A Christmas Story - 1983

 

A Christmas Story (1983) perhaps unlike any other Christmas movie, has reached icon stage in American pop culture.  Its meteoric rise in stature—to the level where the house in Cleveland where some exterior scenes were shot has been turned into a tourist attraction, and Major Award Leg Lamps are to be found for sale as T-shirts, earrings, tree ornaments and actual lamps.  The movie’s dialogue has become a universal language.  Even hallowed favorites among classic film fans like White Christmas (1954) or Christmasin Connecticut (1945) have not become so widely quoted, merchandized, or watched.

This is the final film in our series on holiday movies.  I’ll link to the other movies we discussed below.  This series was meant to lead up to the release of my newest book—a collection of essays on Christmas classic films, but life, as the saying goes, got in the way.  That book will have to wait a little longer, and I’ll discuss that more next week.

While I don’t personally consider A Christmas Story a classic film (my criteria follows that it must be produced before 1965), nobody who loves classic films can deny the special attraction this movie has for classic film fans.  It achieves a unique quality of being a “retro” movie by virtue of its setting in about 1940, but unlike other movies, even very good and well-researched movies set in the 1930s and 1940s, it accomplishes this with effortless submersion into a world that most viewers, even in 1983, did not remember personally but understood instinctually.  This was achieved without mawkishness, or parody.  Though the movie is clearly a love letter to the era, it is never sentimental, and yet is it still without the brutish pseudo-sophisticated sarcasm of modern films and TV shows.

It is a look at the travails of Christmas through the eyes of a child, yet it is narrated by the adult the child has become and we also see the parents’ and other grown-ups’ view of things.  There is no linear story, but the movie is told in splintered vignettes woven together as Christmas draws ever closer, with the anticipation of marking off the calendar.

Directed by Bob Clark (who also has a short role as “Swede,” the guy to whom Ralphie’s father brags about his Major Award), the movie was co-written by humorist Jean Shepherd (who also appears briefly in line waiting for Santa) from his series of semi-autobiographical stories.

Peter Billingsley had the role of a lifetime as Ralphie, a wide-eyed bespectacled kid who is innocent but not naïve, and who desperately wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, despite being warned by every grown-up he encounters that “You’ll shoot your eye out.”

Darren McGavin is his father, or “the Old Man.”  I love him in this role.  He is the perfect curmudgeon with the soft heart who eventually grants the boy’s wish.  His thrill at watching his son open the box is priceless.  His grumpiness is true to life and hysterical.  My favorite line of his: “You used up all the glue on purpose!”  He reminds me of my own father.

Melinda Dillon is the mother, who in every way is the perfect consort to the blustering McGavin.  I will say, though, the only thing I don’t like about the movie is her hairdo.  It should have been more of a 1940s style.  She looks too modern.  Her battle at getting Randy into the snowsuit is epic.

Ian Petrella plays Randy, and Ralphie’s pals are R. D. Robb as Schwartz, Scott Schwartz as Flick, and the bully Scut Farkus is played by Zach Ward and his toady Grover Dill is played by Yano Anaya.  The movie was made nearly 40 years ago and yet these guys will always be kids whose place in pop culture is so cemented as to override the fact that they were really just actors saying lines. 

Tedde Moore is the longsuffering teacher Miss Shields, who meets every obstacle with a raised eyebrow.  I love her arch inspiration of announcing to the students they are to be given the assignment of writing…a theme.

It’s hard to say if the blueprint of this movie—script, casting, storyboard, cinematography—is a masterwork of brilliance in the planning or if the sum total of the movie’s parts were just a happy accident.  There is a feel of serendipity about the film and where it takes us.

The details are there to enjoy that have little to do with the plot: the teacher’s drawer full of confiscated trinkets including Big Little books (I had some, did you?), and my favorite, the Terry and the Pirates comic strip on the back of the newspaper Darren McGavin is reading on Christmas morning.

The Orphan Annie decoder was a particular topic of discussion in my family, as my mother, who as a child in the 1930s—and a huge Orphan Annie fan (I learned the theme song at her knee as a young kid…”Who’s the little chatterbox, the one with pretty auburn locks? Whom do you see, it’s Little Orphan Annie….”)—and who could not afford to send for the decoder to get Annie’s secret messages, cleverly figured out the cipher key herself on paper.  She would not affirm that each message was about Ovaltine, the sponsor, but agreed the commercialism was pretty heavy-handed.

“Fragile—must be Italian,” and not sticking your tongue to cold metal are scenes so indelible this must be the one film where the plot—even though there is one—seems unnecessary at times.

