Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

christmas-clip-art-free-downloads-174203I am a creature of habit. And a lot of habits of mine kick in around Christmastime every year. One is the daily posting, on Facebook, of a favourite Christmas carol. Another is this: the reviewing of a film that centres round Christmas. Over the years this blog has been in existence (I began it in November 2008), I’ve reviewed several films, some well-known, others not. This one, according to several polls, is listed as one of the very top Christmas films ever made.

It begins at Thanksgiving in New York City. The huge department store, Macy’s, at 34th Street, is holding its annual Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the employee in charge of managing much of the parade is Mrs Doris Walker (Maureen O’Hara). Doris is very harassed, what with the large number of people she has to juggle and instruct; thus, when she discovers that her Santa Claus has been drinking and is now tipsy, she nearly loses it.

Doris receives a shock

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Pride and Prejudice (1940)

Happy 200th birthday, Pride and Prejudice!

As crazy as that might sound, it is the truth. Jane Austen’s wonderful romance novel was first published on January 28, 1813. Originally titled First Impressions, the novel was written by Austen in 1796-7, and was eventually (after numerous revisions by the author) finally published by Thomas Egerton of Whitehall.

Jane Austen

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The Trouble with Harry (1955)

Looking through my blog archives, I realised that the last Hitchcock film I reviewed, Dial M for Murder, was way back in November 2008. For someone who’s a self-confessed Hitchcock fanatic, this amounts to blasphemy. Service recovery seemed in order.
May I present, therefore, one of my favourite Hitch films: The Trouble with Harry. In true Hitchcock style, it’s full of suspense—but a suspense that’s quirky in the extreme. This is dark humour: farcical, irreverent, and very funny. No, not typical Hitchcock, but one of his best works.

Shirley MacLaine, John Forsythe, Mildred Natwick and Edmund Gwenn in The Trouble with Harry

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