White Christmas – ‘Tis the Season Cinema

I am tagging a long a bit with Lisa at Boondock Ramblings and Erin at Cracker Crumb Life with their Christmas movie watching (‘Tis the Season Cinema). Last week was a lot of fun, so even though I might be kind of late here, here I go with this week’s film.

And yes, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Wow! No wonder people went to the movies once upon a time! I have been to the movies twice in the last ten years or so – I saw They Shall Not Grow Old in 2018 and Man of God earlier this year. Both were fantastic, but both were fairly “niche” films which had very limited runs. I don’t work right by a movie theater anymore, but for years now, I don’t hear about anything I’d like to watch in theaters – they all seem to be blockbusters, and almost nothing seems appropriate for bringing kids to.

This actually reminds me of passing a theater in a mall in Sioux Falls, South Dakota in 2020. South Dakota did even less “locking down” because of Covid-19 than Florida did, and that summer, there were no new movies being released to theaters because theaters pretty much everywhere else were closed. Obviously, somebody had a James Bond thing going on here, but there still were a mix of adult, family, and kids’ movies.

So… “White Christmas”. I had never seen this movie before. I’m not kidding you. I think one of the reasons I don’t think about “movies” as a recreational pastime is that my parents weren’t very much into movies either. This is a movie that is a feature-length (2 hours) “adult” movie with no swearing, no sex, no violence, and a group of characters who may not always be angels, but are primarily motivated by the good. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, as the movie is from 1954, but it was amazing to watch. How sad that the “family-friendly” romantic comedy seems to be dead, dead, dead. The most “risque” thing here is probably the men “filling in” for the young women in their song and dance number while the young women are escaping the premises. Very, very tame by today’s standards!

I had two classes in college under the theater department, one was a beginning acting class, and one was “American Musical Theater”. I kept noticing things that were mentioned in both classes regarding the period and the acting and everything. The “show within a movie” is a pretty tried-and-true method of getting some extra songs and dances in, and I supposed this is the one place where I wasn’t necessarily feeling that some of that was moving the plot along, but if you went to the movies wanting to see songs and dance, it works. 🙂

I also have been watching a fair amount of YouTube channels about historical hair and clothing, and I remember somebody recently mentioning about how the 1950s fashion still has an outsized influence on fashion and what we consider beauty today, so seeing this “in its element” was gorgeous too.

The plot, like a lot of musicals, was fairly thin, but the characters who are able to work with the plot twists are what really make the film watchable. It’s because of this that even though the movie is set in its present time, and could only work there, the movie is still a classic.

It was amazing to see the treatment they had of veterans, but considering that the film came out less than ten years after the end of WWII, that’s understandable, as much more of the general population had experience with being in the military than today. I worked on US military bases abroad for nearly four years, and it was nice to see a film that depicts military members that do go back home to “normal” lives, rather than being either part of some elite fighting force or damaged by their experiences in the military.

The Stanislavski method was already a thing then, but it was fun to see a movie with acting rather than just emoting all over the place. And adults acting like adults, and humor that was funny without being gross.

Yes, it’s a Christmas movie, and yes, it gives Bing Crosby two occasions to sing “White Christmas” (one as a solo). Again, his voice is amazing, but he’s got so much control over it (I’m so glad Mariah Carey was not allowed to trademark calling herself the “Queen of Christmas”. She has an incredible voice and an incredible range, but she’s completely the opposite of Bing Crosby in style – she’s just all over the place with her voice, and I’ve never liked that.)

(I also want to mention, very quickly that the hairstyle of Phil (played by Danny Kaye) reminded me very much of Kramer from Seinfeld, and I couldn’t not see that sometimes.)

Anyway, I don’t know if this is a great review, but it’s been a busy week and I was happy for the chance to watch a refreshingly sweet movie (even if I had to break it up). Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

I haven’t read the other reviews, but if you’re interested to read, Lisa’s review is here: https://lisahoweler.com/2022/11/26/tis-the-season-cinema-white-christmas/ and Erin’s is here: https://crackercrumblife.com/2022/11/26/tis-the-season-cinema-white-christmas/. I appreciate being able to tag along with these movies! 🙂

P.S. If you would like to watch this, I watched it on DailyMotion at this link: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7v2t88

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