We are taken on Ralphie’s rollercoaster emotions of the season and face trials of how to ask for the present he knows his parents won’t approve of, facing the frightening experience of a too-loud Santa in a line of fretful kids, an especially facing the awful bully.  Using the "oh fudge" line rather than explicitly using the vulgarity is actually funnier than if we had been allowed to hear Ralphie's uncensored slip into profanity, just as Mr. McGavin's indecipherable sputtering is funnier than if we had been able to understand his frustrated rant over the furnace. 

About the only aspect of Christmas missing from the movie that many of us would identify with is the religious themes and overtones, which we catch only a glimpse of at the beginning of the film with the church choir singing on the street corner.  Missing are the mysteries of the Nativity, which most kids comically mix up and about which they come to very strange conclusions.  I have always personally enjoyed the kids’ reenactment at church of the First Christmas with unruly shepherds, sheep that won’t stand still, and angels that shove Wise Men when they step on their line.  The theatricality of Christmas could be another movie, but it’s not something Ralphie has to endure. He has enough on his plate.

At the end of it, Ralphie gets his heart’s desire, and the adult voiceover rejoices and confirms that it was his best Christmas present that he would ever receive.

There is a poignant note of sadness in that.  Never to have topped the Christmas when you were eight years old?

Perhaps that is because as children, all our experiences, big and small, happy and sad, hit us so acutely.   It is not just believing in Santa or in wishes that come true, but rather that we live the season so passionately, down to our bones. 

We look for messages in Christmas films, if only because most of them, at least the modern Hallmark versions, bludgeon us with them.  If A Christmas Story has any message for us, it is just to take the holiday season for what it is, make the best of it, and keep your sense of humor.  And if there are any good memories, keep them.  Treasure them.  Stretch them in the retelling.  They will sustain us long after the much-desired presents of childhood have been broken and thrown out.

But the reason for the film's popularity and ascendance to pop culture icon is not only due to the film's excellence.  Many wonderful movies have not reached this stage of familiarity or have been entirely lost to us.  It is because of the canny repetitive broadcasting every year, not just once but several times, even an annual 24-hour marathon on one cable station. That, like Orphan Annie's Ovaltine "secret message" Ralphie was desperate to decode, is pure clever marketing.  There is nothing sentimental about that, but you can't argue with success.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas. 

The films in this series were:

Cover Up (1949)

The Lemon Drop Kid (1951)

Fitzwilly (1967)

It Happened on 5th Avenue (1947)

Big Business (1929)

Beyond Tomorrow (1940)

 

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.  Her new book, a collection of posts from this blog - Hollywood Fights Fascism - is available here on Amazon.

The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

“The Man with the Golden Arm” (1955) is such a product of its time that it is fascinating that the movie can still remain so powerful. There is a fable-like quality to the film that seems to transcend the decades between then and now, during which we have learned in more detail the horrors of drug addiction, the criminality of the drug world, and the hopelessness of a life of dependence. More sophisticated films in after years have given us valid, accurate information, a more realistic presentation, and an intense experience; but they have not always given us a reason to really care about the characters and see ourselves in them.

Perhaps it is simply the nature of more realistic films to narrow the focus on a particular character and set of circumstances. We are shown a lifestyle, a neighborhood quite possibly dissimilar to the lives and environments of most of the audience. Therefore, the movie, no matter how engrossing, becomes a film about “them.”

Likewise, along this vein, a modern film might focus on a particular economic class, i.e., the wealthy Hollywood addicts whose addiction is emblematic of their super-charged and privileged lifestyle. Or, we might be shown the lower class junkie scratching for survival in a dangerous world of gangs. If the film becomes focused on an economic class, it also gets focused on race. More and more, peeling away the layers and focusing on a narrow viewpoint, it becomes a story about “them.”

“The Man with the Golden Arm”, though certainly considered gritty and realistic for its day, and attracted some controversy, nevertheless opens the story outward rather than focuses inward, and the Runyonesque characters lend a kind of “everyman” quality to Frankie Machine and his neighbors. It’s not so much about “them” as about everybody.

The film is shot on a set, but while probably its attempt at realism would have been better served with location shooting, even this adds to the fable quality of the story. Here, in this tight little neighborhood, Frank Sinatra returns from a six-month prison term with a new set of drums and high hopes for a better life. He has kicked a heroin habit and learned a new trade in jail, and intends not to return to his old lifestyle as a card sharp working for the local tough guys.

