Some movies are just plain old comfort food and our returning to them again and again has little to do with any actual cinematic merit. Maybe there’s a simplicity of story that just makes for a great escape or maybe there’s a time machine quality that helps to transport us back for a couple of hours to when life seemed simpler. And with that I ask…
Who doesn’t remember watching White Christmas as a kid? Every year on some winter weekend afternoon on some local UHF channel you couldn’t help but stop and be dazzled by the big bright holiday colors and Bing Crosby’s warm comforting voice. Director Michael Curtiz’s sequel/remake to the wonderful Holiday Inn really is a kind of Christmas Porn and we should all be big enough to acknowledge that it just isn’t a very good movie.
I know, I know, it’s a classic, a perennial. But it’s also long, slow, talky and, well, sorry … kinda dull in spots. Long spots.
Then why do we love it, why do we hunker down annually and lose ourselves in the slow predictability of it all? Because when you’re feeling Christmassy, the sets, costumes, and oh-gawd-yes, the Vista-Vision, works the senses like mainlined eggnog. And of course, there’s Irving Berlin’s unforgettable score, the stunning Rosemary Clooney, the impossibly leggy Vera-Ellen, the energetic Danny Kaye, and the unique pleasure of watching the ease with which Crosby — Mr. Christmas himself — does everything.
And then there’s those few final minutes where the title song and a big, gorgeously produced, sentimental last-burst-of-Hollywood-Golden-Age finale combine to erase the memory of all the mediocrity that came before.
Mark my words: you’ll watch again next year. Oh, yes you will.
[Note: Other than some revising, pruning, and improving (hopefully), longtime readers will recognize this series from last year at my old perch.]
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