Tangled Mind

Continuing my Christmas quest with a rewatch of White Christmas! This is one of my all-time favorite movies. I wrote Yuletide fic for it (Bob/Phil ofc), I’ve seen it on the big screen with the whole theater singing along at the end, seen it in general more times than I can count. (Despite this, I still have to check Wikipedia for the character names. I know who the characters are and how they pair off! I just can’t remember which name goes with which!)

So yesterday when I was taking a sick day, I figured another rewatch could only be good for my health, and of course I was right. Just such a fun movie. I love the song and dance numbers, and pine for the day when Hollywood would just straight-up stop a movie for a musical interlude. Why must everything “advance the plot” or “further character arcs”? Is it not enough sometimes just to watch Vera-Ellen taptaptaptaptap her toe real fast?

Also pour one out for Mary Wickes, who steals the show as General Waverly’s housekeeper Emma. I think my favorite single bit in the movie is the part where Emma overhears (because of course she’s listening in on the extension) that Bob and Phil are bringing their show to the empty ski lodge to rehearse (thus bringing in some much-needed income). She tells Phil and Bob that that’s just the nicest thing she ever heard and then kisses them both, and Bob is like “wowza” and is just about to go in for more when Phil drags him off.

I still love Bob and Phil’s chemistry, and I do kind of ship it but in a way where it also doesn’t bother me that the movie’s whole plot revolves around getting them together with girls. Phil and Judy have fantastic chemistry too, although possibly more shenanigans chemistry than romantic chemistry. (They might be able to work as a marriage, though.)

I don’t love Bob and Betty as a couple, mostly because their big misunderstanding is so movie-contrived. This really is a case where Betty could just say what’s bothering her and Bob could explain and they could sort it all out without Betty running off in a huff to the Carousel Club in New York! Since this is a big part of the story you’d think it would sink the movie, but everything else works so well for me that when we get to this bit I always sigh “ho hum” and wait patiently for the big “White Christmas” finale. Simply a perfect ending tableau.

Naturally I’ve decided that this is the year to rewatch some best-beloved Christmas movies, so I kicked off the season with The Man Who Invented Christmas, starring Dan Stevens as a charming but moody Charles Dickens as he scrambles to write A Christmas Carol in time for the Christmas rush in order to save his tottering finances.

This is such a fun movie. I always love a period piece, and I love Dan Stevens, and I love movies about creating art of any kind (if it’s well done, which it isn’t always…), and this one has such a good balance of seriousness and humor.

On the serious side, we have the demons of Dickens’ childhood coming back to haunt him, especially in his difficult relationship with his father, to whom he is far too similar for comfort. He inherited his father’s charm, his taste for the high life, his gift for performance - and he’s afraid he’ll follow his father’s example by running his family into debtor’s prison with his extravagant spending. A new house! All remodeled! A crystal chandelier and a mantelpiece of Carrera marble!

Unlike his perpetually sunny father, Dickens also has darker moods, where the charm gives way to abrupt outbursts of rage. He stalks around his study in the middle of the night making a racket when composition isn’t going well, apparently unaware that he’s keeping the whole house up. He snaps at his wife, sends away a long-time friend, fires a servant girl - then in the morning demands to know why the servant girl is gone. “You have no idea,” Mrs. Dickens tells him, on the verge of tears but displaying all the self-control Charles lacks, “how hard it is to live with you.”

(I’m happy to report the servant girl shows up again, and is of course rehired. I sort of suspect that the housekeeper keeps these impetuously fired servants in an out of the way corner for a day or two just in case Dickens didn’t really mean it.)

But this is not a grim study of a historical figure’s dark side. There are so many wonderful funny bits, too. In his good moods, Dickens is incredibly charming and funny - you can see why all these people put up with his darker side, just because the lighter side is such a delight.

I love Trollope as the guy in the club who always comes over to commiserate (gloat) when someone receives a bad review. Those cruel reviewers, claiming that Martin Chuzzlewit was “dull, vapid, and vulgar” (which Trollope quotes from memory). “I didn’t think it was vulgar,” Trollope assures Dickens, who is looking for an exit, but fortunately Trollope sees someone else who just got a bad review and scuttles off to crow. I mean sympathize.

And I loved how the Christmas Carol characters start appearing to Dickens. As he gets deeper into composition of the book, they start following him around. There’s an especially funny bit where Dickens looks out a window - he’s trying to avoid the book because he’s struggling with the ending - and the characters are all standing in the street below. Mrs. Fezziwig waves a handkerchief at him.

Also, I covet Dickens’ book-lined study, with a little half-staircase up to a mezzanine level with more books. Why is the study built like that? Who can say? Possibly on purpose to be charming, and charming it absolutely is.

Picture book Advent is going strong! Since I usually don’t have a whole post worth to share about a single picture book, I’ve decided to do a wrap-up post each Monday with quick notes on each of the preceding week’s picture books.

Christmas, written and illustrated by Barbara Cooney: a retelling of the Nativity story, with excursions into the origins of various Christmas customs: Saturnalia as the source of the Lord of Misrule, Odin walking the world morphing into St. Nicholas giving gifts. (Hadn’t heard that one before!)

The Remarkable Christmas of the Cobbler’s Sons, written by Ruth Sawyer, illustrated by Barbara Cooney: an unexpected gem! Left alone on Christmas Eve, the three sons of a poor cobbler are visited by an incredibly grumpy elf/gnome-type creature who kicks them out of bed and makes them turn cartwheels - only for oranges and Christmas cookies and gold and silver coins to pour from their pockets! Delicious. A new story to me, and I’ve read so many Christmas stories that it’s always impressive to find something new.

I Saw Three Ships, by Elizabeth Goudge. Actually not a picture book, but a novella for children, a quick charming story about young Polly in a seaport who insists to her elderly aunts that they have to leave the doors unlocked on Christmas Eve for baby Jesus. The aunts refuse, but Polly manages to open a window regardless, and of course quasi-magical Christmas happenings follow.

An Angel in the Woods, written and illustrated by Dorothy Lathrop. Another banger in the vein of Lathrop’s The Fairy Circus. A toy angel, left on the windowsill with a candle on Christmas Eve, flies into the woods to bring presents to the animals.

The Animals’ Santa, written and illustrated by Jan Brett. More Christmas presents for the animals! One thing I love about Brett’s illustrations is that you often have the main story in the big illustrations, but also a little B-plot taking place in the borders. In this case, the main story is the animals discussing who might be the animal Santa (a bear? A moose? A wolf?), while the side story features adorable little mice in little red hats and green sweaters making little Christmas presents using forest goodies like acorns.

The Twelve Days of Christmas, illustrated by Jan Brett. The main illustrations are the various presents for the twelve days of Christmas (the seven swans a-singing etc.), while the borders show the tale of the singer and her true love heading into the forest to get a Christmas tree, then decorating it with her family. So charming. Each border has “Merry Christmas” in a different language, and then the illustrations reference that national theme, so for instance on “eleven pipers piping” the language is Scotch Gaelic and the pipers are bagpipers in kilts.

Christmas Folk, by Natalia Belting, illustrated by Barbara Cooney. Did you know that Christmas also used to be Halloween? Okay, not exactly, but Christmas used to be the holiday where people got dressed up in costumes, went door to door demanding sweets, and set off fireworks, all customs that Belting describes in this story. (Cooney’s firework illustration includes a little girl with her hands over her ears. What a great detail!)