and certainly funnier ends that just
about any movie of the modern 3D era. But even flat A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas is still a raunchy, red-nosed,
not to mention red-eyed riot, and around our house it’s a new Christmas classic
too.
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4 comments:
Hey Dennis! Thanks for this list! I'd never even heard of Remember the Night or Cash on Demand!
Just thought I'd suggest one that you might not have seen: the Canadian classic Mon Oncle Antoine, which recreates Christmastime in a small Quebec mining town circa the 1940s (or thereabouts) beautifully. It's one of my favourite movies of all time. Somewhat bleak, but not depressing.
Criterion actually released it a few years back, so maybe you saw it then?
Thanks for mentioning CASH ON DEMAND, which I take great pride in getting onto DVD (as part of the Hammer Icons of Suspense set). If ever there was a Christmas movie that merits the term "hidden gem," this is it.
I'd like to suggest two for next year's list. DONOVAN'S REEF may be a John Ford/John Wayne/Lee Marvin comedy set in the South Seas, but it dos have a lengthy Christmas sequence highlighted by Dorothy Lamour and a choir of children singing "Silent Night."
And what I think is the best animated Christmas movie ever, Aardman's ARTHUR CHRISTMAS, which despite rave reviews got buried in the holiday scrum. A sterling mostly-UK voice cast and a snazzy plot make this a complete delight.
Scott: I have never seen MON ONCLE ANTOINE, but I promise I will before next year's Christmas list! And I'm so glad to have tuned you in to REMEMBER THE NIGHT and CASH ON DEMAND, two perennials around my house these days!
Michael: You're welcome!! And thank YOU for all your efforts to get CASH ON DEMAND out in front of eyeballs like mine who have never seen it before a few years ago. And I will definitely revisit DONOVAN'S REEF with the list in mind. Particularly, I really appreciate the reminder about ARTHUR CHRISTMAS, which a friend of mine has touted since it came out. I can't believe I didn't see it then, but now that my girls have gotten close to growing out of movies like that (at least for the time being) I guess I just haven't had to proper motivation to catch up with it. But now I do!
You both of you gentlemen are having a wonderful and relaxing holiday season filled with movies. Mine certainly has been, on all three counts!
Now that the last video store in my city has closed, I only have itunes and (sigh) netflix to choose from, and neither service offers Cash on Demand or Remember the Night. Sadness!
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