A strange concatenation of circumstances hit me today -- it's Christmas Day 2008 at 9:45 AM as I write this. One was obvious, and one was tenuous, but both had a deep impact in my consideration of this, the last film I watched several weeks ago for the Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon and the last Christmas film I'll be posting about this year. The first was the discovery that a friend of mine, who hosts an excellent radio show in Chicago on the nexus of politics and popular culture, recently presented a special Christmas episode in which the central question was: has A Christmas Story replaced It's a Wonderful Life as America's most beloved Christmas movie?
On the surface, it's a pretty strange question. As often as it's shown -- and that's pretty damned often -- Bob Clark's endlessly re-watchable, terrifically funny tale of a young boy's Midwestern holiday misadventures in the late 1940s has never had the cultural ubiquity that Frank Capra's classic had during the years it was out of copyright. It can hardly be called contemporary anymore; it was made 25 years ago (as celebrated in a deluxe new DVD release that's highly recommended by this writer) and was set only a few years after It's a Wonderful Life. And the older film is a genuine four-star cinematic acheivment, directed by one of the towering talents of the Golden Age of Hollywood, made for a significant amount of money and starring some of the greatest screen stars of the day.
A Christmas Story, on the other hand, was directed by the guy best known for doing Porky's and who went on to direct tripe like Turk-182 and Super-Babies: Baby Geniuses 2. His previous holiday movie was the notorious Christmas horror flick Black Christmas. His stars were a seasoned TV pro, a veteran character actress, an untested child star, and two other kids who went on to have no career and a career as a porn star, respectively, with not a superstar in the mix. It didn't come close to delivering any message, any social meaning or psychological boosts of the sort that Capra's film was designed to instill. And, unlike the endlessly parodied and riffed-upon It's a Wonderful Life, it seemed to have little impact outside of its own: it was a singular thing, a ding an sich which could only be contemplated as itself.
And yet, if pressed, I'd agree: A Christmas Story really has supplanted It's a Wonderful Life as the go-to Christmas movie, very likely because of its singularity and uniqueness. Because it's been so endlessly parodied, the Capra film is hard to contemplate on its own, while Bob Clark's film is almost spoof-proof by design. For many, Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed will always occuply some other role in their minds, but Peter Billingsley will be little Ralphie Parker for all eternity. Darren McGavin and Melinda Dillon are so completely pitch-perfect in their roles that they will occupy them forever. And A Christmas Story's lack of ambition -- its small-scale determinance to do nothing but tell its simple story, so wonderfully crafted by Jean Shepherd, leaves it no chance to be bloated or hokey, simply funny and warm without cease.
The second, and more distant, event that influenced my writing of this entry was the death of Harold Pinter. What the news of the demise of a cerebral British playwright has to do with my appreciation of A Christmas Story might not be immediately apparent, but it's not as strange as it seems: Pinter not only pioneered the dysfunctional family drama which resonates so in the film, but he also was an early adopter of the comedy of discomfort and humiliation, with his use of the famed "Pinter pause" and the constant black comedy that can be wrought from embarrassment. Shepherd, writing in 1966 -- around the same time Pinter was doing much of his best work -- understood that sort of comedy perfectly: although his end result is heartwarming rather than soul-searing, almost all the laughs in A Christmas Story come from failure, despair, humiliation, defeat, and disappointment. It even culminates with Billingsley learning that most Pinterian of lessons: you can get what you want and still not be happy, whether what you want is a family or a Red Ryder BB gun.
12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS RATING: An unquenchable 12 drummers drumming. There's simply no better holiday viewing to be had. Merry Christmas, readers -- and thanks for your support, as always.
Related Posts:
The Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon: It's a Wonderful Life
The Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon: Bad Santa