Watchingwell   

              Curated classic films





    

 In addition . . .

     For some reason, my last year's Christmas post was re-posted on December 20 of this year. I didn't mean for it to happen, but not to worry.  Some of you can re-acquaint yourselves with my favorite Christmas viewing.  However, this year I was going to offer a different list of films that are worth watching on their own merit, but happen to have Christmas going on in the background.

    First, let me say that I don't feel like watching my favorite heartwarming films this Christmas.  It's going to be harder this year to charm me. So I won't be watching The Cheaters or Remember the Night.  Christmas in Connecticut was on TCM and I actually turned it off to watch some British mystery rerun on PBS. I did watch Desk Set which was also shown on TCM and while not charmed, I found new things to admire about Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy and Joan Blondell as actors.

     The first film I'm listing is The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) adapted from the play by George S. Kaufmann and Moss Hart. Directed by William Keighly, it takes place during the Christmas season in a small town in Ohio. Changed my mind about this film after about the third viewing.  I knew many thought it funny, but I didn't.  It was the penguins that put me off -- I can't stand animals used in entertainment, unless they have signed the contract.  But if you skip the beginning and the penguins, it starts to get funny, particularly after Ann Sheridan enters the story.

     Monty Woolley plays Sheridan Whiteside, author, critic, and international celebrity who knows everybody.  He is over-the-top full of his own importance and is generally rude and condescending.  His right-hand assistant, Bette Davis, ignores his obnoxious behavior and is indispensable to him in navigating the world of ordinary people.  This becomes even more important when he falls and injures himself at the doorstep of Daisy and Ernest Stanley (Billie Burke and Grant Mitchell), who must turn over their home and their lives to his whims while he recuperates or suffer a ruinous lawsuit.                                                                                     

     While he is laid up in the small town, Bette Davis falls in love with a local journalist and  aspiring playwright and plans to to marry him and leave her job.  This makes Whiteside desperate and why Ann Sheridan is called in to help break up the romance. For some reason, Jimmy Durante also comes in and delivers my all-time favorite movie quote when he releases the startled nurse, Mary Wickes, from an embrace, and says, "Come to my room in half an hour and bring some rye bread."

    Another film is kind of forgotten by many and, if remembered, is not listed among the career highlights of any of the cast.  But what a cast!  The film is the light comedy, We're No Angels (1955) directed by Michael Curtiz. It stars Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, Aldo Ray, Leo G. Carroll, Joan Bennett, and Basil Rathbone.

      Bogart, Ustinov and Ray are escaped convicts from Devil's Island who have come to a port in the French West Indies to steal what they need to continue their journey.  They find the easily-conned shopkeeper, Leo G. Carroll, and his family, and make themselves useful around the shop and the house during Christmas.  While hoping to rob the family and move on, they begin to care about them and their plight when Cousin Andre (Rathbone) comes to visit and threatens to remove them from the shop and their home. If you are familiar with Peter Ustinov, you are aware of his skill for dry comedy, but it is a wonderful revelation to see Aldo Ray and Humphrey Bogart handling the witty script with such command.

     Their surprising success as merchants recalls a related plot in the film, Larceny, Inc. (1942), a gem of a comedy starring Edward G. Robinson, who takes over a luggage store because it is next door to a bank his gang plans on robbing.  But his earnest salesmanship with the customers during the Christmas shopping season throws a monkey wrench into the plan.  Directed by Lloyd Bacon, there isn't a slow moment as the scheme unfolds with snags and setbacks. Also starring Jane Wyman, Broderick Crawford, Anthony Quinn and Jack Carson. Although well-known for his gangster roles, you really should see Edward G. Robinson kill it in comedy.  

     My next selection, Since You Went Away (1944), directed by John Cromwell, has its detractors, as does Mrs. Miniver (1942) and probably for similar reasons. But judge with your heart not your brain and recall that when it was released, it was wartime and families all over the country saw in it a reflection of their own experiences, elevated by the artistry of the black and white photography of Lee Garmes and Stanley Cortez and a score by Max Steiner.  Claudette Colbert stars as the wife of an absent soldier, with daughters, Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple, and friend of the family, Joseph Cotten. Robert Walker plays a young man about to go to war and on the way, falls in love with Jennifer Jones.  They have a very brief and happy time together  pretending to plan for their future before he has to leave.  Whatever you may think of the rest of the film, you wouldn't be human if you have dry eyes during the scene in the train station. The Christmas scene is also poignant as the Christmases of all the families, with members, serving and absent, think about their homecoming and the ones who will never come home.

     Last year, I recommended After the Thin Man for it's New Years Eve in San Francisco setting.  The year I am recommending The Thin Man (1934), the first in the series where the thin man is actually the corpse and not Nick Charles, Detective, played by William Powell, as it was in all the following Thin Man films. In this film, which is also directed by W. S. Van Dyke, Nick is newly retired now that he is married to wealthy Nora, played to perfection by Myrna Loy, whose estate he is managing. He is happy-go-lucky, drinking his nights away in every stylish watering hole in New York, matched martini for martini by Nora, when he is reluctantly drawn into the mystery of a missing acquaintance by the man's daughter. Nora finds the detective business a little thrilling and is enthusiastic about Nicky solving the mystery.  Their relationship, as revealed by their repartée, is what really makes The Thin Man series so entertaining, more so than the mystery or the inevitable, ultimate scene where all the suspects are gathered and the guilty one is identified, after the camera lingers on each terrified face. 

  

    After one particular night of alcoholic over-indulgence, we drop in on the Charles family, Nick, Nora and their clever terrier, Asta, on Christmas morning. The scene has nothing to do with the mystery.  It just reveals more of the nature of the relationship by the way they talk to each other in the sarcastic and off-hand manner that is so very modern.
 

Merry Viewing to You