Five of My Favorite Christmas Movies

A Geek's Cinelist for December 2024

A Typical Weekend Evening in the Lindke Home Copyright Jody Lindke 2024

Five Christmas Films to Add to Your Annual Movie Marathon

While I am a big enough fan of movies that I will from time to time call myself a Cineaste, I’m also what I like to call “pretentiously anti-pretentious.” If you’ve read this newsletter for some time, you might have some idea of what I mean by that. I like movies as both entertainment and as art, but I dislike those who like things “because they are supposed to” or because they are being “ironic.”

Yes, there are objectively great movies, but people should like them because they are actually good and not because they are supposed to like them. Sorry those of you who think “The Author is Dead” and that “All Art is Subjective,” there are objectively good and objectively bad movies. That doesn’t mean that you have to like them or hate them. I can appreciate that the best professional golfers in the world are objectively good at golf, but I don’t like golf so I don’t like watching people play it. Sometimes films that are well written, expertly edited, exquisitely acted, and look beautiful don’t connect with a viewer. That’s fine.

On another note, I don’t believe it’s possible to “like something ironically.” Either you like it, which is cool, or you don’t like it and are claiming to do so. Now claiming to like something you don’t is an ironic thing to do, but you don’t like it ironically. You might be liking it just to annoy other people and there’s a different turn of phrase for that than being ironic. I might be willing to concede something like a Richard Rorty-esque understanding that you can like something while believing there is no grounds for liking it except your personal preference.

Rorty loved Liberal Democracy, but he believed his love was nothing but personal preference and that there were no objective standards to base his preference on. Genuinely valuing an ideology/belief system while thinking there are no real moral foundations is actually irony, there’s a reason he called his philosophic school Ironism, but he genuinely loves Liberal Democracy. To “ironically” like something is to like it while knowing that’s an indefensible position, but that’s not “liking it ironically” it’s that it’s “ironic that you like it.” That’s a distinction with a difference, one of temperament.

Wow, that’s a lot of words taken up to say that this will be a straightforward list of recommendations that will be films I genuinely like. For the record, Die Hard won’t be among the recommendations. That’s not because it isn’t a Christmas film, it is due to it being a remarriage film predicated on visiting the kids for Christmas being the reason John’s in town. That it’s threat of harm to John’s wife the instantiates reconciliation and not playful flirting and misdirection doesn’t undermine that. I’m not including it because many who say it’s a Christmas film are doing so to be ironic and I hate that.

These are all genuine classic Christmas films that I deeply love, but that I think might be overlooked with the abundance of excellent Christmas films that have been made over the years.

It Happened on 5th Avenue (1947)

Frank Capra was originally slated to make It Happened on 5th Avenue for Liberty Pictures, but he decided to direct the box office flop It’s a Wonderful Life instead. It never ceases to amaze me that it was the fact that It’s a Wonderful Life (minus the score) dropped temporarily into the Public Domain in 1974, allowing it to be broadcast on the cheap, that led to it becoming a seasonal classic. After Capra moved on from the project Roy Del Ruth came in as Producer Director, a mildly surprising choice to me given that crime films and proto-noir had made up so much of his early career though he had worked on some upbeat stories.

It Happened on 5th Avenue seems a film perfectly suited to Capra or Preston Sturges as it deals with the issues of class. It’s also very much a quintessential 1947 film dealing with the neglect many veterans of WWII experienced after returning home. While this is an entirely upbeat film, it was released a year after films like The Best Years of Our Lives and The Razor’s Edge. The direction style falls somewhere between Sturges and Capra. It’s Sturges in that there are no villains in the story, but it’s Capra in that there is a genuine struggle about housing and the responsibility of people to come together. It’s a wonderful film that captures the spirit of charity perfectly.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

The Shop Around the Corner is one of the most romantic films ever made and it is one of the best films to watch in the Christmas season. The film has been remade several times with classics like In the Good Ol’ Summertime and You’ve Got Mail. Each of those classics addressed the one minor flaw in the original, that the reconciliation in the final act comes too quickly, but both lack the one thing that makes The Shop Around the Corner slightly better. While the central conceit of the film is that two pen pals are madly in love with each other in writing and hate each other in person, that is only one of the ways that this particular telling portrays love. The later films focus on the Beatrice and Benedick romantic centerpiece, with it’s quippy and witty dialogue, this film uses those as a brilliant counterpoint to the more subtle love around them.

There’s the love of Pirovitch for his wife and young child that is used as a part of a wonderful “glass slipper” moment in the film. There’s the love of Pepi Katona for the businessman who has given him opportunity. We don’t know his exact backstory, but we imagine it is similar to that of Rudy the boy he chooses to replace him as delivery boy by the end of the film. There is the love of Flora for Mr. Matuschek. It’s a love that Matuschek almost notices at the end and is very subtle, but is there intentionally. Which is likely one reason why Robert Z. Leonard had the two equivalent characters get married in In the Good Ol’ Summertime. There is the “love” of Vadas and Mrs. Matuschek that is a commentary on envy and the importance of real love in a marriage. Finally there is the fatherly love between Kralik and Matuschek.

