“The next person who says Merry Christmas to me, I’ll kill ‘em.”: Alternate Christmas Movies

I love Christmas movies.  Every winter, as the season approaches, I feel a battle begin to rage within me, two sides fighting over when it is too early to start watching Christmas movies (the same battle is fought over Christmas music but that’s another post).  Some years November wins, others I survive until December.  There is also a battle over which movies to view each year.  I don’t want to tire of them but there a few, some mentioned on this list, that I find it infinitely difficult to avoid every year, they give me so much joy.  I know, many of you are saying, “Man, Dave, you need to get a life.”, to which I reply, “Any life lived is a life, even if it’s not what you would do with yours.”  But I digress.  I don’t want to talk about what many call ‘the classics’ (although there are many here I would not call that), Christmas Vacation, Miracle On 34th Street, Home Alone, It’s a Wonderful Life (which I do love watching…often), you get the idea. Although there are many ‘alternative’ Christmas movie lists in this crazy internet tube, I have laid out one ground rule for my list:  the piece being watched has to have the December/January holidays as its theme or take place during this period for more than half of its running time.  That way, unlike Warner Brothers, who released a Christmas collection a few years ago with Boys Town included even though only the first few minutes take place at Christmas, mine are TRULY holiday movies.  Of course this will in effect remove some of my favourites from the list, Holiday Inn and Christmas In July, to name two (okay, Christmas In July takes place in JULY but anytime I can give props to a Preston Sturges movie, I will).  Well, let’s see what this fool watches (almost) every year.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – “Really?  A Bond movie?”, you may ask.  Well, as a Bond fanatic, and more the books than the movies (Roger Moore almost singlehandedly destroyed the series), On Her Majesty’s Service is my favourite book and was my favourite Bond movie until the new Casino Royale.  The book shows Bond at his most vulnerable, in love, and at his most angry, when that love is threatened, and the movie manages to stick closely to the book.  James Bond becomes Sir Hilary Bray, genealogist,  and spends his Christmas holidays at a ski resort/clinic in beautiful Switzerland trying to finally bring down the elusive Blofeld, played smarmily by Telly Savalas.  Even though, I’m not fond of John Glen’s erratic fight scene editing and George Lazenby, in his only Bond appearance, isn’t Sean Connery (but he’s miles better than the stiff Moore), this one has lots of holiday cheer, skiing, figure skating and Diana Rigg.

The Thin Man – Now I’m really stretching, you may say, but the fact is that the first Thin Man movie takes place almost entirely over Christmas eve and Christmas day and has much holiday cheer, in the form of copious amounts of alcohol consumed by William Powell and Myrna Loy as the mystery-solving Nick and Nora Charles, a rich couple who have some unseemly connections (his, actually).  As in the novel by Dashiell Hammett, the mystery is simply a cover for a romantic screwball comedy, with Powell and Loy throwing around wisecracks like a drunk spilling their drink.  In many ways, it’s the anti-Christmas movie because there’s not a lot of goodwill to men, just murders to solve and this is never more clear than when Nora says, after a few too many Merry Christmases are bandied about, “The next person who says Merry Christmas to me, I’ll kill ‘em.”  By the way, there were 5 sequels, all with the Thin Man moniker, even though the titular Thin Man was a victim in the first movie only.

3 Godfathers – This might be the least known movie on the list.  A John Ford/John Wayne western, 3 Godfathers is a Christmas parable about three outlaws on the run through the desert.  They come upon a pregnant woman who, with the help of the three men, gives birth before dying and her last wish is that the men take care of the baby so they head to the town of New Jerusalem where they find her family but also reparation for their crimes.  This is a terrific movie with strong Nativity themes running throughout and takes place entirely during the Christmas week.  If you haven’t seen this lesser-known gem, search it out.

Remember the Night – Okay, I managed to squeeze a Preston Sturges movie on to the list.  Sturges wrote the screenplay but Mitchell Leisen directed (even though Sturges was very blunt about his less-than-exemplary opinion of Leisen’s skills).  Barbara Stanwyck plays a thief in New York, court-ordered to spend Christmas week with lawyer Fred Macmurray, whose plans to visit his family now have some excess baggage.  The requisite crazy Sturges dialogue and oddball characters keep the laughs coming but the standout is the heart-tugging scene when Stanwyck makes a stop at her childhood home, to find she’s neither welcome nor wanted.

Elf – Every year the studios try to catch lightning in a bottle by releasing a couple of Christmas movies, hoping they catch the public’s fickle attentions.  Usually we get a Deck the Halls or Surviving Christmas (if you haven’t heard of these, be happy) but every once in a while we get an Elf.  Although this one has been catching some speed the last couple of years, Elf is still a bit of an outsider and the most enjoyable Christmas movie in years.  Will Ferrell is a human adopted as a baby by Santa and raised as an elf but realizes he’s not like the other elves so he travels to New York to find his father, curmudgeon book publisher James Caan.  This one successfully mixes some edge with some sweet scenes (especially with sort-of romantic interest, Zooey Deschanel, who shines here) to create very big laughs.  My only complaint is that the movie is almost derailed by a silly (even within the context of this movie) finale in Central Park. 

