Horror and Sci-Fi films old and new, weirdo trash, arthouse, forgotten gems, well loved classics, and I'm watching the original Dr Who from the beginning.
Miracle on 34th Street remains perennial yuletide viewing, largely thanks to the charm of the cast, the innocence of the main characters and the lack of any heavyhanded preaching.
After seeing the Santa at the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade staggering around drunk, Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) protests to the parade organiser Doris Walker (Maureen O'Hara). She offers him the job and he proves to be such a hit, he is taken on as the in-store Santa too. However, after a run-in with a psychologist, Kringle is sent to a mental institute - but a wily lawyer reckons he can get him out, if he can legally prove that he is the real, genuine, one and only Santa Claus.
Gwenn is utterly charming as Kringle, bringing a total unironic sincerity and a genuine sweetness that makes him impossible to dislike. The other star is Natalie Wood as Walker's daughter Susan, a girl brought up by her disillusioned mother to only believe in the rational and not to waste time on imagination. The character's pessimism stops her from becoming cloying, but Wood also manages to give her enough charm to make her likeable. Also, look fast for the always enjoyable Thelma Ritter making her big screen debut as a harried toy-hunting mom, before going on to memorable roles in the likes of Rear Window and All About Eve.
It is perhaps easy to label a much-loved film like this as timeless, but in many ways, it is very much of its time. A world without computers, iPads and mobile phones (and one where a mother happy to let a complete stranger spend whole days babysitting her young daughter and taking her out to the zoo) seems like a completely foreign one. Basing the story around departments stores and marketing men puts it between the time of post war euphoria and the increasing commercialism and Mad Men style ad campaigns of the 1950s. The film doesn't beat you over the head with a radical anti-capitalist message, but if there is anything to take away, perhaps it should be that amongst the noise, booze, shopping and stress, there should always be time for a little bit of magic.
One of Hitchcock greatest films, Rear Window is an ode to voyeurism that effortlessly combines mystery, wit, and romance, and has some interesting things to say about both the movies and moviegoers. Hitchcock is at the height of his powers, and his complete control of the film means there is not a wasted scene or line.
James Stewart plays L.B. Jeffries, a globe-trotting, thrill-seeking news photographer whose last assignment left him with a broken leg. Apart from visits from his socialite girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly), and his insurance company nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter), he is forced to spend the summer cooped up in his apartment, passing the time by taking an interest in the lives of his neighbours in the courtyard opposite. There is the beautiful ballet dancer, the newly married couple, Miss Lonely Hearts, a composer struggling with writer's block - and a salesman, Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) and his bedridden wife. When the wife mysteriously disappears, Jeffries begins to think there is something sinister going on.
The whole story takes place in one room, something Hitchcock had attempted before with the flawed but interesting Rope, but here there are two important differences. Firstly, while Rope was set in real time, Rear Window takes place over a week or so, giving more time to introduce the characters and build up the storyline. Secondly, in Rear Window, the location is used to provide a portal into a much larger world.
The window itself becomes a metaphor for the screen that we watch the film on. What he is seeing is just like a movie. The characters and story form, he gets gripped by this, but at tense heart stopping moments, he is almost always as powerless to intervene as we are, and like us, is reduced to the role of passive voyeur.
The theme even extends beyond the on screen characters, to take in our viewing of the relationship between the two leads. There is great chemistry between the leads, and several times Hitchcock shoots passionate scenes between Stewart and Kelly in such an extreme close manner that we begin to feel like voyeurs.
However, in a further twist, Jeffries goes beyond the role of passive voyeur, when he tries to intervene in the plot of the unfolding story. After antagonising his chief suspect, said suspect performs the equivalent of the movie monster coming out of the cinema screen and into his real life, threatening him physically.
Hitchcock's genius is to set all this within a tense, witty suspense thriller with two gorgeous likeable and charismatic stars, and a great supporting cast, particularly the sinister Burr, and Thelma Ritter as Jeffries' droll nurse Stella, whose disapproving attitude towards the sleuthing soon morphs into morbid fascination.
