| | |  Entertainment | November 2008 
Holiday Movie Favorites, From Some Insiders
 New York Times
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| | Edward Zwick, the director and co-writer of "Defiance," writes: This year I intend to watch "Made for Each Other" (1939), in which Jimmy Stewart and Carole Lombard play a married couple who begin the evening estranged, only to have the events bring them closer than they've ever been. (Everett Collection) | | |
Five insiders from the film industry discuss their holiday movie picks.
MADE FOR EACH OTHER (1939)
I hate noisemakers. I don’t much like Champagne. And there’s something about a holiday that celebrates the passing of time that makes me anxious. This is a source of contention in my marriage when, every year, my wife tries to make up for my bad mood by bringing together our friends for what she calls a dance party and I call a middle-aged horror show.
My ambivalence about this particular night — I try to tell her — is shared by the great filmmakers.
In Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard” (1950), Norma Desmond prepares a party for two in her mausoleum of a ballroom. She manically flitters about in anticipation of a romantic dance with Joe Gillis. (At our house, considerably south of Sunset Boulevard, I remove the piles of books, scripts, newspapers and magazines that overflow our dining room table the other 364 days a year.) By night’s end, La Desmond is rejected and attempts suicide. I fall asleep at 10.
In Chaplin’s “Gold Rush” (1925), the Little Tramp works for weeks to prepare a party for a bar hostess who fails to show up on time. When at last she glimpses the elaborately decorated room, she knows she can’t possibly live up to his dreams of her. Not unlike how I feel when, upon returning from my sixth trip to the market because I forgot the guacamole, I find myself watching through the window, my heart melting, as my wife lovingly lights hundreds of candles.
And so this year I intend to watch “Made for Each Other” (1939), in which Jimmy Stewart and Carole Lombard (above) play a married couple who begin the evening estranged, only to have the events bring them closer than they’ve ever been.
Only in the movies. - EDWARD ZWICK, director and co-writer of “Defiance,” opening Dec. 31.
THE MARK OF ZORRO (1940)
My favorite holiday film experience was in the small Mexican town of Yelapa, south of Puerto Vallarta. I was in architecture school at the University of Texas at Austin, and my friend Suby and I had traveled south for Christmas break, taking a “tourist” boat across the Bay of Banderas. The funky old boat held only about 50 people, but there was a D.J. who thought he was on a Princess Cruise — he loved coaxing the gringos into dancing. He shared his surefire secret to a good life: “Move your bonbon and be happy.” (It turns out he was right. If you say his line and actually move your bonbon, you pretty much have to smile.)
After about an hour, we arrived at a remote fishing village without electricity or automobiles. Suby and I set up our tent on the beach under the coconut trees. We swam and hiked during the day, and at night the jungle roads were lighted with candelaria. We heard they were showing a movie near the church, so we hiked up the hill and sat on wooden benches in a tiny dirt plaza. We watched as two guys hung a sheet on the side of the building. A projector hooked up to a generator started playing the 1940 black-and-white “Mark of Zorro,” with Tyrone Power.
The flickering images drew the townspeople like moths — the benches filled up — everyone was riveted to the “screen.” The locals were especially amused to see the Mexicans speaking lines in English — “Let’s go!,” “Get ’em!” — which were then subtitled back into Spanish. The highlight of the film, which had the entire village howling with laughter, was when a fleeing “peasant” got whipped by a villain on horseback — and his pants fell down. - CATHERINE HARDWICKE, director of "Twilight," set to open Nov. 21.
THE RECKLESS MOMENT (1949)
A favorite holiday film is Max Ophüls’s “Reckless Moment” (1949), which was released just three years after Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.” In this film, Christmas comes to epitomize the smothering nature of family.
Joan Bennett plays an overprotective mother trying to cover for her teenage daughter, who is involved in a man’s death. Every time Ms. Bennett’s character, Lucia Harper, tries to find a moment alone with her blackmailer-lover, Martin Donnelly (played by James Mason), some relative barges through the room lugging a Christmas tree or strumming a ukulele. Her only moment of quiet time occurs when she’s alone, out in a boat, ditching the body.