Die Hard – This is my favourite Christmas movie.  It is actually my favourite movie, period, so by virtue of that, it has to be my favourite Christmas movie.  You may think that this movie is about New York cop John McClane fighting terrorists in a Los Angeles highrise, an action-packed thrill ride filled with violence and inappropriate language and you would be right, but it is also chock-a-block with Christmas music, decorations, holiday cheer, faith in your fellow-man, a negative predilection towards greed and consumerism and family togetherness.  Think about it.

Honourable Mention: Saturday Night Live, December 8, 1990 – I know.  This is an episode of a television comedy sketch show and so, it really doesn’t belong on this list…that’s why it’s an honourable mention.  Saturday Night Live has had a spotty success rate and I’m not patient enough to slog through the crap to find that golden kernel of comedy, however the night this aired, I was otherwise engaged and I heard Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians were the musical guests and I was very into them at the time so I taped it.  Thank you to myself for that prescience.  This was one of the only SNL episodes that worked (for me) from start to finish.  Tom Hanks hosted and once again, brought back my favourite SNL character, Mr. Short Term Memory in a skit that after dozens of viewings still makes me roll on the floor (“Hey!  You’re Tony Randall!”).  ‘The Five Timers Club’, ‘Carl Sagan’s Global Warming Christmas Special’, ‘Sabra Shopping Network”, all absolutely hilarious.  And, oh yeah, Edie Brickell was good, too.

To all my friends, family and readers, may the joy of the season be made manifest in your lives.

The Death Of Classic DVDs Will Be the Death Of Me

I LOVE classic movies.  When a new one is released on DVD or shows up at the local rep theatre, my excitement is palpable.  People always ask me if I have Turner Classic Movies in my cable selection and I tell them that if I did, I would never leave the house (the other side of that coin is that due to my…’involvement’ with a local video store that has one of the largest rental collections in Canada, from whom I receive free rentals, we only have basic cable, which doesn’t include TCM).  Now, when I say ‘classic’, I don’t mean The Breakfast Club or Happy Gilmore.  I don’t even mean The Godfather or Rocky.  I mean black and white.  I mean movies that are older than your parents (in some cases, your grandparents).  I get all aflutter over movies with Errol Flynn, Jean Arthur and Cary Grant in them.  I become giddy as a schoolgirl when I think of movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and Preston Sturges.  I actually know who Zasu Pitts, Franklin Pangborn and Edward Everett Horton are…and I like them!  When I say, “They don’t make them like they used to”, I mean it.  But my excitement came to a screeching halt a few weeks ago, thanks to an article in ‘Canada’s newsmagazine’, Maclean’s. 

On August 6, Maclean’s published an article entitled “Say goodbye to big screen classics”, (http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/08/06/say-goodbye-to-big-screen-classics/) which espoused the theory that classic movies on DVD would become as rare as the dodo, or a Toronto sports team winning a championship.  Through interviews with a smattering of highly placed studio execs, the story developed that studios, due to a downturn in sales, would be virtually discontinuing the release of classics, other than huge hits like The Wizard Of Oz and Gone With the Wind.  Even a ’boutique’ distribution company like Criterion would be paring back their schedule with more of a focus on modern film.  Well, I have a word or three to say on this…

I work in the trenches, retail trenches, that is.  As the sole person in charge of the ordering for one of the largest video stores in Canada (8,000 titles for rent, 10,000 titles for sale when the average Rogers and Blockbuster carries 1000-1500), I have a daily view into the soul of the DVD consumer and most of the time I don’t like what I see.  There has always and will always be crap.  The term ‘B movie’ came from the time when you went to the theatre for the evening, and saw two movies, the ‘big’ title, an ‘A’ title and a lower budget (and usually quality) ‘B’ title.  So yes, there will always be the Adam Sandler fan (don’t think he’s the first to make a fortune from lower-brow comedy…before him there was Chevy Chase, Jerry Lewis, Don Knotts, Lucille Ball, Arthur Lake (Blondie), Three Stooges and Fatty Arbuckle). 

It seems clear to me though that the quality of these classics are much higher than what today’s studios are putting out.  I don’t know if it’s the old studio ‘contract’ system which basically forced most actors and crew to appear in or work on whatever the studio heads told them to.  There wasn’t any of the script readings by actors and agents to decide if the potential movie fit his or her image (the studio head told YOU what fit your image).  You were on a weekly salary and you did what the bosses told you (which doesn’t sound all that different from my job, except for the pay scale).  A real difference is that while the Warners, David Selznick and Harry Cohn were businessmen first, they knew and loved movies while today’s execs are mostly MBA graduates who think that the French New Wave is Depeche Mode.  William Goldman famously said that in Hollywood, no one knows anything and that is more true today than ever. 

Yes, I admit that there is some good stuff coming out of Hollywood today (this year alone we’ve so far had Up, (500) Days of Summer, Away We Go, Inglourious Basterds and District 9) but most of this is coming from independent filmmakers or those who work outside the system with that system’s blessing.  I’ve already written a blog on the death of Hollywood (http://argento2665.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/the-blockbuster-and-the-death-of-hollywood/) so I don’t want to get back on that soapbox but I can’t help but think these issues are intrinsically tied together.  If we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it and if someone removes that history, we have nothing to learn from.  Classic DVD’s are that history and I would hate to see a day when I’m forced to resort to trading with other movie buffs on the information superhighway for a fourth generation VHS dub of Sullivan’s Travels (a movie about movies that will change the way you think about movies).  I fear though that day is closer than we all think.