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Post by spiderwort on May 19, 2019 19:52:36 GMT
It's almost Memorial Day, so I thought it would be interesting to consider films that are built around or have important sequences that celebrate certain holidays (for those not in the USA, please feel free to contribute holidays from your country, specifying the celebration, of course).
You can also include films that remind you of certain holidays or that you just like to watch on certain holidays.
I'll start with these:
PICNIC (1955), the story about how people's lives are affected on Labor Day weekend in a small midwestern town.
THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946), a great film about soldiers returning from WW2. I'll sometimes watch it on Memorial Day, because I love it, and also in honor of the service of my father and uncles in WW2 and of friends in later conflicts.
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Post by mattgarth on May 19, 2019 20:06:57 GMT
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Post by marianne48 on May 19, 2019 20:49:32 GMT
Pieces of April (2003)--A "black sheep" daughter attempts to host a Thanksgiving dinner for her contemptuous family, and also make some peace with her terminally ill mother (who's the more likely source of a lot of the dysfunction in the family). Like a lot of family holidays, bittersweet.
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Post by claudius on May 19, 2019 21:14:40 GMT
THE LION IN WINTER (1968) The Plantagenets squabble on Christmas Day. To paraphrase Trevor Willsmer, the whole family is trying to kill each other, and no one gets what they want.
AH WILDERNESS! (1935) and SUMMER HOLIDAY (1946) set mainly on July 4.
MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944) On Halloween, Judy Garland gets her beau but Dad tells everyone they are moving. On Christmas, Dad changes his mind.
The Sword in the Stone event happens on different holidays. THE SWORD IN THE STONE has it happen on Christmas Day (THE LEGEND OF PRINCE VALIANT backs this one). EXCALIBUR has it on Easter.
The 1935 MGM version of A TALE OF TWO CITIES makes Christmas the decisive setting where Sydney Carton finds out he is in love with Lucie Mannette, and that there might be hope for him (Adeste Fideles becomes his redemption theme).
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Post by Doghouse6 on May 19, 2019 23:30:35 GMT
Say "holiday" in the context of classic films, and one always jumps first to my mind: Holiday Inn (1942), giving us the ABCs of them as Astaire, Berlin and Crosby cover the entire calendar; over two years' worth, in fact, beginning on one Christmas Eve and concluding on a New Year's Eve two years later. It moves so briskly and is so packed with songs, dances and banter that the passage of time is barely acknowledged, other than the ticking off of one holiday after another.
Two Christmas Eves have passed, along with three musical interludes (I'll Capture Her Heart, Lazy, You're Easy To Dance With), before the film gets to its first truly holiday-oriented song: White Christmas. Less than a week later, the New Year's Eve opening of the eponymous Holiday Inn delivers another three: Happy Holiday; a generic Come To Holiday Inn; Let's Start the New Year Right, along with an instrumental reprise of You're Easy To Dance With to accompany Astaire's scotch-soaked dance with Marjorie Reynolds.
Lincoln's Birthday presents the song Abraham, which was long missing from most broadcast copies of the film due to its blackface number. Home video releases restored it, although it was reused in 1954's White Christmas as an up-tempo instrumental accompaniment to a dynamite tap duet for Vera-Ellen and John Brascia.
Valentine's Day is up next, with the appropriately titled Be Careful, It's My Heart. This, rather than White Christmas, according to both Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley lore, was the song Berlin expected to be the big hit from the film. Washington's Birthday follows with I Can't Tell A Lie.
Easter Parade is one Berlin pulled from his trunk. The now-familiar lyrics were added in 1933 for the review As Thousands Cheer (introduced by Clifton Webb and Marilyn Miller) to an already-recycled tune originally published in 1917 as Smile and Show Your Dimple. Astaire and Judy Garland reprised it in 1948 for the film of the same name.
The Fourth Of July brings Let's Say It With Firecrackers, performed by chorus boys and girls in jive-y four-part harmony (and reprised as a dance by Astaire), and Song Of Freedom, sung by Crosby before a screen enumerating the Bill Of Rights and seguing to morale-rousing newsreel footage of aircraft and munitions factories, ship launches, tanks and so forth, culminating in star-encased closeups of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Pres. Franklin Roosevelt superimposed over the stars and stripes waving in the breeze. Although not released until Sept. of '42, U.S. entry into the war occurred during the film's Nov. '41 - Jan. '42 production.