Where “It’s A Wonderful Life” shows family cohesion and community, all wrapped in a warm Christmas spirit, the tribe in “The Reckless Moment” is fractured — the father is just a voice on the phone, and every person in the house is so focused on his or her own drama that any encounter with another family member is an intrusion.
At the end of the film, when Lucia hits bottom and finally breaks down, she is interrupted by a long-distance call from her husband. She holds the receiver, chokes back the tears and tells him: “We’re getting a blue Christmas tree this year. Everything is fine, except we miss you terribly.” - KELLY REICHARDT, director and co-writer of "Wendy and Lucy," opening Dec. 10.
DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS(1966)
Three reasons that “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” (1966) could be the most subversive American film ever:
1) The Grinch is a character in a Cormac McCarthy novel. Let’s think for a minute. How come there’s only one Grinch? No girlfriend, no cousins, no shrink. And what is he doing in Whoville? Why isn’t there a Grinchville? If I were the only one of my kind, eking out a miserable existence in a post-apocalyptic cave with my dog without the benefit of any medication, I’d hang myself from the nearest tree, provided it had tinsel.
Maybe he was displaced. Maybe he’s a refugee of some kind.
What if there was a war, a horrible war, and all the other Grinches were shipped off to gulags and the Grinch escaped by hiding inside the Moss-Covered Three-Handled Family Credenza (see Cat, Hat). And traumatized by survivor’s guilt, he has been relocated to just north of Whoville, where he can see the table and smell the cooking but never gets invited to dinner.
2) Or though it credits Chuck Jones, I smell Martin Scorsese.
The Grinch, a petty thief and vandal, lives in a state of arrested emotional development and an entrenched sense of entitlement. He has nothing but contempt for the suckers who follow the rules and a domestic partner, Max, who is terrified of him yet remains devoted.
3) But it could be a horror film written by Aeschylus.
Who are the Whos exactly?
One big, vaguely humanoid cult with curly eyelashes that, despite a lot of singing about Christmas and love, manages to stalk and kill the hapless Roast Beast and feed it to its children.
There is a vault somewhere with unseen footage of the Whos playing their karfloofles at earsplitting volumes until the Roast Beast flees from its lair and falls into the Who Death Pit, and they all stab it with spears. And then they take the carcass to the Who butcher, who chops it in pieces and wraps it in bloody packages to sell for filthy lucre, or worse, to give away in the spirit of the season. And at the very end the Grinch is so terrified of them that he himself carves the Roast Beast, his own brother in persecution and loneliness. - JENNY LUMET, screenwriter of "Rachel Getting Married."
DIE HARD (1988)
I tend to take my Christmas films regionally. “Miracle on 34th Street” will forever be the Christmas movie when I’m in New York. “A Christmas Story” is the one when I’m back in my hometown, Princeton Junction, N.J. (While the film is set in Cleveland, Ralphie’s yellow-eyed nemesis, Scut Farkus, and the real-life villain of my childhood share the same last name.) George Bailey and his building and loan provide a most versatile (and slightly obvious) Swiss Army knife for life on the road, turning wherever you may be into Bedford Falls.
But these days I find myself living in Los Angeles, not far from Century City, in the shadow of Fox Plaza or, as I will always call it, Nakatomi Plaza — setting of perhaps the greatest American caper film since “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” (1974) and undoubtedly the finest action film of its era, “Die Hard” (1988). Not often remembered as a Christmas movie (along with its not-so-timeless cousin, “Lethal Weapon”), “Die Hard,” starring Bruce Willis was and still is the ultimate stocking stuffer: a great action film, a great crime film, a great comedy and perhaps the single best use of Beethoven’s Ninth in the history of cinema.
Should you ever find yourself jet-lagged and lost in the alien landscape that is Los Angeles at Christmastime, curl your toes in the carpet, grab a cup of hot cider and have yourself a merry little yippee-kai-yay. - CHRISTOPHER MCQUARRIE, screenwriter of "Valkyrie," opening Dec. 26. |
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