We see, perhaps even sooner than the optimistic Frankie does, that he is being drawn into his old life and habits that will lead to disaster. Frank Sinatra, in one of his best roles, plays the part with compassion and sensitivity. Eleanor Parker is good in an ugly role as his clinging wife, who wants him to remain as a card dealer in the illegal game down the block, is threatened by his talk of pursuing a career as a drummer in a big band, and wants him to remain tied to her. She is in a wheelchair, her injury caused by an auto accident with a drunk Frankie at the wheel. His guilt is part of the reason he turned to drugs, and her continuing to manipulate his guilt will drive him back to the local drug pusher. We learn early in the film that she is faking her injury, only one of a number of people surviving by playing angles in this depressed little world.

Eleanor Parker, whom most likely remember as the elegant and subtly treacherous Baroness in the “The Sound of Music” (1965) had a versatile career. Scrambling out of the B-movie jungle in the late 1940s, she seemed to hardly ever play the same type of role twice, and she digs her fingernails in on this role. Though manipulative, her character is probably as much a victim of her own ignorance in a world where survival skills are based on what you can take from others.

Kim Novak plays the woman Frankie would most like to be with, were he not duty-bound to remain with a dependent wife who needs him. She works in a local dive, supports a lazy, dependent, alcoholic boyfriend, and though as much a product of this grim world as Parker’s character, she looks beyond it, and shows Frankie the encouragement and support he needs to get off on the right foot. More than just the long-suffering woman behind the man type of role, this is one of the few strong female roles in the 1950s when damsels in distress, neurotics, or fallen women were the usual fare. Novak holds Frankie’s future in her hands, and eventually she sees this and takes responsibility. She and Frankie are the heroes because of the risks they take and the courage they display.

Arnold Stang is Frankie’s squirrelly sidekick, a simple chump whose particular survival skills are a knack for petty thievery and a true gift for friendship. He also, if helplessly, tries to steer Frankie from old habits, because he loves him. Stang is ironically believable in this role, considering it is such a cartoon.

Darren McGavin plays the smarmy drug pusher, who first got Frankie hooked and wants him back. He and Novak, though they are both the cleanest-looking and best dressed people in the film, are at opposite poles, and they work on Frankie from opposite motives, the devil and the angel on either of his shoulders.

That Frankie appears to be his only customer in the neighborhood makes us wonder a bit what Mr. McGavin did while Frankie was in jail.

Another star in film, besides Sinatra and Novak, is the penetrating score by Elmer Bernstein, played by Shorty Rogers and his Giants. We hear the blare of the trumpets in a jazz nightmare whenever Frankie is about to fall off the wagon. The use of the music to indicate what is going to happen is a trigger to the audience that also seems to belong to this era. We don’t see too much of this thing anymore, except in horror or suspense films, i.e., the swimmer-is-about-to-be-attacked-by-the-shark music in “Jaws.”

A couple scenes from the film illustrate the fable quality in a rather sweet way. One is when Sinatra and Novak stand before an appliance store window. Male and female mannequins are set up in a modern kitchen display, the sort of 1950s suburbia heaven that people from Frankie’s neighborhood might hardly dare believe is real. Sinatra and Novak pretend a make-believe scenario and dialogue for the mannequin couple, and we see that Frankie is reaching, innocently if earnestly for not just a better life, but a nicer one. His anticipation over his upcoming audition for a band is not just about hitting it big and striking it rich. One imagines he would make a lot more money dealing cards for the racket, where he is famed as “The Man With the Golden Arm.” He doesn’t want that anymore. That’s all his self-interested wife wants for him, but he wants more for himself, and her, and his little buddy Arnold Stang.

The other moment in the film is the well-known cold turkey withdrawal scene. Having hit some setbacks, Frankie turns to heroin again, and seeks Novak to give him money for a fix. By this time, Novak wants something better too, has found the guts to search for it, and so kicks out her lush boyfriend, moves away to a different apartment, and tries to get on with her life. When Frankie finds her, we see she has a metal lunchbox and her street clothes indicate she’s not working in a dive anymore. She challenges him to get through his withdrawal and get off the heroin, and locks him in her apartment so that he can.

Frank Sinatra’s intense scene that follows, with him bouncing off the walls in agony, is impressive. The scene, like most of the film, is a fable of humanity, and losing it, and finding it, more than it is of drug addiction. An unexpectedly sweet moment, keeping the fable on track, is when Frankie collapses shivering to the floor and Novak, covering him with blankets chokes a broken prayer, and seeing that the blankets are not helping, crawls on top of him to warm him with her own body.

Maybe is it these moments of helpless innocence that make a fable out of subject matter that is so sad and so ugly. The film has no triumphal ending, only a glimmer of hope, a sense of peace, of calm after tragedy, but that is enough. Mr. Sinatra’s and Miss Novak’s characters don’t really seem to be asking for much.