Category: Sturges, Preston

Reel 28: Miracle Movies

Merry Christmas to you! Assuming you celebrate, of course.

In this episode we’re looking at a pair of films that have a Christmas component to them, and which have the word “Miracle” in the title. We open up with Preston Sturges and his 1944 screwball comedy The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, starring Betty Hutton and Eddie Bracken. Here’s a film that managed to slip a bunch of stuff past the censors, but don’t get your hopes too high; it’s still a family-friendly film.

From there we move on to a more traditionally-Christmas film, 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street, starring Edmund Gwenn and Maureen O’Hara. It was written and directed by George Seaton, with the story provided by Valentine Davies. Since its release it’s grown into a Christmas tradition for many families, and both Claude and Sean, as native New Yorkers, can appreciate the verisimilitude provided by so much of the location shooting and even many of the addresses we can see in the film. The house we see at the end is, in fact, quite close to the location purported to be the rest home where Kris Kringle lives. The only mystery about locations is…well, listen in and you’ll learn about that.

Finally, here’s a Christmas present for Claude, because it happens so seldomly on this show. Claude was RIGHT about Kris bopping Mr. Sawyer on the head with an umbrella. Let us all applaud while he does a Happy Dance.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:
In our first episode of 2022, we’re going to look at Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, both from 1967 and both representative of the New Wave in American films. Have a great holiday season until then!

Reel 20: Depression Comedies

We’ve heard any number of film scholars suggest that the films of the Depression Era were meant to be escapist entertainment, and that’s why screwball comedies and lavish musicals really took off during that period. People were having miserable lives, and for a couple of hours they could get away from all that.

1941’s Sullivan’s Travels essentially comes around to that point of view, but it takes pretty much the entire film to get there. Nevertheless, Preston Sturges has given us a fun bit of a romp…until it’s not. But even the point after the film takes a hard turn has some comedic moments in it.

We’re also spending some time on the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, from 2000. It’s also set during the Great Depression and it takes a very different look at that time while still providing a ton of entertainment. And while both films have wildly divergent approaches to that period—which could easily be attributed to the distance provided by time itself—there are many, many things which the two films have in common. In fact, we’d venture to suggest that we only barely scratched that particular surface, despite this being a rather long episode.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: In our next episode we look in on the lives of ex-spies and the things they do to keep busy. In that spirit we have 1998’s Ronin and Duplicity, from 2009.