Crosby next passes a lonely Thanksgiving providing sarcastic commentary to his own demo recording of Plenty To Be Thankful For as it plays on the Victrola. After a tearful reprise of White Christmas by Reynolds (voiced by Martha Mears), we conclude with one of the opening number, I'll Capture Her Heart, with a new set of scene-appropriate lyrics reflecting the plot's romantic resolutions, and a few bars of You're Easy To Dance With and Let's Start the New Year Right for the fadeout.
Since 1942, other holidays have been added, and others combined or renamed. Some depicted in the film are nationally observed as holidays, others not. In the film, Crosby guesses there are about fifteen in the year. Some Berlin apparently decided to ignore in the final score, or else found them difficult to memorialize in song. I wonder, for example, if he attempted a Labor Day number (although one might interpret the few bars of his WWI-era Oh How I Hate To Get Up In the Morning quoted in the background score while Crosby does hard labor on his farm as some sort of passing acknowledgement).
There's lots more to say about the satisfying banquet of entertainment this film lays out, but I'll leave it for now simply as one that's apropos and welcome at just about any time of the year it's served.
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Post by bravomailer on May 20, 2019 12:57:54 GMT
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🎄😷🎄 on May 20, 2019 14:17:39 GMT
Speaking of the awesome Holly Hunter... Years ago I went to a matinee of Home For the Holidays (directed by Jodie Foster), assuming it was a Christmas movie, but it turned out to be a Thanksgiving movie instead. Robert Downey Jr. is also in it, and the legend that was Anne Bancroft too. The family squabbles made for a fun flick.    |
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Post by fangirl1975 on May 20, 2019 21:28:17 GMT
Halloween naturally takes place on Halloween.
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Post by Sulla on May 21, 2019 2:54:43 GMT
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) - starts on Thanksgiving and ends one year later on Thanksgiving.
Four Rooms (1995) - New Year's Eve.
The Great Escape (1963) - 4th of July. I'm told that in the UK, this is often aired at Christmas.
Gods and Generals (2003) - Christmas
Joyeux Noel (2005) - Christmas
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Post by mikef6 on May 21, 2019 5:46:53 GMT
The Roaring Twenties (1939). It ends with a flamboyant scene on New Year’s Eve of 1929 that, as one biographer put it, only Cagney could have played without causing laughter in the audience.
The Saint Strikes Back (1939). Directed by John Farrow. Opens with an almost one-minute one-take of a New Year’s Eve crowd in a night club, swinging the camera out and over the room, focusing in on three people at a table and then following one of them as he moves to a concealed position and draws a gun.
The Midnight Clear (1992). WWII drama that takes place at Christmas at the front lines.
Doctor Who: New Series. S1. Ep. 3 “The Unquiet Dead” April 9, 2005. The Doctor and Rose arrive in England over Christmas in 1869. They meet Charles Dickens.
For Your Consideration (2006). Christopher Guest’s “mockumentary” about a film within a film. The documentary was supposed to be about the filming of a family holiday drama called “Home for Purim.” The end result is that studio suits, fearing a limited audience, force a change in setting and script to “Home for Thanksgiving.”
Om Natten (At Night) (Denmark. 39 minutes) (2007). Oscar nominee. It is about, get this, 3 women in a hospital cancer ward celebrating Christmas and New Years together. Right from the very concept, the film makers were relentless in their efforts to yank every last tear from the eyes of the toughest cynics. This film is a cruel act of manipulation. I hated it. It made me furious. I don’t understand why it is not a Christmas regular.
Call Me By Your Name (2017) has a Hanukkah scene.
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🎄😷🎄 on May 21, 2019 14:13:12 GMT
Years ago I went to a matinee of Home For the Holidays (directed by Jodie Foster), assuming it was a Christmas movie, but it turned out to be a Thanksgiving movie instead.
Well, here's a film that does celebrate Christmas. It's explores familial complications with a lot of humor and compassion. For some reason, I seem to be in the minority of those who like it, but in fact I love it. It's funny, sad, and filled with humanity, which its great cast conveys so well. Never understood why it wasn't more appreciated.
I did see this a few years ago. It is both funny and sad. Dermot Mulroney seems to be everywhere lately, I've been seeing him a lot. I love Diane Keaton more than I can form into words here.
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Post by nutsberryfarm 🏜 on Nov 29, 2019 17:01:10 GMT
five easy pieces---greatest thanksgiving movie ever!  |
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Post by koskiewicz on Nov 30, 2019 17:04:08 GMT
"Born on the 4th of July"
"Joyeaux Noel" (SP?)
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