| The 10 Essential Christmas Movies
|
 |
 | By
Al Weisel
CDNOW Senior Editor, Movies
"It was always snowing at Christmas," Dylan Thomas writes
in his evocative prose poem A Child's Christmas in
Wales about his childhood holiday memories. Just say the
word Christmas and our thoughts to hazy days of snow-covered
landscapes, the smell of sugar cookies wafting from the
kitchen, houses bedecked with colored lights, and the moment
when we rip the paper off the package and find a model plane
or a Barbie doll or a video game we've always wanted inside.
Somehow we never remember the Christmases when it didn't snow
or we didn't get exactly what we wanted.
And even if we never had any of these experiences we all
lived through them vicariously in the wonderful movies and
television specials played every year. Christmas movies,
perhaps because we've seen so many of them so many times from
the moment that we were young, have a deep connection to
something in our psyche. They've become an integral part of
the ritual of the holiday.
What's strange about many of these movies and TV shows is
how dark many of them are. Their plots include suicide, death,
poverty, broken homes, and any number of tragedies. Christmas
should be the happiest time of the year. Unfortunately, it
doesn't always live up to our memories of what it's supposed
to be like. Much of the stress we feel during the holiday when
we get older is related to the fact that we are forced to
remember the ideals of our youth and how often they fail to
match up with the realities of adulthood. George Bailey, the
Grinch, and Scrooge all face this same crisis of the spirit
and learn to triumph over it. As they stare into the snow
globes of their childhoods they have the great fortune to
learn the meaning of "Rosebud" long before they take their
dying breaths.
| |
| 1. It's a Wonderful Life
(1946) |
 Although the holiday season often sees a rise in
suicide attempts, that hardly seems like the subject of an
uplifting Christmas movie. Yet this heart-warming Frank Capra
film, which stars Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, a man who
tries to kill himself on Christmas Eve, is a moving tribute to
the essential goodness of people and captures perhaps better
than any other film the true spirit of Christmas. After an
angel saves his life, Bailey gets the chance to see what the
world would be like if he had never lived, learning how
important every one of us is to one another.
|
|
| |
|
| 2. Miracle on 34th Street
(1947) |
 Though this underrated film is a popular Christmas
staple, it's so much more than a holiday confection. This
story of a man who believes he's Santa Claus and the cynical
little girl who has no faith in things unseen, is actually a
deceptively simple religious allegory about the nature of
faith. Edmund Gwen won an Oscar for his performance as the
gentle man who claims to be more than just a department store
Santa and a young Natalie Wood plays the girl whose single
mother has lost the ability to love and infected her daughter
with her cynicism.
|
|
| |
| 3. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
(1965) |
 Like all of Dr. Seuss' wonderful stories, How the
Grinch Stole Christmas, a faithful animated adaptation of
his work, has a very important and beautifully rendered
message. When the bitter, unloving Grinch attempts to steal
Christmas from the peace-loving Whos by taking all their
gifts, decorations, and food, he learns that the spirit of
Christmas has nothing to do with these accouterments. Chuck
Jones' animation wonderfully evokes Seuss' bizarre and
delightful world.
|
|
| |
|
| 4. The Bishop's Wife (1947) |
 The lonely wife of a Bishop who is more concerned with
building a big cathedral than the spiritual well being of the
members of his congregation is visited by an angel played by
Cary Grant (who one hopes is the prototype of all angels).
Through his intercession the Bishop rediscovers that being a
good minister has nothing to do with having a church that's
bigger than anybody else's.
|
|
| |
| 5. Meet Me in St. Louis
(1944) |
 Vincente Minnelli's glorious musical about a family in
St. Louis in 1903, the year of the World's Fair, stars Judy
Garland and young Margaret O'Brien. The movie is divided into
four seasons, from summer to spring, when the family is set to
move away to New York, missing the fair. Christmas brings into
focus the trauma of moving away from their home and leaving
behind everything that's familiar to them, culminating in Judy
Garland's wistful rendition of "Have Yourself a Merry Little
Christmas," one of the great movie Christmas songs of all
time.
|
|
| |
|
| 6. A Charlie Brown Christmas
(1965) |
 The death of Charles Schulz means that we won't be
seeing any new adventures of his idiosyncratic characters who
never grew up. But we'll be watching A Charlie Brown
Christmas, the first Peanuts animated special, for many
Christmases to come. Charlie Brown's attempt to put on a
Christmas pageant to illustrate the true meaning of Christmas
predictably goes awry, symbolized by the sad, drooping
Christmas tree he finds, until wise-beyond-his-years Linus
reminds everyone what Christmas is all about with a quote from
St. Luke. The soundtrack,
with Vince Guaraldi's jazzy, melancholy music, is etched in
the Christmas memories of everyone who grew up after this show
premiered.
|
|
| |
| 7. A Christmas Carol (1951) |
 There have been many versions of Charles Dickens'
Christmas classic, from Reginald Owen's 1938 film to the
recent adaptation with Patrick Stewart, but this 1951 version
is still the best, largely because of Alastair Sim's
performance as Scrooge. Some have criticized his Scrooge for
not being mean enough before the visits from the ghosts of
Christmas past, present, and future leads to his
transformation, but he gives the most human and least
caricatured performance of the infamous miser. Future Avenger
Patrick MacNee plays the young Jacob Marley.
|
|
| |
|
| 8. Nightmare Before Christmas
(1993) |
 From Tim Burton's demented mind sprang this gothic
Christmas tale about a plot by some grisly creatures from
Halloween Village to kidnap Santa and take over the production
of Christmas. Made with stop-motion animation, this film's
imaginative world is full of bizarre characters who give
Christmas a hilariously ghoulish twist. The songs by Danny
Elfman are also memorable.
|
|
| |
| 9. Remember the Night
(1940) |
 Preston Sturges wrote this funny, touching tale of a
thief (Barbara Stanwyck) who spends Christmas with the
District Attorney (Fred MacMurray) prosecuting her when her
trial is put over for the holidays. Rejected by her cold
mother, the thief finds her heart melted by the warmth of the
D.A.'s quirky but loving rural family. Predictably, they fall
in love, but Sturges' crackling dialogue makes the film
something more than a sentimental fairy tale.
|
|
| |
|
| 10. Holiday Inn (1942) |
 With songs by Irving Berlin, dancing by Fred Astaire,
and singing by Bing Crosby, how could you go wrong? This light
holiday bon-bon set at a supper club that goes all out for the
holidays is about two men who are rivals for the affection of
one woman. But the plot is secondary in this captivating
musical, which includes the most popular Christmas song ever
written, "White Christmas."
|
|
| | |
