Mainlining Christmas

I've seen at least three genre films titled "Silent Night", and none were what I'd call a slam dunk. This comes closest, between John Woo's stylish direction, a clever gimmick, and an impressive performance from Joel Kinnaman - it's by no means a bad revenge flick, but the elements making this distinct don't overcome the ones making it feel generic. Specifically, the movie's sparce use of dialogue doesn't have the intended effect, so you're left feeling like the film is incomplete. That's the gimmick, by the way: this has essentially no dialogue other than radio transmissions and video clips watched and heard by characters in the movie. I actually think this would have worked better if they'd found ways to cut those as well - the handful of spoken words we hear don't add much and water down the effect. It's not that I found myself missing the dialogue itself - if there's one thing this movie succeeds in, it's demonstrati...

Barbed Wire is one of several films mentioned in passing in Jeremy Arnold's Christmas in the Movies book that I figured I should track down. I should note Arnold is clear that the movie doesn't qualify as a genuine Christmas movie under his definition, which is quite a bit more restrictive than those we use. Even with our more expansive approach, Barbed Wire is a marginal case. The holiday section certainly doesn't come close to encompassing half the runtime, nor is it particularly important to the plot (Arnold places a great deal of significance on this metric throughout). The holiday does resonate with the movie's theme, however, which is why I think it's at least ambiguously a Christmas movie. Regardless, between being nearly a hundred years old and featuring a thematically relevant extended holiday sequence, I feel this is at least worth discussing, whichever side of the "Christmas movie" line it actually falls on. Released less a month before The Jazz...

This 9-minute film from 1928 represents something of a transition between silent film and talkies. Technically it's neither, as it includes a synchronized musical soundtrack but no spoken dialogue. In addition, it's shot in two-color Technicolor, similar to Mystery of the Wax Museum (though that movie features a much more technically advanced execution of the process). Between those features and an extremely intricate fantasy effect at the heart of the short, The Toy Shop must have amazed audiences ninety-five years ago. I still found myself surprised and intrigued today. There's not a lot to the plot. The movie opens with a poor beggar girl (presumably an orphan) begging outside a toy shop on what I'm assuming is Christmas Eve (all we get from the title cards is that this is happening in France). Visually, we only get a couple hints at the season: there's a wreath on a door in the background, and later we'll see some garlands inside the shopkeeper's home. ...

Big Business is a 19-minute long Laurel and Hardy short film in which they play Christmas tree salesmen who get in a destructive fight with an angry potential customer.  The holiday elements are fairly light here - aside from a joke or two at the beginning and end, the fact they're selling Christmas trees as opposed to literally anything else is irrelevant to the story or comedy. But it's still technically set at Christmas, so let's take a look. The plot here is simplistic. Laurel and Hardy visit a couple houses without luck before reaching the home where things go off the rails. It starts with the tree (then Hardy's coat) getting repeatedly stuck in the door, requiring them to ring the doorbell, which further annoys the home's owner. The silent picture format is useful for smoothing over the obvious plot contrivance: it's easier to avoid confronting why they're unable to explain the misunderstanding when no one's actually able to speak outside the occas...

This thirteen-minute film doesn't offer much of interest, but it's unusual in one respect: it was posted by the National Archive, which also took the time to provide some information on the movie's history and production . Context tends to be elusive when it comes to silent films, so it's nice to actually get a little insight into where this came from. This was produced by the Ford Motor Company, of all things. Apparently, they had a fairly substantial film division at the time. To clarify, while it's produced by Ford, it doesn't include any kind of tie-in, commercial, or product placement. There are no motorized vehicles in this at all. The film itself is kind of simple. Honestly, it's closer to what I'd expect from the first decade of that century, not the third: there's no real story, no visual effects or tricks, and the selling point here feels largely centered on the notion that seeing moving images will be exciting in and of itself. The movie f...

I think the official title for this is simply, "Good Cheer," as opposed to "Hal Roach Presents His Rascals in Good Cheer," but the longer version gives at least a hint as to what this actually is. My generation thinks of this property as "The Little Rascals," though that branding came quite a bit later. "Hals's Rascals" is already an alternate name for what started as "Our Gang," a series of short films about a group of poor kids who went through comical adventures. Regardless of what it's called, this is indeed a 1926 Little Rascals Christmas film. First, let's talk a little about what that means. The Our Gang shorts started in 1922 and were produced in various incarnations for decades. The premise centered on the idea that kids acting relatively naturally would make for good comedy, particularly when compared against the unrealistic behavior and dialogue they were typically directed to present at the time. Good Cheer is re...

