Johnny Deadline: Unsung Christmas Movies

 by JB

Last Tuesday, I attended a theatrical screening of perennial Christmas favorite It’s a Wonderful Life. This may have been a mistake because over the next 23 days, I’ll only have 36 more chances to see it.

It's running as a Cinemark Special Event tonight and Saturday; and as half of the Music Box Theater’s 41st Annual Christmas show, on a double feature with White Christmas, tonight thru December 24th. Like some Christmas songs that I love but have now had quite enough of... (I’m looking at you, “All I Want for Christmas is You,”) some Christmas movies are... over shown and overblown.

Mind you, it used to be worse. Back in the days when It’s a Wonderful Life was considered in the public domain, some UHF stations used to show it on a continuous loop. Ironically, that’s one of the reasons that it became so popular: its sheer ubiquity on every television station in the nation each December. Still, I feel that I have had a bellyful of Zu Zu’s petals for this holiday season, and I need to move on.

SIDE TOPIC: I refuse to enter the “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?” fray. Of course, it is.

Some delightful comedies are generally overlooked as Christmas movies, perhaps because they are wholly successful as comedies and don’t need the holiday angle as a marketing crutch. Trading Places is a Christmas movie; a key scene takes place at an office Christmas party with Dan Aykroyd as a disgusting, inebriated Santa, eating a huge slab of smoked salmon through his beard. Diner is a Christmas movie; one of Kevin Bacon’s misadventures involves stripping out of his skivvies and filling in for Jesus at a local church’s Nativity Scene. The Apartment is a Christmas movie, its black comedy made grimmer by a holiday setting that underscores its themes of loneliness and hope.

SHAMELESS PLUG: If you are looking for a fun, unconventional holiday experience, why not watch perennial Schwarzenegger favorite Jingle All the Way, but with the commentary the F This Movie crew recorded 11 years ago. It’s big fun... and will have you laughing all the way!

NOW TO MY POINT: my suggestion for a fun but overlooked Christmas film to fill out your holiday viewing experience.

Nine years ago, Universal Studios and Turner Classic Movies conspired to elevate an obscure 1940 Christmas confection to classic status, restoring and marketing Paramount’s Remember the Night on Blu-ray disc as an unsung holiday classic. I’m not sure if the film has achieved cult status yet, but it is a delightful comedy, dripping with holiday atmosphere, and features entertaining performances by its two leads.

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: John Sargent (Fred MacMurray) is an assistant district attorney tasked with prosecuting a shoplifter, Lee Leander (Barbara Stanwyck) on Christmas Eve. Knowing that it is well-nigh impossible to expect a guilty verdict on the holiday, Sargent asks for a postponement. The judge grants this, but remands Leander into the custody of Sargent himself. Sargent is forced, in one of those hard-to-believe movie clichés, to take the lovely Leander home with him for the holidays! Guess what happens next?

CAVEAT: One reason Remember the Night has not yet entered the “Hall of Over-Shown Favorites” might be that it features an unfortunately stereotyped black character, MacMurray’s butler Rufus, portrayed by Fred “Snowflake” Toons. This type of portrayal is no longer acceptable, but 1940 was a different time. The relationship between Rufus and John Sargeant is portrayed as one of mutual respect; the two characters seem to be genuine friends, and there is a notable absence of scaredy-cat, eye-rolling nonsense on the part of Toons. Still, modern audiences might be uncomfortable with it, so you have been forewarned.

Despite the caveat, Remember the Night is my go-to “You Have Never Seen This?” holiday recommendation.

I mentioned White Christmas in my first paragraph, and I would be remiss not to recommend the new 4K restoration with all of my black little heart. It’s stunning 4K Blu-Ray, and this is a film that has never looked particularly bad. In fact, at the dawn of digital theater projection, White Christmas at the venerable Music Box Theater was one of the first films I ever saw projected digitally. Back then, people thought theaters switching over to digital projectors was a death knell to the theatrical experience (How wrong they were; the twin death knells turned out to be COVID and streaming!) I remember thinking back then that if every film projected digitally looked like White Christmas at the Music Box, we had nothing to worry about. It was that good.

The new 4K disc is stunning, the best this Vista Vision gem has ever looked. It reminded me that sometimes a restoration like this can get you to watch a film in a new light, and almost make it seem like a brand-new film. Almost...

AN HONEST PLEA FOR HOLIDAY SANITY: In this high-tech age of DCPs and satellite downloads, can’t we have more than four holiday movies that are shown in theaters on a regular basis? It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Elf, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation are all great… but COME ON! I would love to see seasonal theatrical screenings of Meet Me in Saint Louis, the original Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story, Batman Returns, the Alistair Sim Scrooge, The Muppet Christmas Carol, Christmas in Connecticut, or Home Alone.

What Christmas Classic, shown at your local theater, would motivate you, gentle reader, to attend a screening? Comment below. Ho Ho Ho.