This is a film that oozes love. Love is, as the voice over of Love Actually states at the end, all around. All three of the major versions of this film are regular staples in my annual viewing. They are all true classics, but Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan have such great chemistry together. It’s no wonder that Ernst Lubitsch rescheduled the shooting of the film to ensure they could both star in it.

The Thin Man (1934)

When people discuss, seriously, whether Die Hard is or isn’t a Christmas film, I always ask them to watch The Thin Man and tell me whether they think it is a Christmas movie. To me it is an almost perfect Christmas film. It’s about a new marriage that encounters a significant challenge as one of the partner’s pasts comes into conflict with relatively newlywed bliss. It’s about charming people, deeply in love, solving a murder and saving a family. The novel by Dashiell Hammett is wonderful, but dark and a bit angry. Hammett, who had been a Pinkerton Union Buster, had little faith in humanity. When my wife and I visited friends in Montana in 2021, we drove past the Golconda mine where Dashiell worked and then quit the Pinkertons. It was a beautiful and stark place that would have been even starker in the Teens and Twenties.

This film manages to keep the dark undertones while keeping its faith in humanity. The Nick and Nora of the film, and its sequels, are much closer in their interactions and love for one another to screenwriters Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich than to the relationship between Hammett and Lillian Hellman that inspired the book characters. They are a couple in love who could bicker, worry, and tease while never losing sight of how much they cared for one another. The movie has a good use of forensic pathology and in solving the case Nick and Nora fall deeper in love and save a younger couple from destroying their relationship. The “meaning of Christmas” stuff comes with the interactions Nick has with people from his past and in the triumph of love.

Going My Way (1944)

Going My Way is a beautiful film about faith and love that has one of the most powerful final moments I’ve ever seen in film. The basic premise for the film is that St. Dominic’s Church in New York City is struggling under the leadership of its elderly pastor Father Fitzgibbon and young priest Father Charles “Chuck” O’Malley has been sent to save the diocese from ruin. Fitzgibbon assumes that O’Malley has come to push him aside and take his place as the new pastor for the church and this sets the stage for the underlying conflict.

O’Malley and Fitzgibbon represent two different pastoral approaches with O’Malley being closer to Pope Francis and Fitzgibbon closer to Pope Benedict in how they react to sin and sinners. While a shallow reading of the film might assert that O’Malley’s approach is always the right one, such readings overlook the influence that Fitzgibbon’s faith and sacrifice have on O’Malley. This is a film with no villains and the only proper pastoral approach being presented is one of love. O’Malley uses the church choir as a way of redirecting the youth of the parish away from criminality and toward charity and community. While the choir story would dominate a modern version of the tale it is merely one of many storylines here, though it does happen to be the one that culminates in a perfect ending.

**** SPOLER ALERT ****

Once O’Malley has gotten the church’s finances stable, Fitzgibbon realizes that he will finally be able to return home to Ireland to see his ancient mother, a woman he hasn’t seen in 45 years. Sadly, an accidental fire damages the church putting things in chaos again. Not so much that it will have to close, but enough that Fitzgibbon will not be able to go home. The film ends with O’Malley having the choir sing “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral” as he sneaks Fitzgibbon’s ancient mother into the makeshift church. As Fitzgibbon sees his mom and goes over to hug her, O’Malley walks off into the distance knowing it’s a job well done. I’ve rarely cried so hard at the end of a movie and the fact that the 1992 Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn film Housesitter references this scene makes it even more powerful.

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, S.Z. Sakall, Sidney Greenstreet, and Reginald Gardiner star in a charming romantic comedy that combines sincerity with a touch of slapstick and farce. It’s rare for an American film to push farce in the way that French films do, though when it does you end up with wonderful comedic experiences like Noises Off and Clue. There is a wonderful bit in the film when Felix (S.Z. Sakall) is teaching Elizabeth (Barbara Stanwyck) how to flip pancakes and another with a missing baby that are delightfully silly, but at its root this is a serious film about real love and a real love match.

Stanwyck plays Elizabeth Lane, one of the most successful family home advice columnists in media. She’s essentially the Martha Stewart of her age and her publisher adores her. She has been working hard and wants a raise. Somehow these two tensions combine with Elizabeth inviting her publisher to her farmhouse in Connecticut for Christmas dinner. The problem? She doesn’t have a farmhouse in Connecticut, but John Sloan (Reginald Gardiner) does and he is madly in love with Elizabeth. Given that Elizabeth is played by Barbara Stanwyck, this is not a stretch of the imagination. Had the film kept Bette Davis, who was originally cast as Elizabeth, this might not have worked so well.

This sets up a delightful game of cat and mouse where Elizabeth and Sloan are going to be married, except for one small wrench in the works. Sloan has agreed to house a wounded veteran in his home for the holiday, and Elizabeth is far more attracted to him than Sloan. There are a lot of jokes that could have been over played here, but none are and everyone ends up happy in the end. While some critics have tried to imply that this film was pushing a conservative ideology to get women back into the kitchen, such critiques are shallow and ignore the resolution which is that Elizabeth gets not only a raise but a promotion and will never be headed to the kitchen.