I've been digging into old silent Christmas movies to get a better idea for how and when holiday tropes formed. This one stands out. To clarify, I'm not saying you should track this down. Most of you would find it tedious and pointless. But for me, it's the missing link for a number of ideas and concepts common in modern Christmas films. This represents the earliest example in film I've come across to date for a number of elements, and that alone is enough to make me excited. Let's back up and discuss what this is, because - setting aside all that - the film itself is a bit bonkers. It's the creation of Frank E. Kleinschmidt, an explorer and documentarian, who seems to have realized he could make more money off footage of the Arctic if he brought along a Santa suit and spliced that with some scenes filmed in a studio with a different actor. As such, this isn't remotely story-driven. The movie opens with a passage from A Visit from St. Nicholas, before cuttin...

I'd seen conflicting reports on whether or not Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush was a Christmas movie, so I decided to check for myself. I've seen several of Chapman's other films over the past year, and consider him one of the most consistently entertaining filmmakers of his era (possibly the most entertaining, in fact). While The Gold Rush might be my least favorite of his movies I've seen to date, it's still quite good, and it technically meets our definition for a Christmas movie, which you probably guessed from the fact you're reading this at all. I want to stress that the word "technically" is doing some heavy lifting. The movie doesn't mention or acknowledge Christmas itself, though both Thanksgiving and New Year's are significant dates in the narrative, making it easy to confirm the bulk of screen time is spent on or between these holidays. In fact, only the first and last fifteen minutes fall outside this range. I should mention the...

I'm worried this is going to get lost in the shuffle because we're looking at so many silent movies this year. This one's a little different, though, both because it's an incredibly influential and important work and because the subject matter is probably going to resonate more with the sort of people I expect (or at least hope) read this blog. The Phantom Carriage is a silent Swedish horror/drama hybrid built around a New Year's Eve legend in which the last person to die before the stroke of midnight is cursed to drive Death's carriage through the following year, collecting souls. The term "folk horror" isn't generally applied to movies prior to the 1970s, but this certainly feels like a pretty good fit. You could argue it's the first film in that subgenre, and one of the first horror films in general, coming out a year after The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and a year before Nosferatu. Before anyone gets too excited, I should add a great deal of i...

I'm a little unclear on some details, but this appears to have been part of a series of adventures built around the character, "Octavius, the Amateur Detective." Based on a title card's invitation to read the story in "The Pictorial Review," I'm assuming it was a series of short stories adapted into film. If "The Adventure of the Wrong Santa Claus" is any indication, these were comedy adventures. The story starts with Octavius being asked to come to a friend's family Christmas party and dress as Santa. He purchases a costume and heads over. While at the party, he's introduced to Grace, who is... some relation to his friends. Or something. He's also informed that there's a spare Santa suit in a spare room, though he decides to wear his own. Unbeknownst to Octavius, a burglar skulking outside overheard that there was a spare Santa suit, broke in, and changed. While Octavius is getting changed, the thief sneaks in and knocks him un...

I wrote this up before , though I was feeling far from charitable at the time. In my defense, we started this blog coming at Christmas media from a very different point of view, so our early reviews were intended more as brief recommendations or warnings for modern audiences. We weren't particularly interested in analyzing these, nor were we remotely experienced enough to have done so. Eight years later, I find this stuff far more interesting, and - while I'm still no expert in early cinema - watching bucketloads of this stuff at least provides me with a little context. Compared to most silent Christmas media I've come across, Santa Claus Vs. Cupid is notable for having a great deal of plot crammed into its 16-minute runtime. It also has a great deal of filler and side characters, which makes the short feel larger but also makes the narrative difficult to follow. Ultimately, there are really only four significant characters: Jack, Edward, Binks, and the unnamed love interes...

I'm grouping these two animated shorts from Ladislaw Starewicz, a pioneer of stop-motion, together despite them being made more than four decades apart. Both films are fairly easy to locate online and well worth tracking down. The Insect's Christmas (1911) I believe The Insect's Christmas is the first animated Christmas movie ever made, or at least the earliest surviving example. The Insect's Christmas is sort of a whimsical fairytale that admittedly becomes a bit less whimsical when you realize the titular insects are dead bugs whose legs have been replaced with wires, but it's worth overlooking that unpleasant detail. Before we get to the insects, the movie opens with a Father Christmas ornament coming alive on a Christmas tree and climbing down, accidentally shattering an ornament and waking a sleeping doll in the process. He travels outside and conjures a Christmas tree using his staff. Next, he uses his staff to clear away rocks and even break open the ground, ...