A Holiday Showcase: Discovering Hidden Gem Holiday Movies

One thing that bothers concerning many modern holiday movies is their overly meta-commentary – the gaudy decorations, the checklist music choices, and the canned speeches about the real spirit of the season. Maybe because the style was not yet solidified into formula, films from the 1940s often explore the holidays from increasingly imaginative and not as anxious perspectives.

The Fifth Avenue Happening

A delightful gem from exploring 1940s Christmas films is It Happened on Fifth Avenue, a 1947 semi-romantic farce with a brilliant concept: a jovial drifter winters in a empty luxurious mansion each year. During one cold spell, he welcomes fellow down-on-their-luck individuals to stay with him, including a former GI and a young woman who happens to be the heiress of the mansion's wealthy owner. Helmer Roy Del Ruth gives the picture with a found-family coziness that numerous newer Christmas movies strive to attain. It perfectly balances a thoughtful story on housing and a whimsical city fantasy.

The Tokyo Godfathers

Satoshi Kon's 2003 feature Tokyo Godfathers is a entertaining, heartbreaking, and deeply moving take on the festive story. Loosely based on a John Wayne movie, it follows a triumvirate of displaced people – an alcoholic, a transgender woman, and a young runaway – who discover an abandoned infant on the night before Christmas. Their journey to locate the baby's family sets off a series of misadventures involving gangsters, foreigners, and ostensibly serendipitous encounters. The film embraces the enchantment of coincidence typically found in seasonal stories, delivering it with a cool-toned visual style that sidesteps saccharine emotion.

Meet John Doe

Although Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life rightly gets a lot of acclaim, his other work Meet John Doe is a compelling seasonal film in its own right. With Gary Cooper as a down-on-his-luck "forgotten man" and Barbara Stanwyck as a plucky writer, the film starts with a fabricated note from a man threatening to leap from a ledge on December 24th in frustration. The nation's reaction leads the reporter to find a man to impersonate the fictional "John Doe," who then becomes a country-wide symbol for kindness. The narrative acts as both an uplifting story and a brutal indictment of wealthy businessmen attempting to exploit popular goodwill for personal gain.

Silent Partner

While Christmas slasher pictures are now plentiful, the Christmas thriller remains a relatively rare style. This makes the 1978 feature The Silent Partner a unique discovery. Featuring a wonderfully vile Christopher Plummer as a criminal Santa Claus and Elliott Gould as a clever bank teller, the movie pits two kinds of opportunistic individuals against each other in a well-crafted and twisty tale. Mostly overlooked upon its original debut, it is worthy of rediscovery for those who prefer their festive entertainment with a dark atmosphere.

Almost Christmas

For those who prefer their family reunions dysfunctional, Almost Christmas is a riot. Featuring a star-studded cast that has Danny Glover, Mo'Nique, and JB Smoove, the movie examines the dynamics of a clan compelled to share five days under one home during the festive period. Hidden issues rise to the top, culminating in scenes of extreme comedy, such as a confrontation where a weapon is pulled out. Naturally, the narrative arrives at a touching resolution, offering all the fun of a seasonal mess without any of the real-life consequences.

The Film Go

Doug Liman's 1999 feature Go is a Christmas-adjacent caper that is a young-adult take on woven stories. Although some of its humor may feel dated upon rewatch, the film still offers many aspects to appreciate. These range from a cool turn from Sarah Polley to a standout scene by Timothy Olyphant as a laid-back pusher who amusingly wears a Santa hat. It captures a very brand of fin-de-siècle movie attitude set against a holiday setting.

Miracle at Morgan's Creek

The satirist's 1940s comedy The Miracle of Morgan's Creek skips conventional Christmas warmth in exchange for irreverent humor. The movie centers on Betty Hutton's Trudy Kockenlocker, who ends up expecting after a drunken night but cannot recall the man involved. The bulk of the humor arises from her condition and the attempts of Eddie Bracken's hapless Norval Jones to rescue her. Although not immediately a Christmas film at the outset, the story winds up on the Christmas, showing that Sturges has created a playful interpretation of the birth narrative, filled with his trademark satirical style.

Better Off Dead

This 1985 teen movie starring John Cusack, Better Off Dead, is a textbook example of its decade. Cusack's